coverage area

thetourist

i want to get a wireless setup to cover my house and surrounds aprox 2500sqr ft house plus a patio and shed. the ap and pcmcia card i have dont seem to be strong enough ( us robotics kit E109 ) - any suggestions ?? - i want to get a much stonger system - i have heard of wifi going several kilometers - what's the story

thanks

Snowbat

To get better coverage indoors, you'll need to deploy multiple access points.

The main factor limiting the range of a single access point is that the microwave radio bands available for wifi transmissions do not propagate well through walls and floors. Considerably greater range is achieved when there are no obstructions in the path.

Range can be further extended between two fixed points by using outdoor directional antennas aimed at each other, allowing links of several kilometers to be achieved.

thetourist

multiple access points - so how do they get connected / configured on the network - - i connected the ap that i have to my main pc's lan port - where would i connect in a second one ( i'm guessing that i take a cat5 cable out of the wired section of the router and send that to the second ap and so on ?? ) - and would i have to make any changes to the network configuration on any of the pc's

am i to understand by this approach that even the best ap available will only cover a few hundred sqr ft on it's own ( without the directional antenae etc ) ???

thanks

Snowbat

Some useful info on this page - scroll down for answers:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Notebooks_Wireless/Q_21184000.html

You could feed each AP with CAT5 from a small hub/switch or use wireless forwarding. Wireless forwarding is not as reliable and will reduce your throughput though.