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A Wireless Network for a 4-Story Apt. Building?
zzzreyes asks: "I live in a 4 storey building, and pretty much everyone in this building is into gaming and computers. I have just received, through the death of a great aunt, about $7,000. I want to know how and what I should buy, to provide wireless access through out the whole building, so we can all share one connection. There are 6 double-room apartments on each side, and we only have four floors. I'll hopefully have access to the elevator shaft, in case I need it. Will $7,000 be enough?" How cheaply could you do something like this, assuming you had access to much of the building? What would be the best way to set up the access points to guarantee the best coverage for the whole building?
Just buy about 4 wireless routers. The linksys linux-based ones mentioned early today on slashdot are great. Whatever you do, DONOT GET BELKIN! They are based on a misconfigured Nucleus Plus kernel. They frequently crash, and have to be power cycled. In addition, many of them have a bug making them ONLY work with IE/windows. They fail with mozilla, konqueror, IE/mac, and safari because they append a character 0 (aka 0x00) at the end of a javascript file. I reported it to them and they shipped me another older version of the router, which works with mozilla but the wireless signal cuts out every 10 minutes. /rant
Anyway, just hook them up at places throughout the building... in different people's rooms. These will form the main network that people will connect to. Their wireless card will automaticallly pick the closest one... just make sure they have the same SSID. Then, either connect the routers wirelessly or with wires. If you want to do them wirelessly, you'll need either a seperate wireless gateway or an additional router for each main router. These gateways will connect to your internet router.
I agree with the general sentiment that the money should be invested rather than blown on toys, but everyone should take a step back and rethink real-estate as an investment option. There are plenty of warning signs that the real estate market has been in a bubble and that it's due for a crash. I'm not saying don't invest in real estate, I'm just saying do your research first rather than blindly jumping in. I suppose I should post a few links to supporting source, but I'm too lazy and y'all can find em just by googling.
My suggestion to the poster:
1.)Install mySQL or any database for that matter
2.)Run SELECT * FROM google, user WHERE user.hasClue = 'TRUE' AND google.query = 'wireless network apartment';
3.) ?????
4.) Profit
Only if your business is the Catholic Church and the kids are alter boys