Need a Long-range indoor wireless network.

[elkinm]

A friend wants me to set up a network through his house. It will have some mission critical PCs at one end of the house connected to the router through cat-5 and wireless through the rest of the house.

The house is fairly long, brick/concrete walls so I doubt that a signal from one router would do reach to the other end.

I would still like to try a MIMO router an see how far it goes. The problem is that it would connect to laptops or PCs without MIMO network cards so I don't know if that is an option.

So my next option is to get a wireless router and then run a repeater. It is possible that I might have to use 2 or even 3 repeaters dew to the thick walls. I would prefer to use routers as repeaters and be able to connect wired PCs to them if needed. I believe BuffaloTech has such routers out of the box and Linksys can be firmware hacked for this.

Either way I would like to go to Best Buy or some local store and buy some good hardware if only to test the range it can give me. Can you give any good suggestions for what hardware I can test out and what would be the most efficient way to run this network.

The network is more for internet through cable. So would it be possible to connect a second modem at the other end of the house and have it connect to a wireless router so there would be two routers and either side and clients will find the best one through the house. I want this to be legal so if it is possible, what can I tell Comcast to do to get the second modem to run.

Thanks

 

[Goosemaster]

Look up WDS

 

[JackMDS]

MIMO is downward compatible. However if the MIMO would cover you are would not find additional Hardware to extend and bridge the Network (My position on current MIMO. http://www.ezlan.net/faq#MIMO )

Entry Level repeaters can repeat only one time (No daisy chain).

Best and cheapest solution would be few Wireless Cable/DSL Router connected between them with cable,Using a Wireless Cable/DSL Router as a Switch with an Access Point

If the people are "allergic to CATS" (Cat5e), then as Goosemaster said above WDS ( Wireless Network - Configuration Modes. ).

Out of the box, Buffalo Tech. and some of the Belkin 802.11g line of Wireless Router are WDS. Flashable Linksys WRT54g can be made with 3rd party firmware WDS as well.

:sun:

 

[elkinm]

Thanks, I know that MIMO is a one router thing so it might not work but I still want to try it. Is there any difference between the brands or are all MIMO the same? Also, Do MIMO routers extend the range as much as in your link or is that a best case scenario?

The Buffalo Turbo G router looks like my best option as it comes with WDS. Although I don't like that I can only repeat once. Is there any hardware that allows me to repeat several times without costing a whole lot more. If I were to run wires they would be very long and I really can't think of a way to hide them. I want to try wireless to see if it is even possible.

 

[JackMDS]

The reason that Entry Level Repeaters cut into half have to do with the single Radio that is installed on all inexpensive Wireless. When you have a single Radio it has to Flip Flop between Transmit and Receive and thus cuts the Bandwidth.

Dual Radio units go into the high hundreds.

The Buffalo High Power Turbo is as High as it can go with regular 802.11g.

:sun:

 

[elkinm]

Can I set it up like this:
A wireless router -> wireless access point -> another router via cat5 -> wireless access point...

Basically the access point is a router configured as a client which is connected to another router very near by, by cat5 which will communicate to yet another router.

This is an extension of the Ethernet based connection in the links. I want the Ethernet connection to be very short giving the transmitting router coverage around that area.

Thanks again.

 

[JackMDS]

Yeah in principle you can, you actually creates a Double Radio Repeater with such a setting. Using Access Points (AP0 devices can make it is easy to setup since AP are designed for such purposes.

Wireless Routers might be challenging when used as Clients.

If you use all Buffalo, or all solid flashed WRT54G you might be able to ?swing? it.

:sun:

 

[elkinm]

I tested the house with my cheap SMC router, the Dlink 634M and the Buffalo high power, all with a built in laptop G adapter.

The regular router barely went 20 ft trough the walls down to the bottom floor from the office. The 634M surprisingly was not any better, maybe even worse. The adapter was not MIMO but I would think it would put out a slightly better signal. The buffalo was slightly better but only a couple of feet so not a real difference. I thought it was hopeless so I went to the other side of the house to see about wiring a network or getting a second internet connection and discovered that the other half got a signal going from the office outside and windows in the other side of the house.

From there I tested a router to test coverage and with the windows the signal goes through the rest of the house. So I need a router in the office and then a repeater on the opposite end of the house.
The WDS setup on the router is quite complicated. I don't see why it needs to be that complicated, just as long as it works.
I will post again when I am done.

Thanks for your help.

 

[elkinm]

Set it up and it works great. I followed the online DWS instructions. The biggest problem I had was that the router did not assign an IP address when set it to bridge. I got to connect once, but after that I had to set the IP manually. After that the setup went smoothly.

I set them up with the same SSID for easy roaming but if use a laptop close to the bridged router were it can pick up the signal from the main router it uses the connection from the main router even if the connection is very slow. Once I move out of range of the main router the signal goes through the bridge and then runs at full speed.

Is this a typical problem with repeated wireless or is there something I can set to always use the fastest connection.