I am so NOT the person to offer advice but I'll tell you my experience for what it's worth.
I renovated a cottage which is an L shape and has thick walls. The BT Home Hub is in the boiler room in the corner of the L and the thick walls mean the wifi barely gets out of that room. I do have Cat5 cable to two rooms (down the two arms). My first attempt was a Netgear wireless extender. It detects the wifi, joins it and re-transmits it. It worked a treat except that every time I needed it, it had lost the network. I only had to switch it off and on again and as soon as it had rebooted it was fine for the whole session. I never solved ths but it was a real nuisance. I then tried an idea from the PLUG folk which was to get a wireless repeater. This worked a treat. It plugged into the network socket and 'sprayed' wifi all through the kitchen and passageway. The problem was that if you walked from the Netgear area to the kitchen or vice versa, your phone or iPad would hang onto whichever signal it was on until it was so weak it was pretty useless. You had to go into settings and manually tell it to join the stronger network. I'm pretty certain, now, that if I had known how to rename the networks so they both had the same name the problem mightn't happen. What I did next was to try an Apple Airport Express. It worked so well that I bought a second one for the other arm. They do plug into Network sockets so I'm not sure if they would work like the Netgear and do the whole thing wirelessly. Setting them up was really simple. "Do you want to extend the BT network?" they asked. "Yes" said I. And they've worked perfectly ever since. Wifi is always on and you can walk through the entire house without ever losing signal. Phone, iPad, laptop, they all connect to the strongest signal wherever you are. Brian Sent from my iPad On 31 Jan 2013, at 15:43, "Steve Harker" <shar...@gmx.com> wrote: > Hi Gary, > > That setup would work fine UNTIL a user wanders outside the range of one > Wireless Access point and into another. They will have to authenticate to the > new AP and there is no guarantee that they would get the same IP. A way > around this is a wireless network controller that the Access Points plug into > this will then handle a hand off from one AP to the next without the > re-authentication. Now Wireless controllers need special APs and are > expensive. > > Another option is a Wireless controller as a service. Two examples of these > are provided by Meraki and Airohive. you configure the AP via a web interface > offsite. > > If you have a POE switch then they don't need power either. > > Happy to discuss or give you more info if you need. We are looking at the two > mentioned solutions for work at the moment > > Steve > > >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Gary James >> Sent: 01/31/13 03:13 PM >> To: Peterborough LUG - No commercial posts >> Subject: [Peterboro] Commercial wireless setups >> >> Hi PLUGers, >> >> Need some advice on wireless networking. A hotel we do Electrical work at >> has asked to add some more wireless access points into the mix as there >> current 1 point doesn't cover all areas of the hotel. The place is over >> 300yrs old with some walls at 36inch's thick!! >> >> In my own home network I have my current ADSL wireless router and an older >> ADSL wireless router further down the line connected with CAT5 (I know the >> second ADSL bit is not needed, but hey I had a spare one.) >> >> The above arrangement works fine with both router having the same ESSID and >> WPA2 network key. Would adding some wireless access points (without ADSL) >> be this simple? Am I overlooking something that won't work in this >> environment? >> >> I have also on another network seen wireless access hubs that link over >> wireless rather than being hardwired back to a central switch. Is this >> reliable or am I better off with CAT5 between. >> >> Thanks >> Gary >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Peterboro mailing list > Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
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