Wiring house with antennas?

[Simon McKay-Mills]

I had this scenario a while back (for laptop surfing as well as my SB1) in
our old rambling victorian house with thick walls. Rather than setup
multiple access points around the house, I took the option of the HomePlug
(ethernet via the house earthline) with the base HomePlug connecting in to
the base wireless station/internet router (Belkin ADSL router), and 2 wired
Homeplugs (for SB's around the house) and one wireless HomePlug for surfing
at the other end of the house.

It made the setup a doddle and fairly discreet - (V Important for the
memsahib!)

Even she can now log on to the vaio laptop running Suse 9.3, listen to music
and surf in the lounge!

My £0.02 worth.

Simon

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com] On Behalf Of Kevin O. Lepard
Sent: 23 June 2005 22:50
To: Slim Devices Discussion
Subject: [slim] Wiring house with antennas?

This is a bit off topic, but I was wondering if anyone has placed multiple
antennas around their house and routed them back to a central point as a way
of providing WiFi coverage instead of putting multiple access points around
the house. It seems like this would save you having to upgrade a bunch of
access points whenever b goes to g to n (or i or whatever is next).

Any thoughts on this? Anyone tried it?

Kevin
--
Kevin O. Lepard
kolepard (AT) charter (DOT) net

Happiness is being 100% Microsoft free.

[corwin]

You could do it, I suppose with splitters on the RF side. However, each splitter will reduce the RF power (i.e. a 3-way splitter will give each antenna only 0.33 of the power that the original put out (unless you use amplified splitters, and those usually don't go two-way - remember, you need bidirectional). Also, most RF cabling (unless you want REALLY BIG or REALLY EXPENSIVE cable) is fairly lossy. You probably wouldn't get too much signal at your antennas, or return signal back at the AP. In short, not a good idea.

If you want to manage all the AP's as a single "AP", then look at something like Airespace or Aruba, but be warned, these are enterprise, not home units (i.e. will cost serious money).