(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm trying to help a friend who is setting up a wireless network in his
>home. He has a wireless router at one side of his house and a study at
>the opposite end of the house with a pc with wireless adapter attached.
>At the moment he cannot get a good signal... I would like to solve this
>using no wires... As such we have 2 options... Boost the signal by
>increasing the output signal of the AP or receiver sensitivity of the
>adapter. As my friend is not local to me and has little knowledge of
>networking I'd like to keep it as simple as possible.
Lets look at the options a little differently. What you need to
do is improve the path between the client radio and the AP
radio. That is a two way path, but almost anything that helps
in one direction will be equally effective in the opposite
direction. Ways to do that might be:
1) Increase the transmit power (equally on both ends).
Small effect for a potentially large expenditure of
resources. Doubling the power gives you 3 dB, which
could also be described as "not much", or "not enough".
This option is easy if it is already available, which
is to say of your existing equipment allows you to
increase the power. Otherwise, it's a waste...
2) Improve the path itself. This is *very* dependent on
the physical circumstances. The biggest problem in
this case is that while an experienced person can take
one look and tell you to rotate the radio 90 degrees,
or move it to avoid some obvious obstruction, none of
that will be apparent to someone who has no background
in how microwave radio signals propagate.
3) Provide a better antenna at one or both ends. This is
the most likely to be productive, yet easy, option. It
dovetails with item 2 above, and perhaps in the process
of trying to experiment with the idea of a better
antenna, a combination of better antennas and or better
location and orientation of antennas might be *very*
productive.
4) Worst case for resources and best case for results,
is the option of installing a repeater in a location
that provides a good path to both ends of the current
link.
>My proposed solution which I believe should be possible, affordable and
>easy to set up would be to place a wireless access point in his roof in
>the middle of his house and bridge the signal between the original
>router and the client adapter in his study. However the wireless router
>and the additional access point would have to connect to each other
>wirelessly... How do you do this?
This is essentially Item 4 above. Pick a location with a *good*
path to each of the current link ends. You can test that with
the existing equipment, hopefully, by temporarily relocating one
router to the point you think would work and testing the other
at it's current location, and then move the client to other end
and try it there too. Obviously that will all be *much* easier
if someone has a laptop with a wifi builtin!
Some pointers about choosing a location. Walls are, at best, not
good. If they contain chicken wire or other metal supports for
plaster or perhaps foil backed insulation, or are made from
concrete, they might be absolutely impassable. (If you have
three of these to go through... even the repeater isn't going
to make this work!) A regular wood frame wall with sheet rock
and wood paneling isn't so bad, but you still lose something
through every wall.
Antenna orientation is significant. A 1/2 wave antenna, the
most common one seen, radiates in a donut shaped pattern. If it
is vertically oriented that donut is omni direction in azimuth,
but has less radiation as the elevation angle approaches
vertical. So you do *not* want to place such an antenna
directly above or below one end of the link. On the other hand,
most of them can be swiveled around and position horizontally,
which in a point to point link between two stationary radios is
just ideal.
As to equipment... There are a number of options, and I'm no
expert of picking between them. If you use an AP at a high
point, you can use two client units at each end to connect to
the AP. It doesn't actually have to have a wired connection to
anything else (though usually it is easiest to arrange them that
way). The client at one end can just as well be a router or a
PC that can forward IP, and provide Internet access to the
opposite end client unit that way.
Or you can put a repeater at that center point. That is
something I'd recommend with mixed feelings. I've set up and
used WRT54G routers from Linksys (with third party firmware) as
repeaters. I am also currently using a WRE54G Repeater from
Linksys. In all cases dealing with a WDS enabled repeater for
802.11b/g is technically a pain. They tend to only work with
other equipment by the same manufacturer, have complex problems
regarding security. For someone who does this stuff for fun can
be just an all day joyride! (That may be Hell for anyone who
doesn't play with radios compulsively.)
>Has anyone done this? Any ideas of the best products for the job? I
>currently use a Linksys WRT54G router myself with Sveasoft firmware, I
>have been very happy with this product, could I use this for the
>scenario? Any tips on configuration of products would also be
>fantastic.
I have a WRT54G 20 feet from me right at first floor ceiling
level, and a WRE54G located across the road near the ceiling on
the second floor. That allows my laptop to solidly connect with
54Mbps rates when I'm across the road sitting on the first
floor. Without the repeater connections are marginal at best,
usually with 11 Mbps or less, and sometimes it just won't
connect at all...
I've also done the same thing with a shot 400 yards down the
road, where the client was at the wrong end of the building and
the repeater was placed at one end of a building which is just
barely protruding far enough to be line of sight. It turned out
that playing with a directional antenna indicated the actual
path being used was a "passive repeater" arrangement! Pointing
it directly up the road to the AP did not produce the strongest
signal, but pointing it across the road and just a little closer
to the repeater than to the midway point gave the best signal.
One of the buildings must have foil backed insulation, because I
couldn't see anything obvious (it would only need be about the
size of a car license plate, so it might be hard to notice too).
I've used both a WRT54G as a repeater (using Sveasoft's Satori
firmware) and the WRE54G. The WRE54G is more expensive and less
capable, but has some physical advantages because it is smaller
and comes with a very nice wall mount. I don't recommend the
WRE54G unless you happen to find an unhappy owner who wants to
unload it for cheap. It's worth it at half price, but not at
full price!
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
(E-Mail Removed)
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