10 wireless pc

trailb · Post by **trailb** » 15 Dec 2006, 10:27

Hey guys, girls , and guy-girls

My friend wants me to help him set up a 10 laptop wireless lan, what do i need all to do this and what should i watch out for?
Its also going to have an ADSL router

1. 802.11g Adsl 2 router?

is that all can it be?

the laptops will run diffrent kinds of wireless setup's

AlphA · Post by **AlphA** » 15 Dec 2006, 10:37

You can just get a wireless ADSL router. If any laptops dont have onboard wifi, they will need WIFI NICss.....thats about it really.

Futs · Post by **Futs** » 15 Dec 2006, 11:31

Only thing that you might concider to do, is to try and centralise the router.
Because standard line of site range is roughly 70m and for every wall in between you loose about 10m.

So if the farthest laptop's range is not withing the limit, you might need to setup a sceondary router to act as a repeater or bridge.

trailb · Post by **trailb** » 15 Dec 2006, 11:40

thanks guys ,

Post by **Ron2K** » 15 Dec 2006, 11:46

Futs wrote:Only thing that you might concider to do, is to try and centralise the router.
Because standard line of site range is roughly 70m and for every wall in between you loose about 10m.

So if the farthest laptop's range is not withing the limit, you might need to setup a sceondary router to act as a repeater or bridge.

On that note, watch out for near/far. If you get too many laptops that can't detect when another laptop is transmitting/receiving because said laptop is too far away, it can seriously degrade the performance of your network and you may have to enable CTS/RTS on your access point.

Then, it goes without saying that you should enable encyption - WPA if you have a RADIUS server connected to the wired part of the network, and WPA-PSK if you don't.

One more thing. Don't plan on bandwidth-intensive network stuff, because that 54Mbps that your access point offers is shared bandwidth (meaning that with 10 laptops, theoretically they will get 5.4Mbps each if they're all active at the same time).