Question : Increase range in apartment complex

We have a U shaped building with two ap's it each end of each floor (8 total).   They have a 6db high gain antenna purchase with the COMPUSA stamp on it.   We have a couple range issues.  Any suggestion on better antenna's or any upgrade I could made.   We have DWL-G710 ap's; are these ok?

Answer : Increase range in apartment complex

Honestly, its all about experiences.  Personally I'll never buy a Linksys ever again.  Have had horendous luck with the WRT54G's (various version from 2 to 6).  I swear by Netgear now for SOHO APs.  Personally I'd stay with what you have until you are reasonably sure its the APs that don't work or else you could be wasting a lot of money.  Do not go with repeaters though unless you have low numbers of users using the APs.  Otherwise you'll just saturate the AP bandwidth; remember wireless is comparable to hub technology, the antenna can only communicate with one host at a time.

First, what are the channels you are using,  sounds like you have 4 floors.  Place each floor on a different channel: 1, 4, 8, 11.  That should help ensure they don't interfere with one another.
Second, you say you have range problem.  Can you be more specific?  How far away are you from AP, what materials (e.g. walls, microwaves, water bins, glass etc.) are between you and the AP.
Third, what are the floors made of.  Are they cement, if so no waves will leak thru, but if their wood, try moving where the APs are positioned so Aps on different floors could cover "dark" areas of other floors.

One thing I would recommend is getting a decent PCMCIA wireless card with good software.  What you're looking for is something that will give you information like the MAC of the AP your connected to, the SNR, etc.  This will help guide you in knowing where high AP roaming occurs and signal ability.  Signal strength should be atleast -70dB and SNR should be at least 15 to 20 dB for a quality enough signal to be useable.