I have tried to test trough all the options and variants of using wireless cards that I could imagine, and I have some experiences and some points of view that is just my experiences. Other might have done things different, and have some other experiences, but still some of my point of view.
1. Wirleless cards supported by sme server is a bad idea. This will mess up your server - allways.
2. Alternative 2 is rather "do-able" with a general Linux distro, not sme server.
If I still wanted to build aternative 2 and to use a wireless card, I have actually done it and tested it like this, using virtualization:
1. First I installed newest Centos 5.x. Then I installed the cabeled and the wireless card to the Centos host installation and got both cards up and working.
2. Then i downloaded and installed the free vmware virtualisation server.
3. Installed then sme server as a virtual server on Vmware and bridged over the wireless card of the host system over to the "virtual cabeled adapter" of the virtual sme server.
When I dis this testing I actually also combined it with a virtual smoothwall firewall, to obtain some more detailed and easy firewall configuration option. (So that the virtual sme server was actually runned as a server only behind a virtual smothwall gateway.) I also made a test of running the virtual sme server as a virtual gateway. Also this worked, but I did not use so many hours to test it out.
The principle of letting the host system take care about all problems related to wireless communication, and then just to bridge over the wirless card over to a "virtual wired card" worked pretty well.
I still use this server arrangenment, except for that I have removed the wireless card, due to what I will call "some estetical considerations". When you try to optimice and your host system for stability and hardness, the wireless card will allways be the factor that make things look "not so beatifull" (Even though it works.)
Today I use Centos 5.3 as host system, Smoothwall as virtual firewall gateway, SME 7.3 server as virtual server, and Windows 2000 Pro as a "on server windows client" for remote connection etc. The SME server also has the Asterisk server contrib installed. System has been tested with wireless card as client (like alternative 2) and also with a wirless access point implemented into the server.
In all cases the Virtual SME server was completely unaffected by the use of a wirless card, so there were not any need for any kind of modification for the virtual SME server.
If yo have a PC a wired network card a wireless network card, alternative two can actually be done at zero cost by moving all problems releated to the wireless card down to a host system, and then just run the SME server as a virtual installation on top of that arrangement. (As it in this way will not "see" the wireless card.)
I am quite happy with my virtual sme server / smoothwall / Windows 2000 installation on Centos 5.3/Vmware. It has now been running for approx 6 months without a single bug, and it has the option of using all kind of wired and wireless card arrangements and safety zone arrangements. (As supported by the virtual Smoothwall)
One thing I can not remeber for sure: Did I use WPA encryption when running the network card as a client ? I believe I did, but I'm not 100 % sure if I remeber this right. One thing I can remeber was that when I implemented a wireless access point into the host system, I were only able to impement WEP for this Linux based access point. (And the installation was actually quite "ugly", even though it worked.)
17 Replies
5965 Views