Forum

I was asked by a friend to give him a plan to install a wireless network in an apartment complex. I was researching various types of antenna and was hoping someone could help. There are 8 buildings in the complex, would it be possible to point an antenna in the direction of the buildings and cover multiple buildings? Am I going to need an access point in each building?

Help.

One option you might consider is a solution like Vivato (http://www.vivato.net) in a situation like this. Other options are sector antennas and then treat the area like wide area wireless broadband. Check out www.ydi.com

Hi!
I Think it's better to implement more than one antenna in that building. you get more through-put and less collisions using two antenna and two AP.

So, with 8 buildings, how many people/computers/devices are we talking?

The more devices you have, the more you need to cut up the Bandwidth Pie. I would think you'll need to have at LEAST one AP per building, if not 2 or 3.

Also, what are the AP's going back to? Are you bringing them back to a DSL or cable modem type connection? You have to think in terms of how many connections back to what size pipe. 35 to 30 devices going back to a single cable modem line is just not going to cut it :o

One oversight so far...what are the buildings made out of and where do you plan on mounting the
antenna(s)? If the buildings are brick, then good luck. Even so, getting a 2.4ghz or 5ghz signal in the home would be difficult, unless you use both a base station and cpe devices. See Proxim's 802.11a MP.11A products here:
http://www.proxim.com/products/bwa/multipoint/mp11/mp11a/index.html

5054-BSU Tsunami MP.11a Base Station Unit
5054-RSU Tsunami MP.11a Residential Subsciber Unit
5054-SU Tsunami MP.11a Subscriber Unit

The subscriber units have window mount antennas. You can use alternate higher gain wall or pole mount antennas also and it uses the more channel dense and higher available frequency band of 5.8 ghz at 9-11 channels! Better than 3 channels w/11b or g!

If you are doing the installation and own an access point and wireless card & laptop/pda then do a site survey. If not then there are Proxim certified engineers all over and some may be in your area and willing to help size the opportunity.
http://www.proxim.com/partners/findpartner/classification.html