I have been told that I can use a Netgear Prosafe 802.11g WAP as a signal booster. Basically the problem is that my client lives in an old three story house. Their wireless router is situated on the middle floor (it's just plugged into the broadband socket and not connected to a PC because there are none on the middle floor) but due to the thick walls and floors, they get a very poor signal on the top and bottom floors. My problem is that I can only get the WAP working if it's plugged into either the existing router or a laptop on the middle floor. This obviously doesn't help as the top and bottom floors still don't get a signal.
I need a way of getting the WAP to pick up the signal from the router wirelessly so I can move it closer to either the top or bottom floors but it seems it's not designed to do that. I can't use an adapter to boost the signal via the mains as they have different circuits.
Consider using a couple of HomePlugs to create a small LAN-segment between your brodband router/switch and the other floors. Then attach plain WLAN AP:s on each floor. No fuzz with repeating/bridging configurations etc. I've got a FVS336G as my main router/firewall/switch and then three WAG102 on three different locations using homeplugs to connect the APs to the LAN. Haven't looked at the specs but there are also wireless extenders (HomePlug+WLAN AP in one unit) that also might be suitable. Cheers /Henrik
Well, if you can't get a wired connection (HomePlug, Ethernet etc) between the floors you'll have to go wireless. I assume that you're referring to the WG102 as "802.11 WAP". Basically you got two options: (a) Wireless Repeating or (b) Directional antennas
Repeating has performance drawbacks and the WG102 since bandwidth is used for both client transmission and repeating (more or less cut in half)... see page 4-7 in ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/wg102_ref_manual_5_0_0.pdf This also requires your main router/AP to support repeating with the WG102
Using high-gain directional antennas you can add one or two extra APs on the middle floor (same as the router and use a wired connection) and replace the omnidirectional antenna with a directional antenna that boosts signal through the floor or ceiling to the other floors. I'm not sure if Netgear has a suitable antenna for this purpose though.
