Peabody <waybackNO784SPAM44@yahoo.com> hath wroth:
>Is there any reason to believe that the slightly-pre-N
>wireless stuff would overcome the wall problem?
Your problem, my problem, or the original posters wall problem? Each
one is different, depending on what's in the walls. I'll answer in
reference to my problem. Please advise if this is not what you meant.
Methinks not. Real MIMO technology (i.e. Airgo) is great for reducing
the detrimental effects of multipath and reflections. These become
more signifigant as the signal is reduced. MIMO and other
technologies has to have a signal to work with and a shielded
aluminium foil wall is fairly impervious to 2.4GHz. The only signal
going through the walls was through two doorways, both at right angle
to primary coverage areas. RF does not like to turn corners. I could
have done it with leaky coax and multiple access points, but those
cost more than just running the CAT5 wires. The power line networking
solution is going to be a temporary until the owner can determine
where to locate the CAT5 ethernet end points.
While crawling under the house, I did find that the owner had run CATV
coax to all the rooms, but not installed wall outlets, apparently to
allow the option to locate the cable jack as needed. I may use the
coax to run 10base2 (Cheapernet) at 10mbits/sec, or some method of
coax sharing. Dunno yet.
A repeater at the junction of each of the 2 shield walls is another
option. It might work, but I suspect performance through 2ea
repeaters might be a bit flakey. I asked the owner for priorities and
was told that uptime and reliability was paramount. Never mind
convenience. I interpreted that to mean run CAT5 if necessary.
Incidentally, the house was custom built with fire control in mind.
The 3 sections of the house are isolated by heavily insulated
firewalls with metal cores in all the connecting doors. Were a fire
to start in one part of the house, it would be largely confined or
delayed in that part long enough for the sprinkler system to do its
job. Such construction is not very common in commodity housing, but
very popular in upscale custom houses.
There is a sort of basement and an attic where I could have tried
locating the wireless router. The problem is that both the floor and
ceiling also have foil backed fiberglass insulation. Bummer.
>Also, for what it's worth, my Buffalo HP G router does
>regular stud/wallboard walls (no foil) pretty well. The
>laptop just has a regular G card. I suppose it would do
>even better with an HP card.
I've installed several Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless routers and had
great results with coverage in conventional (no foil in the walls)
type of houses. There was one story I related, where I had to punch a
hole in the foil insulation and string an antenna on the other side of
a wall seperating the house from the garage. Local construction codes
require a fire retarding wall (i.e. insulated) between the houe and a
connecting garage. In general, I don't use the stock antennas.
--
Jeff Liebermann
jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Advice appreciated to go wireless 
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