jay lunis <jay.lunis@gmail.com> hath wroth:

>Well, my walls/floors are typical residential wood/drywall.
>HomePlug has worked tolerably well but, since I tend to move around a
>room, I'd rather not be tethered to a wire. Is there a way to send a
>signal to a remote network device (wireless or wired) and have the
>remote device send a wireless signal so I'm not forced to connect my
>laptop to a wire/cable?

Got time to make a quick measurement? Fire up Netstumbler or anything
that gives a signal strength graph in dBm. Lock the speed on your
wireless access point to some fixed OFDM value.

Walk around your house starting with going through 1 wall. Get an
average signal strength value and record the straight line distance
between the access point and the laptop. Try it again for 2 and 3
walls. If possible, also try it in an open area, with no walls.

What you should see is that doubling the distance, should cause a -6dB
drop in signal level. Any loss in exess of this value, is attenuation
in the walls. That will give you a real number to work with for
calculating wall attentuation. I can help with the calcs if you email
to me the setup and numbers.

As for HomePlug and HomePNA, both have wireless bridges and repeaters
that use the phone or power lines as a backhaul. For example:
<http://www.netgear.com/Products/PowerlineNetworking/PowerlineWirelessAccessPoints.aspx>
Both use the power line for a backhaul. One acts as a wireless
repeater at both ends. The other uses wireless only at one end. The
other end gets a CAT5 cable plugged into your router.

Incidentally, with such an arrangement, you really don't need
wireless. Your laptop is going to be plugged into the battery
charger, which is plugged into the wall. You might as well run a CAT5
cable to a HomePlug ethernet bridge using the same wall plug. No need
for wireless.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558