Wireless at the house

[timothykerr]

Hello all,

I am new to Cisco's wireless products. I have never seen or touched any Cisco wireless products. I use a Linksys wireless router at the house, but would like to repalce it. I was thinking of replacing it with a Cisco WAP. The reason I want to do this is to learn more about Cisco's wireless products. What better way to learn it than to get one off of eBay and use it at the house?.

Anyway, I was looking at the Cisco 1200 AP. It looks like this access point will provide me with 802.1b/g, WPA/TKIP. Which is what I am looking for. I guess my question is, do I need anything else to use this? Do I have to buy antennas? How will it integrate into my home network? I know it will connect through the uplink port to a switch (or whatever I my be running). Is there anything else I need to configure? Is everything configured through the IOS? Can you run routing protocols on it? Or is it simply a layer 2 device?

Are there any products you would recommend other than the one I was looking at? Anyway, sorry for the ignorance here, but I am brand new to Cisco's wireless products.

[ericgarnel · Accepted solution]

You will need to provide a router/nat device in front of the 1200AP.

Start with some good reading material:

http://www.ciscopress.com/title/1587050773

or

http://www.ciscopress.com/title/1587201119

If your linksys is fairly recent, it should support WPA/TKIP, 802.11b/g, as does the 1200AP.

The 1200AP can be configured via web int or IOS cli.

As far as I can recall, the 1200 does not support nat and is considered a layer2 device, although I believe it can act as a dhcp server

as well as provide some auth capabilities. It's been a while since I played with the 1200s even though I have 3 of them sitting on my desk!

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Timothy,

I think Eric covered everything here (nice work my friend - 5 points "congrats" on the Silver Badge) except the Antenna reference;

2.4 GHz antennas are not included with the 802.11b or 802.11g radio modules in either version; they must be identified under a separate order line item and purchased separately. Note, the 802.11a radio module is designed with its antenna integrated to the radio module, and therefore no antenna selection is required or available.

From this good doc;

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/prod_technical_reference09186a00800c9435.html

Hope this helps!

Rob

[timothykerr]

Let me start off by saying thank you to Eric and Rob for taking the time to answer this question. I already have a router to perform the routing (5 in fact (I love my testbed)):).

Now, as far as configuring it, Eric you covered that. Thanks. About the antenna's though. Rob, can I assume that unless it is specified, there will be no antenna to support my wireless network. Right? I will have to buy a 1200 WAP AND an antenna for support of 802.1b/g? Correct?

Thanks again for your responses.

[Rob Huffman · Accepted solution]

Hi Timothy,

First off, you are most welcome :) As far as the Antennas go, there are some Cisco AP's that come with Integrated Antennas (AP1121 for example) but most do not (I don't think any of the 1200 Series does). Here is some additional reference material (that I should have added in the first place);

Cisco Aironet 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Antennas and Accessories

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps469/products_data_sheet09186a008022b11b.html

Cisco Aironet Antenna Reference Guide

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps469/products_data_sheet09186a008008883b.html

Something like the 5959 or even the "Rubber Ducky's - 4941" should work for a Home setup. Without an External Antenna these 1200's will only be good for use as a Paper Weight :)

Hope this helps!

Rob