Advice needed with large house Wireless architecture

Hi everyone,

I am working on a wireless setup for a large house (30,000 sq ft) and an adjoining shop that is about 600 ft away. Everyroom in the large house has ethernet run to a central closet so I have lots of spots to put Access Points. I have a few goals for this that we need to meet so I'd like your perspectives on how to best achieve:

- Users must be able to roam throughout the house seemlessly without dropping connections
- Speed and quality of link should be good throughout
- Security is important - ideally I would like to authenticate users back to a Radius server tied into Active Directory so they have one login for everything (there will be a windows server 2008 server).

So my questions are:
- I estimate we will need about 6-8 access points to achieve optimal coverage (we are thinking 1 access point in each major room / area), should I be looking at Wireless LAN switches? These seem expensive but look easier to manage?

- Roaming is key key key - can roaming work successfully with cheaper "consumer" based access points from Linksys or Dlink? Does the wireless NIC in the laptop have to support anything special to accomplish or will any modern wireless NIC have this built in?

- Can I use something like WPA to tie into radius on Windows Server 2003/2008 to give them the same username/password as there server login? Or is this asking for trouble?

- For the 600 ft run to the shop (clear line of sight), what sort of access point/antenna product would I need on each end? I Alternatively, I was thinking of using an ethernet extender solution since they do have a conduit between the house/shop.

- If Wireless Lan switch / w matching access points is the way to go, can someone recommend an affordable and reliable solution? Seems like one cannot go wrong with the low end Cisco stuff?

Thanks everyone!

Until the 802.11r standard has been ratified and the equipment capable of complying with it becomes available then you would have to look for proprietary eqpt. that may do what you want.
802.11r: Wireless LAN Fast Roaming - Wireless - Network Computing
IEEE 802.11r - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So if I just used a bunch of Linksys WAP4000 access points throughout the house, would it still work with standard wireless NICs? I know at work we have wireless access throughout our entire building and my standard laptop seems to roam seemlessly. Not sure what equipment they are using but my laptop just has a standard Intel built in wireless.

It is probably a question of how you define "Roam Seamlessly" and whether you are only going to use it for Data. If I move my laptop from one AP to another AP it appears to move seamlessly without a disconnection however if I am having a converstion over VOIP whilst moving, the connection disconnects while the transition from one AP to another takes place. This is supposed to be resolved with 802.11r with the original connection being maintained until the new connection has taken place and there will be no disconnection with the "Network".

hi there - excellent point. No need for VOIP. Largely data with connectivity to internet and also connectivity to the server downstairs for working on office files. Will that work with a series of standard Linksys Access points scattered throughout the house (with common SSID)? Or should I go with a Cisco wireless switch solution with managed APs?