Large WiFi Range with few devices

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Limp Gawd
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Apr 17, 2008
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I'm working for a small charter school I'm in the process of upgrading all their infrastructure. This phase of the project requires WiFi coverage for the whole building, the building next door and the tent off to the side. Both buildings are 1 story separated by about 25'. The tent is about 150' from the wiring closet.

There is definitely some interferences between the mail budlinging and the tent, a class room and a few metal cabinets. There's not much i can do about those.

We currently have 2 Apple Airports that are not in use. The network will be about 6 eMac desktops with WiFi, 10 Latitude laptops and 4 more Macbooks.

I guess first off, are Airports and the Latitudes compatible? I imagine that they'll play nice, but I'm not %100 sure because I rarely play with any Apple stuff.

2nd, does anyone know the realistic range for an Airport?

3rd. Can you recommend a fairly nice WiFi router or AP? I'm pretty sure I can use the airport for the routing but it's not necessary. Either the Untangle server or a Linksys can also do the routing.

4th. is the range really decided by the size of the antennae or does the acutal router control the range? I know that with some 3rd party firmware you can increase the range but I'm trying to keep things stable and keep the warranty.

5th. Are repeaters a viable solution? I can't run any new wires. so if I have to extend the signal, will a repeater work? Does it have to be the same brand? If I use the Airport, do I have to buy more airports?

Thanks in Advance for any insight you can offer.
 
Wait, you consider a couple of airports piped into a linsys soho router an upgrade?

Whats your budget, sq footage of the building, expectation of growth...

Also, as a school, theres all sorts of compliance issues that you are going to need to look into. Someone that deals with schools on a regular basis should comment here. I tend to avoid them as much as possible.
 
I consider anything an upgrade because there is no student network right now.

There's already a content filter plan with Untangle, and that's about the only compliance policies I've been given.
Budget is not clear, something reasonable, I'd say about $200-$400. But I'd like to reuse as much as the equipment as possible if I can.

I have no idea of the square footage, I'm terrible with estimating. They're not lecture halls, just classrooms. I'd say about 4 classrooms in the main building that are all adjacent. 2 classrooms in the next building about 20' away and the tent is about 150' from the main building. Very little expectation of growth. So anything that can handle 20-30 wifi connections at the same time will be sufficient.

I guess what I'm really interested in is a fairly large ranged WiFi appliance. Whether it does routing or not can be dealt with. But is this just a matter of adding bigger adn better antennae?
 
First, get your hands on a copy of the blueprints. This helps immensely with laying out a network.

If you can just place an accesspoint in any given room and walk around with your laptop, you'll get a reasonable idea of coverage.

As far as hardware, at the bottom end of the spectrum, you've got wrt54's flashed with ddwrt. I personally wouldn't install anything less than a Netgear WG302 but those start at around $100 off of Ebay. You'll want to connect these AP's to a switch. A Dell powerconnect will do the job nicely. Again Ebay if you are tight on funds. Leave the routing to Untangle.

I'd figure two ap's for the main building and one each for the tent and smaller building. Ideally, you'll want to run direct burial Cat5e to these two. Its much cheaper than the alternative method involving wifi.
 
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