FASTEST, Longest Range and most reliable wireless router?

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JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
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Originally posted by: Kai920

Does this High Power radio make a difference in a house with concrete walls?

There is No one inclusive "magic solution". High Power would do better than any regular 33mW radio.

That said, better would be in case of few walls and not whatever number of walls you put it through.

Otherwise you lay few Cat wire and creat an Access Point system (which is the way business do it).

Or if you have Anti-Wire Spouse ;) you do WDS.

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The general approach that I take for Coverage issues is the following.

The best way is to lay few CAT6 cables to central locations in the house, install Access Points, or Cable/DSL Routers configured as an Access Points ( Using a Wireless Cable/DSL Router as a Switch with an Access Point ), and connect them to the Main Router.

You do not want/can not/hate/your client hate to lay Cables.

You start with One affordable Router that can Do WDS (the reason for the WDS support is in case you need to add more Wireless hardware).

If you are lucky and your environment is conducive to get covered with one Wireless Router you are done.

Routers that can do WDS as is are old by (Zyxel, SMC, Belkin, and some others have models that do WDS as is out of the Box ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...ss_Distribution_System ).

Linksys WRT54GL, and Asus, 520GU can do WDS when flashed with DD-WRT firmware ( http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page ).

Using a Laptop loaded with Netstumbler, do a Wireless survey in the house, http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

According to the Netstumbler's signal strength reading, identify spots that have strong signal. and spot with weak, or No signal.

Evaluate how you can cover the space and start placing WDS units.

Additional Wireless Routers in WDS Mode (Wireless Network - Configuration Modes. ) has to be placed in spots were the signal is good about Half way to the dead spots.

How many WDS units are needed? It depends on your specific environment (that is a good the reason to buying WDS units one at the time, try it, and decide on the Next step).

Otherwise.

Extending Distance - http://www.ezlan.net/Distance.html

Wireless Router as an AP - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Wireless Modes - http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Modes.html

Wireless Bridging - http://www.ezlan.net/bridging.html

Hi Gain Antenna - http://www.ezlan.net/antennae.html