Hi there,
I currently have a Netgear Mimo DG824 router connected to a zyxel 660 modem. In a fairly large 7 bedroom, 400 year old house, with lots of different wall constuctions and a couple brick chimneys over 3 floors, the Netgear is not up to the job!
I really want to be able to use wireless anywhere in the house and also about 20 metres into the garden.
What i am wondering is what the best approach is to achieve this. The wireless will be used for 3 laptops all with intel 2200BG chipset, standard 802.11g 54mb.
The two things i have been considering so far are either based around one large AP such a a cisco Aironet 1200 with a couple of aerials or maybe 3 smaller AP's such a linksys WRT54's on each floor. I not that worried about reusing the netgear as the i won't be using Mimo cards in the laptops i just want a good 802.11g setup.
I'm not exactly a expert with networking so if anyone can give me any help or other ideas i would be really grateful
Thanks Chris
Chris,
The Cisco is not going to give you anything better in terms of coverage, except it may have slightly more transmit power. I think most Ciscos are 100mW, Linksys is probably lower. I know the older WAP11s were something like 30mW.
Your best bet is going to be going with multiple APs. Just put one in each area you need coverage. A house that large may need more than 3 to cover the whole thing, plus the garden, though. Ideally, you'll want to backhaul all the APs with ethernet to your router. If you haven't already investigated it, you'll almost definitely want to look into higher gain external antennas for your APs. The problem with omni antennas is that they produce a signal that looks like a donut. They send the signal out horizontally, but not so much vertically, so you can end up with dead spots immediately above and below the antenna. For that reason, when I'm dealing with multiple stories, I try to stagger the AP locations on each floor so I don't end up with no signal in the middle of the house.
