Will This Work?

Trees can be a real pain. Try doing a test with the AP and 1 can on the other side and see if you have something stable to work with.

I have used a 24db grid just to punch thru 2 damn trees. If there was no trees a small omni would safice.

J.

So you suggest I hook up the 2nd router as an AP at my office and a can at the second building and see if/how it works? I was thinking of building a weatherproof enclosure for the router outside. There is only one way I can get out of my office and thats through an empty conduit in the floor to the crawlspace. The owner will not let me drill any other holes, and my office it on the wrong side of the building to see the other building. I don't get much of a signal outside anyway. I don't mind building another can. Have all the connectors and I sort of like that beef stew :)

Is there anything magical about doing the 2 router hook up? I am a complete novice. The office setup was my fist try at wireless.

Having the AP outside will make it much easyer and keeps your coax run small. Weather proof boxes are getting alot cheaper too.

Give it a test with only one can to start so u can find the perfect position then bother with the can on the AP.

Nothing special with the hookup. Make sure the outside router has its own ip and dhcp turned off and your good to go.

If your router is 192.168.0.1 then your AP can be 192.168.0.2 no biggie. U should find a DHCP field or tab and it will have an option to disable. Connect the cable from lan port to lan port and shes done.

POE is simple and novice is over qualified for it :P

this is a guide

but it can be alot more dodgy err i mean u can use less parts then the above example.

Joe.

Thanks a lot Joe. Thats exactly what I will do.I won't get to it until after next week, but will let you know how it works.

I see what you mean about POE. The simples way would be to slit the cable at both ends and extract the 4 wires, then splice the power supply at one end and the plug at the other. Absolutely no cast setup. I think I will get a little fancier though. I suspect one could open the router case and jumper the wires to the jack too.

Thanks again Blair

Yea u got it. I might steal that steal that jumper idea it would make things look very neat and tidy!

J.

Yep, should work well.

Consider using your Linksys in a tupperware container with it's own omni antenna and a homemade reflector on the AP end:

That way you avoid any cable loss On the client end, it sounds like you will need the cantenna to get into a line of sight position from you pc card.

Nothing magical about setting up the second router as an AP. Assign it a different IP addy, as mentioned. You may want to also give it a different range for it's DHCP or else turn DHCP off. Check out the web interface to familiarize yourself with that aspect. Test it in your office first by ethernet with the wireless off to make sure it's dealing with the address part ok, then go test the wireless link outside.

Steve

mac10 hath wroth:

That will work just fine. You don't need "real" 802.3af PoE. The WRT54G is unique in that it has a very wide range input switching regulator inside the box. The WRT54G will run on anything between about 4.5VDC to 18VDC. Here's a photo of my BEFW11S4v4, which has a similar switching regulator, running off of 4.5VDC:

Using the CAT5 cable as an extension cord works just fine. However, if you're going to run wire, you might as well run a 2nd CAT5 cable and make the wiring easier.

As was previously mentioned, setup the 2nd WRT54G as an access point (no router). Nothing goes to the WAN (internet) port. Disable the DHCP server. Setup a different IP address for administration. If the main router is 192.168.1.1, the 2nd access point should be

192.168.1.2.

There's also a question of whether to use the same or different RF channels. If you think that there's some possibility of mutual interference, such as when you are located half way between the two radios, then use different channels (1, 6, or 11).

There's also a question of whether to use the same or different SSID's for the two radios. The same SSID's will give you some semblence of roaming. I don't think it will work, but give it a try. If the client insists on staying connected to the weaker radio, then use different SSID's and select which one you want to use.