YANT - Wireless Setup For Me

[bleeb]

Situation: 3 level building with concrete walls and long distances. DSL is located on the third floor, connection is needed on the bottom floor (go figure).

Need to buy a wireless router and repeaters or bridges or whatever setup you can think of....

Please suggest a setup for me! Thanks.

The approximate distance from the DSL to where I need it is...100-200' feet across, and 3 flights down.

Would it be better to start laying down wires or is there a good wireless setup that you have in mind?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I believe we have a budget of about 200 bucks.

Cheers!

 

[JackMDS]

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.

Buy a Pair of Wireless Routers that can do WDS (Zexel, SMC, Belkin have models that do WDS as is out of the Box.

Linksys WRT54GL can do WDS when flashed with DD-WRT firmware.

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

 

[bleeb]

JackMDS,

That was really helpful! I greatly appreciate the tips. I'll have to do some more planning and do the netstumble stuff.