Long Range Wireless Solution

[tomrippity02]

My company is moving into a new area with a lot of restaurants and other businesses near by. We would like to be able to walk 2-300 ft. in any direction and get a wireless signal from our office. Are there any good commercial products for this that are simple to set up or will it take something much more expensive and complicated?

Thanks!

 

[eibgrad]

At 200-300ft, it’s possible your lowly consumer-grade router would be sufficient. It just depends on where it’s placed, the obstacles, competing signals, etc. Frankly, given your description of other businesses and restaurants, competing signals could be the major problem. In that case, you might want to consider using the 5GHz band (those other guys are most likely trying to appeal to their customers, and thus much more likely to be using the 2.4GHz band).

If you want to step up a bit, esp. if you’d like to mount your AP outside for best LOS (line of sight), Ubiquiti makes some very nice, well made, commericial solutions targeted to SOHO users, at reasonable prices.

 

[tomrippity02]

At 200-300ft, it’s possible your lowly consumer-grade router would be sufficient. It just depends on where it’s placed, the obstacles, competing signals, etc. Frankly, given your description of other businesses and restaurants, competing signals could be the major problem. In that case, you might want to consider using the 5GHz band (those other guys are most likely trying to appeal to their customers, and thus much more likely to be using the 2.4GHz band).

If you want to step up a bit, esp. if you’d like to mount your AP outside for best LOS (line of sight), Ubiquiti makes some very nice, well made, commericial solutions targeted to SOHO users, at reasonable prices.

Definitely look into their products. It looks like they rate everything at around 100 Meters.. I'm wondering if we decided we might want something for a longer range what some solutions might be? I found BWRG1000 from bountiful that claimed it reached a quarter of a mile, but didn't see many good reviews.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, if the solution costed 500-700 dollars, that would not be outrageous. We just don't want some $2,000 setup that requires us to hire someone because of its complexity.