help a guy in the arctic

Really new here and in need of some help.

The situation is this I work in the arctic and have no access to stores except for shopping online. So I can not try things out to see what will work and what will not work. So I turn to you for your knowledge!

I teach up here and also run the computer lab... as best I can... what I want to do is extend the range of my wireless nextwork so I can work from home. I live within 200 feet of the school and it is pretty much LOS. Right now we have linksys 802.11 G routers, well right now we have nothing but they are on the way.

I have it down between two ways, I think!? I could swap one of the linksys G routers and put in a 802.11 N router, which then means that I have to upgrade the nics in my two laptops at home as well, right? That way I could work from home and switch between my home network and the

802.11 N.

The other option I guess is by using a range extender at school and then another one at my house. I could even plug it into the uplink port on my router and that way I would not have to upgrade my wireless in my laptops, right?

I guess I am a little lost. Any help would be great!!

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Reply to
craig_borden
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Sorry, if you actually believe that the range is better with a new improved more expensive product that linksys can make a few bucks off of like their 'n' crud, you've been reading their marketing department lies....In actuality, there are no N specs yet (not even scheduled to be voted on for possible adoption until dec of 2008), they just hope people are silly enuf to buy the stuff they lie about (actually what everyone else that's halfway honest calls pre-n).... PS I have a bridge to sell you :)

Bottom line, forget N.... And range extenders cut the speed in about 1/2... Just look at directional antennas and a bridge, and maybe an el cheapo wap/router in the house (under $50 at walmart, then you can use the existing stuff your laptops already have)

On another tangent, how is it during the winter, and do you have metal snow roofs? When I was putting stuff in No Idaho/canadian border, during the winter the snow got deep enuf so there was not enuf clearance for a fresnel zone, wanted to use the attic/roof areas, but the buildings had metal snow roofs... Had to go with a bridge on the TV antenna mast at the house, and another roof mounted mast/tripod at the remote building, and that connected to a wap/router in the outbuilding so I could use both wired and wireless there...

Reply to
Peter Pan

craig_borden hath wroth:

What is on the way? Any particular make and model? Type of antenna? Outdoor equipment or indoor? Line of sight to the antenna?

Nope. I haven't done much with Pre-N hardware, but my experience seems to show that one can get two forms of improvement:

  1. It will go faster than 802.11g when you have a very strong signal and/or are fairly close to the wireless access point.
  2. It is somewhat more reliable in the presence of reflections and interference than 802.11g.

Neither of these apply to your situation. Worse, both mutations of Pre-N proscribe the use of external antennas which is what you really need at your end.

As for requiring an Pre-N client radio, that's true for the multiple stream (Airgo) version of Pre-N, but not true for the beam forming method (Ruckus Wireless) method. However, realize that at long range, where the signal levels might drop considerably, Pre-N reverts back to

802.11g or even 802.11b speeds. In other words, you're getting no benefits from the MIMO technology.

Some range extenders work for some users. My luck has been dismal. Search this group for "range extender", "range expander", and "wireless repeater" for a wide selection of failures to function.

Yep. The basic problem here is that you've itemized the solutions without detailing the problem. My guess(tm) is that you can probably find a location at your house that has line of sight to the skool. That means you can install an external directional antenna, pointed at the skool access point(s), and you're done. The antenna will be outside and in the ice, so some effort should be made to reduce its size, wind loading, and survivability. I have little experience with this, but if you look around, you probably will find fiberglass panel antennas and wire mesh grid parabolic dish antennas.

Look at parabolic and panel antennas. Ignore yagi and omni antennas.

For a radio, all you need is a wireless ethernet client bridge. See:

For a list of candidates. I would recommend a Buffalo TWI-TX4-G54HP adapter. These work for me.

You probably don't want to mount the client radio outside, although that has been done successfully using the internal heat generated by the wireless client to prevent freezing. You'll need some number of feet of Times Microwave LMR-400 coaxial cable. The maximum length is largely determined by range and signal strengths, which are currently indeterminate, but can be calculated if you supply some numbers.

There is another alternative worth considering. My guess(tm) is that the skool could probably tolerate more than one wireless access point for its network. The backhaul (connection to the skool network) will probably be CAT5e cable or fiber optics. Locate the extra wireless access point in some location where you can see if from your house. If the range is sufficiently small, you could just put the wireless ethernet client bridge in a window that has line of sight.

Also, you might want to contact Floyd L. Davidson.

He's up in Barrow(?), Alaska and has quite a bit of experience in running 2.4GHz wireless in arctic conditions. He's also posted quite a few articles in this newsgroup:

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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