The lay of the LAN
Because physical structures can eat up wireless signals, the layout of your home or office--the placement of walls, hallways, and doors--counts for everything. If you ignore the floor plan, you may end up with a network that fails to reach every nook and cranny.
Break out the blueprints
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 A centrally located Wi-Fi access point can cover a 20,000-square-foot workspace, but the exact coverage area may depend on the construction and thickness of your walls. |
Every wall and ceiling is a potential barrier to radio signals of any kind. Plaster walls are the easiest to go through, although older construction (which includes wood, lathe, metal screens, and plaster) can eat up signals. Steel or stone is the worst wall material; the signal barely trickles through. Glass acts like a reflector, bouncing back the signal. The only solution is to place the access points to avoid walls and dead ends. Sometimes the best technique is trial and error--testing a device in a variety of locations for the best receptivity.
Choosing the right gear
Figuring out what gear you'll need to put together your network can be a challenge. The chart below will help you lay out the puzzle pieces on the table.
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Every device you want to network will need a radio for exchanging communications wirelessly. If you have an older notebook, you can easily add a wireless PC Card adapter, such as the Linksys dual-band WPC55AG, while newer notebooks offer these features as standard equipment. Smaller CompactFlash cards, such as the D-Link DCF-650W, work well for handheld computers, but they're expensive and have limited range. For desktops, think USB or PCI adapters. The WECA logo assures Wi-Fi compatibility. Once all your devices are wireless ready, they need a basic access-point (AP) radio to communicate. An AP can act as the wireless network's hub, letting multiple computers share a broadband connection, or it can be hooked up to a wired network to add wireless devices. If your network needs to span larger spaces, you can always add extra access points and place them in an overlapping pattern to minimize dead spots. You can connect the extra access points to your wired network or use them as bridges to relay the signal to other APs. If you want to create a network combining both wired and wireless connections, a wireless gateway, which adds an Ethernet router, would be a good choice. At less than $200, Wi-Fi devices can be an inexpensive, one-stop distribution center for your wireless LAN. Some good choices include:
| • | The basics of wireless networking | • | Sweating the details |
| • | The lay of the LAN | • | Optimizing and securing your network |
