"Tor Tveitane" wrote: >Hi,
Do you mean the repeater is 3kms from the house and then the clients are another 3kms farther?
The problem is that 3kms is a fair distance to cover, and will almost certainly require external high gain (directional) antennas. From the house to the repeater site is not a problem, with say a pair of WRT54GS units, assuming you have line of sight and use good antennas.
From the repeater site to the "few clients" is going to depend on factors you haven't stated. Are they all located in one direction, or are they spread out? If, for example, they are all in one large building, or perhaps in one group of buildings, where an antenna with a 30 degree beam width will cover all of them equally, you can to it easily. But if they are spread out so that there is more than a 20 degree or so angle between the directions to them (from the repeater site), one antenna will not do the trick, and you'll need multiple wireless links.
Best case scenario would be a single AP at the house, no repeater site needed (line of sight to every client, and all of them bunched together in one location), and a single WRT54GS at each client location. In all cases high gain antennas will be required.
If there is no line of sight to the clients, and the repeater is necessary, the you'll need, at a minimum, a single AP at the house, a WRT54GS repeater, and a WRT54GS at each client location. Again, high gain antennas are required.
However, if the clients are not all grouped close together a different arrangement is necessary. Given that it also has other benefits and is not really all that expensive... you might want to consider this regardless of what else could be done.
Each WRT54GS has 4 ethernet ports, and it is therefore possible to use multiple back to back WRT54GS units at the repeater site, connected via the ethernet ports rather than as wireless repeaters. A network might look like this:
HOUSE REPEATER CLIENTS ___________ ________________________ ___________ / \ / \ / \ 3km 3km wireless link wireless links +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ | base | | repeater| | repeater| | client 1| | WRT54GS |~~~~~~~| WRT54GS | | WRT54GS |~~~~~~~~~| WRT54GS | | | | | | | | | | WAN | | LAN | | WAN | | | +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ +---------+ | | | | | | to ISP | | | +---------+ | | | +---------+ +---------+ | | | | repeater| | client 2| | | | | WRT54GS |~~~~~~~~~| WRT54GS | | | | | | | | | | | | WAN | | | | | | +---------+ +---------+ | | | | | | +-----------+ | | To 2 Other Client Links
That particular configuration would work for four client links, but it could also be done by chaining each "repeater" to the LAN of another, thus providing for more than 4 clients.
Also note that if any two client locations are located close enough, they can share a repeater site WRT54GS.
Yes. However, that may not work as well as expected. You will need directional antennas, hence the signal quality at the client location is not going to be all that good. You can make if work by using a high gain antenna on one of the two antenna connections, and leaving the omni directional antenna on the other. However there will be problems with poor throughput when a wireless client connects and uses the Internet, because the WRT54GS will be switching back and forth between the antennas, and will often be on the wrong antenna and lose a packet when it is. That will just slow things down though, and it will still be useful.
I would suggest that WRT54G units rather than WRT54GS units might be a worthwhile cost savings. In either case the wireless throughput is probably going to exceed the total bandwidth available to your ISP, hence whatever benefit you get from the WRT54GS will be unusable when connecting to the Internet.