Wireless repeater recomendations?

[Kerry D]

Hey, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a daisy-chain capable wireless repeater. I'm on a farm and am currently renovating the house we were living in (and therefor is setup with the cable to the sender). Fortunately there is another house on the farm, but I'd like to get wireless signal there and in order to do that I think I'd have to have two repeaters set up in order for the signal to reach.

[supaflyx3]

Just about any wireless N capable router that supports DDWRT.

[YukonTrooper]

I'm assuming you're looking for something relatively cheap with good range. In that case, I'd suggest the TRENDnet TEW-639GR. It's not DD-WRT capable but it does have a wireless distribution function (repeater mode). I had my eyes on the TRENDnet router for home use before I decided on a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND because of DD-WRT support; however, the only reason I wanted DD-WRT support was for the wake-on-lan function which I didn't end up needing anymore.

[JD]

For a connection between buildings I'd suggest using directional antennas. It would be much more reliable and offer better throughput than using omni-directional repeaters. Also each repeater you have results in a 50% loss of performance as it needs to send/receive twice as much as a normal access point.

I'd put something like this: EnGenius Outdoor Wireless Access Point / Bridge 802.11B/G 108MBPS 600MW W/ Dual Antenna PoE Support - EnGenius - EOC2611P on the outside of each building, facing towards each other as best as possible.

This would give you a wireless bridge (basically same as running an Ethernet cable between buildings). Then on either end, you'd plug it into a more standard WiFi router to get coverage within the buildings.

Just make sure you use non-overlapping channels. So say you make the wireless bridge as channel 1, then make the WiFi routers in either building run on channel 6 or channel 11, this should decrease the interference.

[YukonTrooper]

Wow, good suggestion there, JD. Those things look amazing. Never knew they existed.

[Kerry D]

I had been wondering about directional antennas but finding someone with any knowledge or experience with them has been a challenge. Do you know if the "N" model is any good?

[sswilson]

Do a google search for pringle can antenna..... ;)

[Kerry D]

Hah, that might work with my old linksys router but my current netgear has an internal antenna.

[JD]

Originally Posted by Kerry D

I had been wondering about directional antennas but finding someone with any knowledge or experience with them has been a challenge. Do you know if the "N" model is any good?

The "N" model on NCIX didn't specifically list outdoor in the title, so I wasn't sure if it was weather-sealed or not. I'm sure it performs similarly though.

[Kerry D]

Odd, I thought the ENH200 would be the "N" model. Likely wouldn't matter though, the "G" model is slightly higher priced so I might go with that, as I've come to believe that higher priced products on older standards generally have more robust components. Plus for what we want we wouldn't need N performance.