options for wireless networking between 2 buildings

The story so far:

We have a wired peer-to-peer network of up to 6 PCs (running a mixture
of Win2K, Win XP Home, and Win98se), installed in a home office. The
network shares an internet connection via an ISDN router (we're not
yet broadband enabled). The office is in a separate building from the
house, about 5m apart. Walls of both are solid stone (house is a
converted barn, office a converted dairy).

We recently acquired a Linksys Wireless AP (WAP54G) and a couple of
WPG54G wireless NICs (CardBus), with the idea that this would allow us
to use laptops in the house but still be connected to the network in
the office. The WAP is currently sited close to a window directly
facing the house. However, initial experimentation has shown that the
strength and quality of the connection is very poor in the house -
indeed, unless a laptop is positioned so that there's line-of-sight
through windows between it and the WAP, the connection is (at best)
intermittent.

Options:

1. The office has a Velux roof window - the WAP could be repositioned
in the space immediately below this. I would need to do a Heath
Robinson-ish lashup of power and CAT5 cables to even test this, and a
permanent installation here would require some moderate
recabling/ducting. The benefit would be that the WAP would then be
positioned at a height of about 3.5m (rather than 1.2-1.8m, which is
the best we can do in the current location.

2. The WAP itself has removable antennae; I assume therefore that with
suitable low-loss cabling and connectors, I could move the antennae
onto the roof of the office (getting extra height and implying that
the signal to the house is only passing through one solid barrier).
(Would the antennae themselves be suitably weatherproof, or would
these have to be replaced by something designed for exterior use?)

3. There is a buried cable duct between the house and the office,
currently carrying a (disused) alarm system cable. With luck, it may
be possible to use the alarm cable to pull through a CAT5 cable,
providing a wired connection from the office to the house; the WAP
could then be moved to a suitable point within the house, hopefully
providing a sufficiently strong signal to the room(s) where we're
likely to want laptops. Additional advantage of this one: obviously
we could stick an extra hub onto the end of this cable, so that some
wired connections could be provided within the house leaving the WiFi
link for those rooms where a wired link is not possible or practical.
Downside here is that, unless we purchase a second WAP, a laptop
connecting over wireless in the house would have to be plugged into
the wired network if/when its moved to the office.

Comments/opinions/thoughts on additional options welcome!!

Julian


--
Julian Fowler
julian (at) bellevue-barn (dot) org (dot) uk


Julian Fowler

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) says...
> The story so far:
>
> We have a wired peer-to-peer network of up to 6 PCs (running a mixture
> of Win2K, Win XP Home, and Win98se), installed in a home office. The
> network shares an internet connection via an ISDN router (we're not
> yet broadband enabled). The office is in a separate building from the
> house, about 5m apart. Walls of both are solid stone (house is a
> converted barn, office a converted dairy).
>
<snip>

> Comments/opinions/thoughts on additional options welcome!!
>
External antenna. Tried it in Bridlington and got a range of about 1
mile with an omnidirectional on a 10ft pole strapped to the chimney.


--
Conor

Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him.

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:30:42 +0100, Conor Turton
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>(E-Mail Removed) says...
>> The story so far:
>>
>> We have a wired peer-to-peer network of up to 6 PCs (running a mixture
>> of Win2K, Win XP Home, and Win98se), installed in a home office. The
>> network shares an internet connection via an ISDN router (we're not
>> yet broadband enabled). The office is in a separate building from the
>> house, about 5m apart. Walls of both are solid stone (house is a
>> converted barn, office a converted dairy).
>>
><snip>
>
>> Comments/opinions/thoughts on additional options welcome!!
>>
>External antenna. Tried it in Bridlington and got a range of about 1
>mile with an omnidirectional on a 10ft pole strapped to the chimney.

Thanks - what external antenna did you use?

Julian

--
Julian Fowler
julian (at) bellevue-barn (dot) org (dot) uk