Anyone set up an 802.11b network with multiple repeaters?

[loup garou]

We have a client that we're going to be doing some home work for. He has a very large home and wants wifi access in every room. We generally shy away from setting clients up wirelessly in a corporate setting, so our experience with rolling out wireless networks is limited to basic soho setups in clients' homes with one AP or router. We did some testing with WAP11's in repeater mode, but couldn't get them to work to our satifaction...sooo...

Anyone have good references on setting up wireless networks with repeaters throughout a large area?
Any recommendations on equipment to use? Money really isn't an object, so feel free to recommend both soho and enterprise equipment.

 

[loup garou]

eh...just ordered a couple of DLink 800AP+'s to play around with. They were so cheap, we'll probably end up buying a bunch more and placing them all over his house.

 

[rw120555]

How about wiring the house, and then setting up waps as needed? Seems like it would be better than repeaters repeating repeaters...transmission speeds get cut in half with a repeater, I believe.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: rw120555
How about wiring the house, and then setting up waps as needed? Seems like it would be better than repeaters repeating repeaters...transmission speeds get cut in half with a repeater, I believe.

I'm not rewiring this house...it's huge multi-million dollar home (I don't want to be working in a wall that probably costs more than my apartment ). We were thinking powerline or phoneline networking and WAPs around the house, but that's a bit inelegant.

 

[rw120555]

I've used phoneline for similar purposes, and it works fine. Just get a bunch of Netgear PE102s or equivalents, hook one up to the router and combo the others with WAPs. I suspect that might be better than repeaters repeating repeaters, assuming you have the necessary phone jacks all on the same line, but maybe not. You can also do this with powerline, perhaps more cheaply, but people seem even more skeptical of powerline than phone line.

With either phoneline or powerline, you'll be limited to 802.11b speed.

Within a year, HPNA 3.0 will supposedly be out, and if so it will offer much faster speeds.

 

[Soybomb]

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: rw120555
How about wiring the house, and then setting up waps as needed? Seems like it would be better than repeaters repeating repeaters...transmission speeds get cut in half with a repeater, I believe.

I'm not rewiring this house...it's huge multi-million dollar home (I don't want to be working in a wall that probably costs more than my apartment ). We were thinking powerline or phoneline networking and WAPs around the house, but that's a bit inelegant.

Multiple repeaters be a pain I would think (never tried multiple ones myself though), not to mention chop your bandwidth in half with each repeater. Multiple AP's the proper solution. If powerline and phoneline is too "inelegant" and this guy has a multi-million dollar and money is no object, why not just pay someone for a couple hours worth of labor and let them pull some cat5 to where you need it. That will give you alot more flexibility in the future as well.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: Soybomb

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: rw120555
How about wiring the house, and then setting up waps as needed? Seems like it would be better than repeaters repeating repeaters...transmission speeds get cut in half with a repeater, I believe.

I'm not rewiring this house...it's huge multi-million dollar home (I don't want to be working in a wall that probably costs more than my apartment ). We were thinking powerline or phoneline networking and WAPs around the house, but that's a bit inelegant.

Multiple repeaters be a pain I would think (never tried multiple ones myself though), not to mention chop your bandwidth in half with each repeater. Multiple AP's the proper solution. If powerline and phoneline is too "inelegant" and this guy has a multi-million dollar and money is no object, why not just pay someone for a couple hours worth of labor and let them pull some cat5 to where you need it. That will give you alot more flexibility in the future as well.

Yeah, we'll probably end up going with HPNA + multiple AP's. Just wondering if anyone has tried multiple repeaters before and how much the bandwidth was cut after going through a couple repeaters. Luckily the 800AP+'s we ordered are AP's as well, so we can either use them or save them for another client or just play around with them. They're nice because they're very small and unobtrusive (thank god, because they are ugly ).

 

[rw120555]

You might also consider signal boosters, such as the Linksys WSB24

 

[ktwebb]

Since there is only one radio in an 802.11x AP, half the bandwidth is chopped each hop. Might not be such a bad deal with 54G. Repeating in general is a poor alternative to multiple AP's in infrastructure mode. If the guy has a multi million dollar house then not wiring it is a really selling the dude short. If your not comfortable doing it then bite the bullet and source it. No experience with powerline so if that works well then so be it, but years in the microwave LAN/WAN business. Repeating SUCKS. Good luck.