Bridging Recording Studio Wired Network with Wireless Network

[ssimlai]

Dear friends,

I wish to solicit your help in configuring a peculiar setup at home as depicted in the picture attached.

I am basically trying to bridge three networks together:

( A ) A Linksys wireless router with its wirelessly connected devices, mainly a desktop in BR2 and a laptop in BR1 or Hall

( B ) Two (crossover) ethernet networked PCs forming my home studio in BR3 and

( C ) A Linksys Wireless Ethernet bridge connected hardwired to a WD NetCenter NAS drive also residing in BR3.

Here is an explanation of the schematic drawing:

- A Motorola cable modem is located in BR1 which then connects to a Linksys Wireless-G router WRT54G positioned in the Hall (at a somewhat central location). A laptop with inbuilt wireless adaptor is generally operated in BR1 or in the Hall wherever convenient.

- In a somewhat distant room BR2 there is a general purpose computer with a Linksys USB wireless adaptor WUBS54G. A printer (with no networking capability) is also attached to the USB port of this computer which is to be shared over the wireless network.

- In a third bedroom BR3 adjacent to BR2 is my recording studio that comprises two PCs (alongwith a huge list of equipment and software) which I plan to wire together in a crossover ethernet network. Normally these machines shall be dedicated to recording and will have nothing to do with the rest of the house or its elements.

- However, these two machines in BR3 will, though very rarely, need to go online only for registration and downloading of software / windows updates etc. For this, each of them has been given a Linksys USB wireless adaptor WUSB54G.

- A WD NetCenter NAS Drive with one Ethernet port is positioned in the studio for backing up. Since this is located in BR3 I purchased a Linksys Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge with a single ethernet port to connect the NAS Drive so that it can be used to back from all PCs all over the house.

While connecting the above is easy, a few issues are bugging me:

1- Is it possible that I am able to connect to the internet wirelessly and without unplugging the crossover cable? I understand that Windows XP gives priority to ethernet connection over wireless.

2- IP address. Since I shall be basically trying to bridge the three networks A, B and C together there could be an issue of IP Addressing, meaning a need to change IP Addresses may appear each time there is a need to connect the two studio PCs to the internet and back to its original configuration of ethernet crossover connection. In other words, for example currently for the wireless router network, the IP addresses are 192.168.1.50 for the wireless laptop and 192.168.1.51 for the wireless desktop. So ideally for the I should be able to configure 192.168.1.52 for the first crossovered PCs, 192.168.1.53 for the second crossovered PC and 192.168.1.54 for the NAS Drive on the bridge. That's for wireless.

But now if I want to revert to making music on the crossovered network (hardwired PCs) will the same IP addressing work?

Would love to hear from someone.

Edited November 20, 2007 by ssimlai

[john_gallow]

Yes it is possible to assign also on cable network cards IPs from the same subnet's like you have on wireless, but it leads to complications and you must manually adjust route table to make it functional,

because if you have not set it correctly then Windows can to use wireless way instead of cable way.

The more simple way is:

On wireless interfaces of both hardwired computers let 192.168.1.x/255.255.255.0 adresses with default gateway equal to internal IP of your modem.

On cable network cards assign different subnet, for example 192.168.2.1/255.255.255.0 and 192.168.2.2/255.255.255.0

for using cable connection on hardwired computers use IP from this subnet.

Dont add default gateway in cable network cards.

Default gateway leave only on wireless interfaces of hardwired computers.

It should work.

John

[ssimlai]

You cannot imagine how nice I am feeling after reading your response. It looks that one of my problems has been resolved.

However, would you be also able to tell me if I can change from wired to wireless without having to physically disconnect the crossover ethernet cable from their ports?

Also, will the wireless ethernet bridge (Linksys WET54G) connected to the NAS Drive sound a good idea or a bad one?

[john_gallow]

If you are on one of hardwired computers

and you need to connect to it's hardwired neighbour,

use it's IP from subnet 192.168.2.x (like I described above).

If you are on rest of network and you need to connect

to one of hardwired computers then use

it's wireless IP from subnet 192.168.1.x .

Thus you dont need to physically connect/disconnect cable.

WET54G:

You have most of backuped data on wireless part of network

(not two hardwired computers), it's ok,

but if you mostly will backup data from hardwired computers,

it can be more quicker to have cable connection to backup device.

Regards !

:-)

John

[ssimlai]

If you are on rest of network and you need to connect to one of hardwired computers then use it's wireless IP from subnet 192.168.1.x.

