Wireless Bridge between floors.....yikes

[Cookiemonster]

I'm getting ready to finish my basement and I need to get network connectivity down there. Right now my cable modem and 802.11g accesspoint/router is on the third floor. The signal in the basement via the wireless is weak over in the area where the PC and xbox360 would live so I was thinking of getting a wireless bridge and bridging a new lan from the basement to the wireless access point on the third floor. If I do that I can place the bridge in the basement in a area where I get a better signal and then hardwire to that with cat5. My question is how bad is the reponse time and latency going to be making that added hop via the bridge? Anyone doing this? My only other option at this point would be to run a "backbone" cable to the basement and that will involve some fairly tricky attic manuevering and holes in walls etc. Thanks in advance for any info anyone can provide.. Cookie

[Crazy Ivan]

A Bridge is usually used to make wired connections to a wireless network... I use one in the living room to connect my Xbox360, PS2 and PC to the network it was easier than running a cat5 from my router.

What you want is a REPEATER also known as a RANGE EXTENDER if you want a WIRELESS connection, if you want a WIRED connection then get a BRIDGE.

I suspect you need a REPEATER and it should be placed where the signal is still good and it will extend the range of the wireless signal.

You didn't say what BRAND of Wireless Access Point you have, many are configureable in the area of Transmit signal strength, you may even be getting some interference with other wireless signals, DO you have a 2.4gHz wireless phone??? Try another channel on your AP.

I don't know how familiar or comfortable you are with doing some advanced setup in your wireless network?

Dan

[Cookiemonster]

Thanks Dan. I'm planning to run the cat 5 cables in the basement and put jacks on several walls just in case. I've had enough issues with wireless nics that I would just prefer to use hard wire to the actual xbox, pc etc. Just call me old school :). If I stick with the combo router/wireless (belkin or Linksys) I can still do wireless later if I want. So I think what I want is a bridge to connect the two wireless access points. So the config would be:

cat5 from the host to a router/WAP (bridge these) WAP/router -cable modem.

Does that make sense? I'm fairly confident I can do it technically. I'm more concerned about performance and latency. I haven't really investigated it but is a wireless hop any slower than a normal wired network hop or are we talking <2ms anyway?