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what's the range of wireless in a residential building?

H

HJB417

Senior member
I live on the 10th floor in my building and my dad lives on the 31st floor of the same building. The building is brick. Would wireless networking work? if not, what will? I want to add his computer to my home LAN.
 
Neither of the 802.11 variants are going to travel 20 stories. If you used very good antennas and perhaps bought a couple of amps and a repeater you might, and I mean might make that distance.
 
Thats roughly 210 feet between you and your father....most wireless products work best within the 100 ft range.
 
Most definately not. Unless you could get a couple outdoor antennas (preferrably yagi) pointed at each other. But you will of course need line of site at that distance.
 
LOS is possible, it's he's 21 flights up but he's also about 200~300feet in front of me. There's a park on the 2nd floor so there's an open space at the center of the building.
 
Distance is not even the biggest factor. 20 stories means at least 20 floor/ceilings if you were going straight up. Not gonna happen.
 
Ah, then that changes everything. If you have line of sight, you might be in business. RF shoots through paned glass well. Almost a non factor. At that distance you are still looking at some additions to a standard AP, even a 100 milliwatt corporate version, something like the Cisco 350 series. If you plan to go cheap, SOHO AP like a Linksys or something of that ilk, then you will need pretty high powered add on directional antennas. Even then, at 30 milliwatt or less, its not a certainty but you got a shot anyway.
 
I already have a server doing DHCP, routing and stuff like that. The most I can do is add a wireless NIC to the server. Is it possible to use the netgear/linksys wireless routers as a repeater/wireless access point? I can't relocate the server but I can put the wireless router at the window.

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Cisco Aironet 350 Access Point

Price: $1,299.00

Good Lord, that's a lot of $$$

is there anyway to test out the distance by using walkie-talkies or a cordless phone(900mhz,1.2hgz,2.4ghz) so I can find out the min milliwat needed?
 
Absolutly, you don't have to use any of the built in DHCP or Firewalls in those products. I have a friend that has had great luck with the Linksys. I would place that directly by your window and then try a card in your dad's pc... I doubt you will get 11Mbps but you may get 4 (if any). If that dosent work you could try an add on outdoor antennas and mount it outside your window. It would be good if you dad could too. If your setting this up... you might as well resell you internet service to other people in the building 😉

You could see if a 2.4GHz phone works and that may give you some insight, but there is so many variables with that. I would just buy the Linksys from Staples and give it a try. If it works, keep it. If not, bring it back.
 
that would be cool but the cable modem uploads are capped at 40kbytes/sec
=(
I will give the router a try sometime soon though
 
Yes, you can setup an AP as a repeater but understand you cut your bandwidth in half when you do so. So say theoretical 5.5 Mbps which is closer to 3 real world. Still enough to smoke just about any cable connection through.
 
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