One PC with multiple WiFi interfaces as an access point test bench tool

I've got a bunch of Motorola WU830G wireless USB adapters laying around.
Just curious if there's a way to connect a few of them to a single PC, have
all of them establish a connection with a single access point under test and
pump data through all of them simultaneously. I didn't get very far with
Windows XP as a client, since it doesn't seem to recognize more than one
Motorola plugged in at the same time.

-- Paul

Paul wrote:
> I've got a bunch of Motorola WU830G wireless USB adapters laying around.
> Just curious if there's a way to connect a few of them to a single PC, have
> all of them establish a connection with a single access point under test and
> pump data through all of them simultaneously.

No, because for one thing, existing 802.11 operates only one client at a
time. In other words, if you had 4 client cards in one machine, youd get
1/4th the bandwidth on each...

I didn't get very far with
> Windows XP as a client, since it doesn't seem to recognize more than one
> Motorola plugged in at the same time.

Doubt many makers have written drivers capable of runnig multiple cards
at once. You'd have to ask the manufacturers.

"Paul" <paule@nospam-mindspring.com> hath wroth:

>I've got a bunch of Motorola WU830G wireless USB adapters laying around.
>Just curious if there's a way to connect a few of them to a single PC, have
>all of them establish a connection with a single access point under test and
>pump data through all of them simultaneously. I didn't get very far with
>Windows XP as a client, since it doesn't seem to recognize more than one
>Motorola plugged in at the same time.

I've never tried it with USB, but I've certainly had multiple wireless
ethernet bridges connected and functioning. However, it will not do
what you think (and didn't bother mentioning). You cannot use
multiple wireless devices to get more speed without additional
complexity. If you simply connect multiple adapters, and set the
route table metric to all the same values, the operating system will
simply pick one route to use, leaving the others with no traffic.
That's because Windoze includes no load balancing software. It may be
possible to convince the "multilink" driver used to bond two phone or
ISDN lines together to cooperate, but you'll need a similar
contrivance at the destination end, which might be problematic.

There's also the not so subtle problem of frequency selection on your
access point. Wireless access points cannot scan for additional
channels while moving traffic. Therefore, you must pre-assign a
channel for the AP to use. It will ignore all others. That means
that each of your multiple USB wireless devices will all be on the
same channel. That a guaranteed formula for maximum
self-interference.

You could use 3 seperate access points, each on the 3 non-overlapping
channels (1, 6, and 11). That will work, but you are still stuck with
the load balancing problem at the USB end.

Good thinking, nice idea, but it won't work.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558