At 11:26 AM 12/17/2004 -0600, Adam Maloney wrote:
>I have two offices in Florida that are going to be doing wireless, so we 
>don't have to put two T-1's 100' away from each other.  This is a building 
>complex with 4 buildings seperated by a 100' x 100' courtyard (they call 
>it the shire...god I hate Florida)  Our two offices are directly across 
>from each other, both on the 2nd (top) floor.
>
>Ultimately, I'd like to just be able to use two 18" cisco yagi's pointed 
>at each other through the windows.  I've read that some glass is a big 
>problem, and some is not.  The landlord says the windows are tinted and 
>tempered.  Since the offices are directly across from each other and on 
>the same floor, the angle of incidence into the windows would be 90 
>degrees.
>
>I'm more interested in actual success stories rather than the theoretical 
>"blah blah law says...index of refraction...multiplied by theta..." - I 
>will be config'ing and shipping the equipment to the site, where a 
>semi-competent phone system installer will be mounting and plugging in. 
>So I have to know that this either will or will not work, since the Boy 
>Wonder of Phone Systems won't be of any help if it fails to come up.

I'm pretty sure two 18" yagis will give you more than enough signal to get
through that glass.  If the antennas are anything like the ones here
http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/hg2415y.php (14.5db from an 18" yagi),
you'll have up to 29db gain from both antennas.  That's enough signal to
punch thru most any normal wall or window (a concrete wall eats between
10-15db of signal, see
http://www.airespace.com/products/appnote_wlan_planning_design.php ).  Your
distance is 100' line-of-sight except for the glass (or wall, as you may
find the signal penetrates the wall easier than the glass) which should be
easily traversed with any wireless gear.

I'd say go for it...I think you've got a better than 90% chance it'll work;
you may even be able to get by with the stock antennas some APs come with
(e.g. the Linksys WRT54G/WRT54GS units work very good).  The only thing I
can think of that could screw up your plan is too much interference from
other 2.4ghz devices like cordless phones, cordless door cameras, and other
wireless networks.

-Haudy Kazemi

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