Wireless Network Design

[Cyberlore]

Scenario:

I have two buildings, the office and the house and they're a good hundred feet (maybe 2) away. (I can use the 2.4ghz cordless phone from the office in the house and vice versa). There is a wired network of 2-3 computers in the office. The internet is hooked up to this network. I want to have internet in the house, what's the best wireless setup to get internet to the house. The minium need is to give a laptop internet in the house.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[meese]

How is the office networked? Do you have DSL or Cable? Do you use a broadband router?

I did something similar between my house and my neighbors. I have a home network and use a Linksys router as the gateway to the internet. I got the Linksys WAP11 wireless access point and ran a CAT5 cable to the outside of my house. I got a NEM-4 fiberglass enclosure and mounted the WAP11 in it. I also went to Home depot and got a thermistat to keep the temperature constant using a light bulb during the winter. I put a wireless PCI adapter in my neighbors pc. This way he can use the wireless erthernet adapter (Linksys WPC11) in either his notebook or the PC. It works great. His house is about 75-100 ft away.

[Cyberlore]

At the moment, we're using one computer as a gateway sharing a dialup connection (sigh). DSL is a good $80 out here (in the country) so if anything, we'd be getting satellite.

That was my plan. I was just planning on getting a wireless access point to plug into the office network. I'm just concerned about the range and how far into the house (basement) the laptop can go.

Would it work to position the access point in the window facing the house equally as well as putting it outside in an enclosure? Correction on distance to the house too...it's only about 100 feet.

[meese]

Yes as long as you don't have metal screens. It may still work with the screens, but putting it in the window is the way to start. The screen can act as an RF shield.

[ooops]

This might help in your "range" issue.

http://www.cantenna.com/