[BAWUG] Best Way to Repeat Signal?

[Jamie Alessio]

I'm attempting to get a wireless link from a house to a cottage 
residence in the back of house. Inside the main house is a Netgear 
MR814. I get a signal from the MR814 in the cottage using a Linksys 
WPC54G and am able to connect, but the coverage is *extremely* spotty 
since it travels through several plaster walls, a brick wall and some 
trees (moving my laptop less than an inch changes a <10ms ping response 
to no response at all!). Making changes to the wireless setup in the 
main house to increase the range is not an option (no adding of 
antennas, etc) so I'm looking for a solution to repeat the wireless 
signal in the cottage. If I mount a stationary unit at the far end of 
the cottage which is closest to the main house I'll have a reliable 
signal which I should be able to repeat for use within the cottage.

At the moment though, I'm confused on the best way to achieve this and 
would love some input to clear up my confusion. After reading through 
the BAWUG archives and doing some research I've come up with a few 
options that I think would work:

Current setup and available gear:
Netgear MR814 - used in main house as dsl gateway and wireless AP with 
WEP enabled.
Linksys WPC54G - PCMCIA card in my IBM Thinkpad running Win2k. Works 
great with MR814 when I'm in range (or find 1 inch wide voodoo spots in 
cottage where I get a signal).
Linksys WRT54G  - router / access point that is currently unused

Option 1:
Purchase a D-Link DWL-810, mount it at the far end of the cottage and 
use it as a repeater. DWL-810 connects to MR814 and laptop with WPC54G 
connected to DWL-810. This seems like a simple solution but I haven't 
found any information on whether the DWL-810 can repeat for the MR814. I 
was initially looking at the Linksys WAP11 for this purpose but 
discovered that it can only bridge for another WAP11. Anyone know if 
this is the case for the DWL-810?

So the setup would be:  Internet <=> MR814 <=> DWL-810 <=> WPC54G

While this seems like the simplest setup, my concern with this setup is 
being able to get hardware from three different vendors to work together 
nicely.

Option 2:
Purchase something link a Linksys WET11 or Netgear ME101 (which are both 
wireless ethernet bridges), mount it at the far end of the cottage and 
connect it via an ethernet cable to my Linksys WRT54G. The WET11 or 
ME101 would talk to the MR814 and my laptop would talk with the WRT54G.

So the setup would be:
Internet <=> MR814 <=> WET11 / ME101 <=ethernet cable=> WRT54G <=> WPC54G
This also seems like it would work with the disadvantage of using one 
extra piece of hardware (the WPC54G) that I could install elsewhere.

My main concerns are purchasing a piece of hardware that will work with 
Netgear MR814 with WEP enabled and also my Linksys WPC54G card.

Any ideas on which of those two options would work best? Or perhaps 
another option all-together? Thanks in advance for your comments.

- Jamie

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