I was visiting with our priest this morning and he wants to setup WiFi throughout the premises. Currently, they have a cable modem, a wired router, and a 10 switch hub.

Attached is a map of the premises with dimensions (thanks to Google Earth). A pink dot marks where a router would have to be placed. The red oval marks the area that the pastor wishes to have covered.

There is a lot of concrete for walls of the buildings (church office, Sunday school classrooms, and the church itself).

I realize it will require a wireless gateway and some number of repeaters or EXTREMELY strong dB antenna upgrades. However, my knowledge on the best devices for a lower price (this church isn't wealthy) isn't that high.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

I can buy from Bestbuy, Office Depot, Newegg, etc... so long as it has a good reputation.

Thanks!!!

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Does the complex share common electrical wiring? If so you might consider power line ethernet.

http://www.google.com/search?client=...utf-8&oe=utf-8

I have not tried it myself.

Wiring is an iffy thing. I don't think it's commonly shared honestly.

I'm assuming I'll need a Wifi router, better antennas, and some repeaters of some sort. I just don't know what's good.

I'm thinking about starting out with:

1) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833320026 router
2) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127063 extra dB antenna

But, I'm not sure what to do about a repeater.

I would set up a router and see what you have before you went too far into it. My Linksys WRT54GL can be seen a half block away, if the router is placed in a good location it may be all you need.

Few remote access points well placed (wired to the central one with ethernet) can give good coverage, and without high levels of rf emmisions in one point as with one big router

I setup the first AP at the church. It reaches most of the offices and classrooms in that particular building. Also, it reaches all of the parking lot and outdoor areas. However, it will not reach into the church (walls of cement about 6in thick). Also, the three rooms signal doesn't make it into in the office-building have concrete-block walls.

The AP is an Asus RT-N12 without any special antennas. I set it up in the middle-most room with a LAN cable ran to it.

I'm wondering what to do to get the signal into the church and into the offices.

The Asus has two antennas. I was thinking a stronger gain omni-directional antenna (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833999015) to replace one of the two. If the omni fails, I figured a directional antenna in the second slot to reach the church.

If the offices have computers standing still, see if you can use wired network. It has its advantages : Speed, reliability, rf emmisions etc

If not, place it in a place with as much as possible line of sight (or the closest approximation of it) between router and supposed computer locations

Moving the access point so that it isn't flat against a ceiling might change reception to good or to bad (conductive surfaces may reflect the wave and create interference with itself)

The current AP is tacked up onto a drywall at this point. Would drywall be a reflector? wouldn't think so...

The pastor wants to enable WiFi across the church campus so that Sunday School teachers and Bible studies could have internet access. He wants to get into the concrete-walled church so that the musicians and other groups who use the building can have internet access to do what they need to do.

I'd use powerline transmission to get into the church, but it appears that the two buildings are on different electrical circuits. And, the point where they diverge would be pushing the few thousand ft distance that power-Ethernet adapters are capable of going.

At this point, I need to boost the Asus power as much as possible to get further, IF possible.

You can use separate PoE in each site, and connect between the sites with standard ethernet cable, which connects to the PoE at each site

Note that you have to electrically isolate the ethernet cable (galvanic isolation) - Different sites have different earth connections, and there may be voltage (ac from line-to-earth currents in either of the sites) between their earths. Connecting a wire directly will cause currents across this wire, which might be quite large, possibly up to damage and electrocution. The line transformer present in many NICs sometimes does not have all the lines going through it, but only half of them

You can bridge between the PoE systems with optic fiber or wifi concentrated to a beam (e.g. the satellite dish hack etc), in this case you dont have the electrical problem of wired ethernet

Where computer placement is freeform / random, use wifi. Where there are offices where the computers are going to stay in one location all the time they are there, consider wired ethernet sockets to plug in. It will definitely work in the concrete part of the building

Drywall is electrical insulator, and does not affect the transmission / reception of the access point. The support beams inside might if they are metallic, but i doubt as they are quite far away from each other

Another solution i heard of is Ronja, a wireless optic link. Never seen one of those though

I seriously doubt wifi will go through thick concrete, so try:

1) find a window or something less thick

2) try powerline transmission and see if it works

3) get a drill that can drill through concrete and run a cable

Yeah, I learned that the electrical is on the same circuit for both buildings. So, I bought two "NETGEAR XAV2001-100NAR Up to 200Mbps Powerline AV 200 Adapter" adapters from Newegg a few minutes ago.

Also, I bought a higher gain antenna to replace one of the two current antennas with. "ASUS WL-ANT191 9dBi Wireless Antenna"

Referring to 1 & 3 points: This church has no windows. It's pretty cool what the parishioners built (did the building on their own). The concrete has a lot of religious images molded in. Further, the parish center is about 100 yds away without a direct path to run a cable...

You can try to use existing ducts that carry electric wiring / air conditioner ducts / etc. for the network cables, depending on what you have

If there are any channels for water drain in the floor, run the cable in them

PoE is basically a form of hub. Use it to connect inside each building, and run with ethernet cable or anything else more reliable than PoE for the main link between the buildings (where more electrical noise is expected and higher data volumes have to go). Then you can use PoE for the real bad places

Unfortunately, there aren't any common ducts or whatever. It's kind of a crap-shoot but powerline networking or extremely high-dollar directional antennas are the options I see as feasible. I'm trying the powerline networking first as it's the cheapest option.

My next thought is to turn my attention to the network itself. Currently, there's one WiFi AP broadcasting the SSID. I'll be adding a repeater which will continue that SSID broadcast in the building and the northern part of the church campus. What about inside the church? I'm betting that using the same SSID would be bad? Like, it would conflict? The AP's will connect through the common routing system (the same Gateway/DHCP server). But, would having two AP's broadcasting the same SSID without being in repeater mode be a conflict?

The AP-SSID broadcast in the church would only have a few areas that it goes beyond the church walls in the very rear of church (furthest point away from the other building). I could see some mixing of signals there...

If the same SSID is okay, should they use the same channel then?

look in http://www.instructables.com - there are few guides for cheap construction of directional wifi antennas