How does one create a seemless wired/wireless network

[pbpayton]

I work at a University which has a wired and wireless network. The university upgraded our equipment and added access points throughout our building for the wireless. The two are not bridged or connected in any way. There are about 50 macs and pcs on the local network and about 120 mobiles devices. There are also about 8 servers and 15 printers which are connected through wire.

Is there a way to get the wired devices to show up as shared items for the wireless devices?

Any ideas? Wireless bridge? I might be able to use IP addresses of the shared devices and limit connections to the range that pertains to our building. VPN?

Another way I guess to make it work is to add enough wireless switches to the wired network to cover the building and set them so that they don't do dhcp since the university server does that already. Then when the users enter the building they can switch wireless networks to gain access to the building's shared devices.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[bill001g]

What you really want is a router between the 2 networks. Of course you need to use different subnets. Be careful you need a actual router not the things they sell in almost every retail store. It must be able to transfer data between multiple subnets without any NAT. Any router running dd-wrt would do that but I suspect the university has routers and maybe even layer 3 switches.

Now this just allows everything to talk it does not solve the issues of dropped connections as you move from AP to AP or move a machine from a wireless to wired network. You need a expensive controller based system to solve that issue.