does this sound like a good networking plan?

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Ryokurin

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Due to piss poor cableing in my house I may be forced to move my router to a very inconvenient part of my house to get a good signal for my cable modem. the issue with the location is that its a good 100 feet away from where I actually need the router to be to connect all of our 6-7 pcs upstairs without issue. thus my problem.

I cannot do wireless for all the devices as some of them I need the 100mb access for video files and so forth and not to meantion it would be quite expensive so what I planned on doing was this. Place the cable modem downstairs along with my router (smoothwall) and place an wireless access point with it. then purchase a bridge and place it upstairs with a switch connected to the machines upstairs. In theory it should work, but im not entirely sure. for security I plan on wep and setting the two wireless devices to mac address authenication. does this sound like a good plan?
 
It should work. Some wireless bridges have limits on how many machines can be behind them, but I've never seen any limits as low or 6-7. Personally, I run a single wire up and then switch it if at all possible. We use a bit of normal wireless at work, and I've set a couple point-to-point links up that are in excess of 10 miles. They are reliable, but I always tend to be disappointed with the throughput.

Brian Taylor
 
Watch out for the D-Link Bridges. like the DWL-G810, and the DWL-810+, I know both of those only support 1 device connected to the Ethernet port (unless they have changed something in the last 2 months).
 
A few do it. The Linksys WAP-11's would run in bridge mode and access point client modes. You have to watch distance though. Anything over 200 feet or so and you run into timing issues with the radio. If you can come up with WAP-11 v1.1 they are good for several miles (give the right antennas).

I acually had a pair of WAP-11 v2.2's for sale not too long ago. They didnt have a lot of range, but you could flash them to the D-Link DWL-900AP+ BIOS which would let you bind channels for 22mbps.

Brian Taylor
 
cool Ill keep a look out for those then. the distance is about 100 feet tops Its just in a way where it would be quite tacky to run a regular cat5 all that distance (not to meantion the latency that 100 feet of cable alone will add. I was planning on Linksys anyways as they have never done me wrong unlike dlink in the past ;)
 
100 feet of cable would give you less latency than any wireless. And either way you would be looking at less than 5ms. I just did a ping from one of my servers to one of the most distant machines, through 3 switches and at least 500ft of cable and I get <10ms. So latency really isnt an issue.

A big issue would be the number of walls. If you get something like WAP-11's you are going to have small 3.3dBi omni antennas, and if you have more than 2 stud/drywall walls your signal will be questionable. 1 Brick/Mortar wall, forget it already. Wireless is not at all friendly with obstructions and walls eat up your signal strength quickly.

With WAP-11's there are some 5.5dBi omni antennas out there for about $12 each that make a surprising amount of difference.

Have you considered running the wire outside? I have runs of plain CAT5e cable that have lasted 5+ years outside (hanging from building to building).

Brian Taylor
 
outside is not really an option since its an rented townhouse. thats is the reason why I have not just ripped the coax out and started over with it Im going to have to figure something out something reguardless. oh well, I got an entire weekend to think of a plan. Thanks for you help!
 
Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldnt a wireless solution mean all the computers have to share a 11Mb/s (or however fast the wireless connection is) connection?
 
You are correct, but if you have better than 11mbps internet I'm coming over to your place.

Brian Taylor
 
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