


Question from rocky510

“I have a complicated problem in setting up wireless Internet in my business. First, I have a cable modem at my house and wanted to set up a wireless network for my laptop and my pc. That’s the easy part; I also own a small restaurant about 3 blocks away from my house and wanted to set up a WiFi hot spot, 802.11b. But instead of paying for another cable modem connection I was thinking of putting up wireless antenna at my house and try to make it reach my business.

Here is an example of one,, don’t know how well it works though. So I have another PC at my business that’s going to receive the connection from my house. Does anyone have any ideas if this is going to work? My 2 PC’s are running WinXP and WinMe. Maybe give me some advise on what the best way to approach this. Thanks. ”

Answer from bobwinners

“Don’t know how long your blocks are, but the limit on this antenna is 200 feet, and at that distance, performance really sucks. I’d suggest you look into wireless repeaters.”

Answer from johncymru

“Normally the further the distance between wireless points the less the data transfer raten and it can be a significant difference, I have seen 811b drop from 11Mbs theoretical to 2Mbs when one laptop was behind one door about 20 feet from an access point, tha same laptop with a 811g card and access point had a data transfer rate of 16Mbs in the same situation.

At even short distances it is quite common to have the data transfer rate drop to a half or more. You might get away with it if all you were doing was e-mail and basic browsing as your DSL/Cable is 500Kbs/1Mbs and even 811a should cope with it, depending on the exact distance.

However, when you say three blocks how far is that exactly, as 811b has a theoretical 1000 feet line of site range, though I would take this with a pinch of salt in all but ideal situations. Though it is possible to get signal boosters to extend the range, but these will still tend to produce a hit on performance and add to the cost.”
