Usable Range

I've done some searching in this group and found a lot of useful
and interesting information such as the information at
www.freeantennas.com.
I understand networking but really nothing about wireless.
What I'd like to do is the following.

Use a Linksys WRT54G to connect a couple of houses together for
some temporary access. These houses are in south Florida, 70s vintage,
concrete block construction (CBS), less then 200 feet apart and
nothing in between except for the occasional car driving down the
street or in the driveway. Does this seem marginally doable or
quite doable ? Or will I likely need to purchase additional hardware
or set up some sort of antenna such as described at freeantennas.com ?
Also with the WRT54G will I be able to block all other connections
besides my own ?

And what is the real difference between the WAP54G and the WRT54G ?
Thank you

Jon



fornews@hotmail.com

> I've done some searching in this group and found a lot of useful
> and interesting information such as the information at
> www.freeantennas.com.
> I understand networking but really nothing about wireless.
> What I'd like to do is the following.
>
> Use a Linksys WRT54G to connect a couple of houses together for
> some temporary access. These houses are in south Florida, 70s
vintage,
> concrete block construction (CBS), less then 200 feet apart and
> nothing in between except for the occasional car driving down the
> street or in the driveway. Does this seem marginally doable or
> quite doable ? Or will I likely need to purchase additional
hardware
> or set up some sort of antenna such as described at freeantennas.com
?
> Also with the WRT54G will I be able to block all other connections
> besides my own ?
>
> And what is the real difference between the WAP54G and the WRT54G ?
> Thank you

The WRT54G acts as an access point and is designed to let clients talk
to it but
not talk wireless with other access points. The WAP54G on the other
hand can act as an access point,
bridge, repeater or an access point client. If you want to give access
to a neighbor
then you should use the WAP54G in bridge mode. Bare in mind, this
bridges 2 wired networks
together and you cant use wireless (laptops etc) unless you add and
access point to his or your network.
Or you can use the WAP54g on your end as an access point (Bridge) and
the neighbor will have his in AP client mode. In this way you can use
wireless but he is just wired. In either case, 200 feet is rathere
easy to accomplish. If you can see his window from yours you might
just use an indoor directional antenna on each end.

I was thinking of attaching just one WRT54G at his end, where the
DSL comes in, allow him to connect wired and me act as a
user across the street with my LapTop. Not trying to set up
separate networks just be a user from across the street.
So it seems, from what you're saying this should be quite
possible.

And then I guess the main difference for a WAP54G is to
connect, for example, 2 seperate subnets ?

Jon

> Or you can use the WAP54g on your end as an access point (Bridge) and
> the neighbor will have his in AP client mode. In this way you can use
> wireless but he is just wired. In either case, 200 feet is rathere
> easy to accomplish. If you can see his window from yours you might
> just use an indoor directional antenna on each end.

According to Linksys support the WRT54G is good for about 100 - 150
feet.
Is this Linksys being conservative or is this more realistic then
the 200 - 300 feet I've read from others ?

I'm hoping to be able to share bandwidth between two houses for
a temporary basis about one week and if anyone can provide some
assurance this should work I would be much grateful. I don't
mind spending some time building a parabolic antenna if that would
ensure success I just don't have a lot of time to spend tweaking.

Jon