Wireless from house to detached garage

Oh, forgot to ask .. is there decent freeware for detecting wireless networks and their strength so I can tell before/after the parabolic reflector? (I just like to type "parabolic reflector", makes me seem wicked smaht!) - I'm from Boston, can ya tell? lol.

I looked at NetStumbler, but not sure if that's a good one or not.

TIA

On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 19:40:30 -0500, "Peter Pan" wrote in :

Excellent advice. Powerline networking has really come of age, and is as good or better than Wi-Fi in many cases. What I'd like to see is power adapters for laptops with built-in powerline networking through the same cable to the laptop as the power -- just plug-in and connect.

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:28:37 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net wrote in :

It's good, will do the job.

I did.

Yeah, when my CAT5 next weathers to unusablity I may well do that. When I first installed it however, 14Mb powerline was still a twinkle in the PNA's eye and its only in the last 12 months that I've seen cheap and reliable enough 200Mbps adapters. The lower speeds simply don't cut the mustard when you're running a video server.... :-)

I've been doing that for a few years now.. have a power strip with the laptop adapter plugged in AND a powerline transciever, just walk into any room with a plug and plug it in... walla.. power for both! amazing to me that people dont do that... :) With some of the new higher speed powerline ethernet bridges, you can plug an ethernet transciever AND a wap router into one power strip, move around, plug it in, and have an instant "hotspot" wherever you want one..

As the other guy said, no harm in trying, service may not actually matter. it actually wants things to be on the same leg off the transformer, and in many areas that means multiple places each with their own meters may still be on the same leg.. (not always, no guarantee, but sometimes).. Found that out in one place (an apartment building, each unit with it's own meter, but the powerline stuff not only worked everywhere in that building, but the two apt buildings next door!)

Depends... Are you looking for software that is free and will run on a computer, or one of those little keychain types that light up? if the software type that runs on a computer, netstumbler is pretty good, but some of those little ones (nor some PDA's with built in wireless) don't work with N/Pre-N networks....

Just a caveat, do you have GIGAbit ethernet cards in your machines or only the older 100's? If the older, no way they will run faster than 100

Well, your plan B (or C depending) sounds just as good. Powerline to that end of the house, put a wireless router there and use it as a switch/AP.

Put a reflector on it if you need more signal in the garage.

Alternatively, you could cable from a powerline at that end of the house to the garage, but I would only do that if there was too much wall to get through, signal wise.

Steve

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:44:03 -0500, "Peter Pan" wrote in :

100BASE-TX "Fast" Ethernet adapters are capable of 200 Mbps maximum in full duplex mode: 100 Mbps in each direction.

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:41:30 -0500, "Peter Pan" wrote in :

Pre-N (no real N yet) radios should also be detected as G and B unless configured for Pre-N only, possible but rare.

Yeah but the adapters aren't. They're just designed to sync for 100Mb and decide duplex is x2. Forget wikilyingcrap - test it your self.

That said, if you get continuous throughput of 14Mbs that's not so bad anyway.

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:29:05 -0000, "William4" wrote in :

Been there, done that, and full duplex does have much higher total throughput than half duplex given heavy traffic in both directions.

I do much better than that, but I said "maximum" in any event, responding to an absolute statement, not real world performance.

In fact as far as I recall 100-Base-T is the same spec as the 200Mbps Powerline kit. Powerline isn't full-duplex, I think.

On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:05:51 +0000, Mark McIntyre wrote in :

HomePlug AV raw 200 Mbps half-duplex, maximum 150 Mbps information rate, is actually quite different from 100BASE-T 100 Mbps half-duplex, 200 Mbps full duplex, not only in speed, but also in signaling, data encryption, etc.

Guess I should buy lottery tickets... Both my pda's (with wifi) and the kensington wifi detector on my keychain don't see my linksys wrt300n (actually pre-n, but in their offer to the gods of profit, they call it N), but all 4 laptops running netstumbler see it.... and the tivos with the G usb adapters all see it..... I suspect it is the channel switching

just an aside, from

Wireless-N Broadband Router

Just out of curiosity, what's your garage made from? I've run into a few outbuildings with the corrugated metal sheets on the walls, or metal snow roofs, that block wifi... Hope you don't run into that..... :)

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:31:36 -0500, "Peter Pan" wrote in :

I'd call it Wi-Fi non-compliant. [sigh]

"(draft 802.11n)" ^^^^^

Wow... you must be one persistant ahole.. 928 characters in, AFTER they have called it wireless-n 14 times, but the description never use's the draft word until several paragraphs (and 928 characters down)... Simply amazing that you have such a whacko persistence, need to be right, and loose grip on reality, and can ignore 3208 other letters and only fixate on the one instance of the 5 letters, and even though no other claims other than that one single one say anything about draft, you assume that the other 38 times n is stated, it must refer to that one and mean draft... First 3 words: Wireless-N Broadband Router.... Where's the beef? (errr i mean the draft)