Hello all. I've done a bit of searching, and this thread seems to be the closes to what I am looking for.
http://www.wirelessforums.org/wirele...atch-4822.html
I've been trying to plan this for a few months, and the HOA is finally in a position to have me move forward with this.
I live in a building I need to make WiFi - to save us all money on Internet. It's five stories tall, but each story is ~15' with extremely thick 3' of concret for each floor. Each floor has about... 20,000 rectangler sq ft. The walls are waffer thin single sheet drywall with metal 2x4s (argh!).
I figure about 3 devices per floor.
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Now the complications/exceptions to the normal "run a AP to each floor" methods and such are:
- Seemless Walking from floor to floor to rooftop pool
- I can only run a single CAT5 to each floor
- Low budget (we're all paying for it out of our HOA dues)
- Low Latency is a must (1/2 of us are online gamers)
- Very low maintenance/fix if something were to fail (i.e., just reconfig a Repeater and put it back).
The first in that list is something that I've struggled to do in other wifi networks in the past.
Seemless wifi (can I coin that phrase?
) is what I describe as showing only one Wireless Network on the SSID list. Connecting to that SSID, and able to walk loft to loft, from the basement to rooftop - all without having to connect to a different network. This also gives the ease of having just one encryption key (that will change periodically).
I know that repeaters should be the answer here on different channels, but reading up on half-duplex versions (which seem to be the only ones I can find) may not be the best solution. Also, I'm looking at about 15 to 17 devices total.
Are there enough channels for that? I don't think there is.
I'm a bit fustrated in planning this. I know an Access Point would be required per floor, and the connect two repeaters to that AP. But, that would give me 5 different SSIDs.
Can I convert Linksys WRT54Gs to a Repeater? I've flashed my WRT54G with the DD-WRT firmware and LOVE IT! I was wondering - I can get these in almost surplus now. I've done the WiFi bridging (as testing) and that's not exactly what I am looking for as the WiFi was only used to bridge the two LAN segments. Cool, but I can run a CAT5 to each floor. So not needed here.
I guess I'd have to give up on having a common SSID across all floors. The current thinking is just an AP per floor, with soemthing like "1ST FLOOR", "2nd FLOOR", etc as the SSIDs. And a repeater at each end of the hallway.
I read where these half-duplex repeaters are about 4mb/s. Is that per client that connects? Or is that for the entire device?
I.e. everyone would have to share that 4mb/s if connected to that repeater/channel?
Are there such devices that I can just connect to a LAN that would cut down on the performance issues if the repeaters? Maybe a LAN-to-WiFi repeater if it exists?
Yeah, I've been thinking about this for a while... Oh, and I am open to any other suggestions/configurations - even if totally different hardware setup/cat-5 runs. I'd appreciate any feedback (details).