On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 14:11 -0600, Michael L Torrie wrote: > Recently my parents got broadband out in the middle of nowhere in rural > Alberta. After setting up a standard Linksys WRT54GL (openwrt of > course), they found the signal was reachable up to 400 feet away from > the access point (across the yard--the AP is by an office window)! Not > quite far enough to reach my Grandmother's house, but close. So I had > them pick up another router, which I also configured to use OpenWRT. > Following the simple instructions, I enabled WDS (wireless distribution > system) and now the second AP acts as a relay, extending the wireless > signal even further. Although the signal from my parents' home wasn't > strong enough to penetrate the walls of my grandmother's house, the > relaying access point is able to see the other AP from the garage, and > extend the coverage into the house. So they have continuous wireless > coverage across an area that now extends about 600' from the house where > the broadband is actually terminated. Pretty impressive, I must say. > Certainly I have never had wireless signal go more than 100-200' in > Provo. They must have almost no 2.4 GHz noise out in the rural area.
That is pretty cool. > They are probably not getting the full 54 Mb/s, but I'd be surprised if > they weren't getting 20 Mb/s across the WDS link, even in a light rain > storm. The outlook is not quite so cheery. Every hop in a WDS mesh decreases the throughput by half because each WDS node has to operate on the same frequency. That means that the repeating node ends up using twice the bandwidth for the same amount of data. Also remember that 54mbps is no way near attainable, so your actual speeds will be lower. Still, without any 2.4ghz noise you should be able to reach speeds faster than what the broadband is capable of, so it sounds like it'll be an acceptable setup. If you ever want to get more bandwidth out there you would have to look at setting up a point-to-point backhaul on a separate channel from the APs using directional antennas. That involves a bit more hardware though. You could also set up a local DSL link, although finding the right equipment for the right price might be a trick. Corey /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
