Question : Wireless over a large area

Hi

I have some experience with wireless networks but just have a few questions

I currently have a wireless network in my office which we are looking to move into the workshop. Unfortunately the buildings we use are fairly old and wireless signals don't transfer particularly well. This has meant I have had to use at least 2 WAP's.

This have worked fine with security but I am not sure if this is more luck then judgement,

Firstly, is it true that providing all the settings are the same (apart from the actual WAP name and IP address), the Wireless network name (SSID?) and security method and password then i should be able to add as many WAPS as i like with there own IP's (ie not repeaters, wired into network) then it should work? In the largest location at am probably looking at round 6 WAP's

Secondly, would anyone have any particular hardware recommendations, I have always used netgear but for no particular reason.

Thanks

Mark

Answer : Wireless over a large area

If they use the same SSID and channel they will NOT interfere with each other - they should gracefully take turns according to the 802.11 specification.
Only if they use different SSIDs and the same channel (and are in range) will they interfere with each other.
The drawback of using the same channel for six APs would be essentially sharing the bandwidth between all six.  A 54Mbps wireless connection provides only 27Mbps of actual throughput, maximum. If you have ten clients and everyone is on the same channel, you're effectively limiting each one to about 2.7Mbps of bandwidth. Where if you put two APs on channel 1, two on channel 6 and two on channel 11, they won't interfere with each other and you effectively triple the available wireless bandwidth. If all you have is a T1 line (1.5Mbps) and they aren't talking to anything but the internet (no file sharing between them or a local server), then having them all on the same channel's not going to make that much difference. I hope that makes sense.  Feel free to ask for clarification if it doesn't. :-)

I've not seen any problems with roaming when they're on different channels, by the way. The windows wireless zero configuration (WZC) service doesn't allow you to specify a channel for an SSID profile, anyway.