Programmable routers communicate with PC

Hi all,

I want to arrange a kind of wireless network like this.

I have a PC(say a laptop). I want to connect two routers to it and work as two access points of a wireless network. So my laptop is working as a server. Through a application I want to read the status of each router, such as devices trying to connect to the router, distance to each devices and so on. To do that the router should be accessible or programmable.

In that way I can retrieve information from each router from an application running on my laptop.

Is it possible to do so, and if so How.

I have done a similar thing with Bluetooth. Just connect two USB Bluetooth adapters and access them through an application.

Thanks in advance.

You can certainly connect two wireless access points (what you're calling a router; a mistake made because most consumer routers have wireless access points built into them) to a single network, and to get status from them, most wireless access points support logging and alerting... either via SysLog, email, or other means. As far as getting things like distance to devices about the best you'd be able to do is get a signal strength measurement. You wouldn't be able to use both of them in conjunction to triangulate or get heading of a signal though due to the way the wireless standard is written. For something like that, you'd need special hardware.

I doubt access point firmware normally provides any API for this, though custom firmware might do it via a Telnet/TCP connection or perhaps a Web Service.

More likely to accomplish this you'd use WiFi adapters and the related API. But even this would probably only support "ad hoc" networking and not normal access point operation. I suspect that requires different low-level software and drivers not normally part of Windows. At a minimum you'd want to configure Internet Connection Sharing in order to get bridging and routing within Windows, which might be enough.

Hi all, thanks a lot for all your feed back and sorry for the delay for replying on this thread. Please have a look at my comments and please keep your contribution here with this thread. :)

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Originally Posted by Jenner

You can certainly connect two wireless access points (what you're calling a router; a mistake made because most consumer routers have wireless access points built into them) to a single network, and to get status from them, most wireless access points support logging and alerting... either via SysLog, email, or other means. As far as getting things like distance to devices about the best you'd be able to do is get a signal strength measurement. You wouldn't be able to use both of them in conjunction to triangulate or get heading of a signal though due to the way the wireless standard is written. For something like that, you'd need special hardware.

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May be the word I used confused you. So the access points could be the correct word.

As I explain I want to make two access points connected to my laptop. I did this with two USB adapters, so I can two USB points to connect to. Through a API I can retrieve details such as single strength and related. However I cannot connect to internet in that case, so I want to use two access points which are connect to the internet. Hope it's clear to you what I want to do.

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Originally Posted by dilettante

More likely to accomplish this you'd use WiFi adapters and the related API.

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So I want to make two (or more) WiFi adapters to my laptop. Is it possible mate, because I don't know much about hardware devices and all.