Thus you dont need to physically connect/disconnect cable.

Looking at my picture above, would this also mean that if I am on one of the two hardwired computers and I need to connect to the wireless network then I can use the subnet 192.168.1.x without disconnecting the cable?

Why I am asking is because I read somewhere that though I can connect to wireless network this way, the computer will see this as if the ethernet cable is still inserted and so will react according to the wired network protocol. Don't understand if this is true or not...

Edited November 22, 2007 by ssimlai

[john_gallow]

Computer choses network interface for sending IP packets to target by it's routing table.

Every your hardwired computer has in it's routing table two routes:

1. Route to wireless subnet 12.168.1.x

2. Route to cable subnet 192.168.2.x

This items in routing table are created automatically when network interface starts.

So dont worry, it choses right route.

For example:

your hardwired computer has on the cable interface IP: 192.168.2.1, and the second computer has IP on cable interface: 192.168.1.2

and

on wireless interface first has IP: 192.168.1.53 , and the second has wireless IP: 192.168.1.54

When you try ping 192.168.2.2 from the first computer, it choses cable interface by it's route table, because it knows that it can to connect to subnet 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0 through cable interface.

If you ping from the same computer to 192.168.1.54, it choses wireless interface.

You can verify these pings and you will see in output that pings through wireless are much more slow.

John

[ssimlai]

Western Digital NetCenter Drive Forum:

You should be able to use the Net Center connected to a wireless bridge. However, and this is a big however... I am very confident that you will experience connectivity issues to shares on the Net Center should it lose connection to your local network. I would recommend using this product connected to a wired networksince the net center will perform best connected wired. There are several factors that might affect performance. You might be fine using the bridge, but performance itself isn't my concern. It's the network access to shares I am worried about. You should try it, but go in knowing of possible issues. Hope you'll have good news to report

What you are saying about using the drive with the WET54G is almost exactly the same as stated by WD Forum. It is therefore very tempting for me to go wired but...

My problem is that I need the two studio computers to be completely blind to the rest of the network under normal conditions of work and so I thought the only possible way could be to use crossover ethernet to join them up regular studio operations.

This solves the problem of the 2 PCs but not that of the NetCenter NAS drive....this worries me quite a bit. As it is the WD drive, I hear from the forums, is not very much "up to the mark" and there have been screw ups in many cases when people tried funny things and it crashed, leaving all data unretrievable...

To top this up I now have the issue of wireless vs. wired for the NAS Drive.

Tell me, if I connect the NAS Drive straight to the wireless router instead of going through the WET54G, will it be better? And is that called "wired" even if the computers whose data are being backed up are on wireless? In this case will connecting the NetCenter to the WET54G not be the same as connecting to the router?

Edited November 23, 2007 by ssimlai

[john_gallow]

Why do you need to have studio's PCs completely blind to the rest of network ?

If you dont want to have access to them from rest of network, it can be solved by

user accounts with access rights, you dont need to disconnect them.

Wired vs. wireless:

I ment in previous post that it should be better to have it on cable only for speed.

I dont see any other reason, only speed, because cable network can be about Gigabit,

and wireless the most 54Mbit (by type of your your Linksys Wet 54G).

If you connect backup drive directly to router through cable, it will have no effect,

because also in this case every computer must to go through wireless way to backup it's data.

But it does not need to be bad if you for example will to backup every day 10 Mega of data.

But if you will backup for example 4GB of music, on 22Mbit (ideal speed) it will take about 24 minutes

on wireless. But mostly parctical speed is less than 22Mbit - depending on antenna placement, material of your house, etc...

so for example if your practical wireless speed will be only 11Mbit, it take time 48 minutes.

That is reason why I write about connecting backup drive directly to one of PCs which will have the most data for backuping in your network.

John

[ssimlai]

Why do you need to have studio's PCs completely blind to the rest of network?

Answer: I do not want the studio computers searching for network drives that these will never use and slowing down the system. For music recording there is an element of latency which the minimum you have is the better. As it is, latency is not easy to eliminate so introducing another potential cause is not welcome.

This is why I am going for crossover ethernetworking and not router based, for these two PCs. And hence I see no way to connect the NAS drive to the crossover ethernetworking - unless I add another LAN Card??!! The NAS Drive has only ethernet connectivity and not USB or any other connectivity. So I cannot connect it to a single PC.

Edited November 23, 2007 by ssimlai