PocketMatrix

I have been very disappointed with the range of 802.11b. As soon as you have any structures (walls, etc) between you and the WAP, the range drops severely. It is practically line-of-site only. Bandwidth drops with range / signal strength. You will only get the full 11 MBPS if you are in the immediate vicinity of the WAP. Battery life is another big issue. If you enable power saving mode on your CF 802.11b card, you will greatly reduce the maximum bandwidth (I think that cuts it down to a max 2 MBPS on my card). There is no way what you want to do would be feasible without power saving mode, but then the bandwidth would be so low that the load times for games like Quake would be extremely long. It may not even be possible to stream a 128kbs MP3. If you are playing games off of the network, and just for a moment you lose your connection (which can literally occur just by changing your position by a few inches, or turning your back to the WAP), then the game will probably crash, or at least exit, because it can no longer access the data files.
Theoretically, it is a good idea, but WiFi did not live up to my expectations at all. You will find that in most corporate settings, they have many Wireless Access Points to provide the coverage they desire.

Dan East

I'm talking about 802.11a, not 11b. It has a much greater range, has a maximum of 72MB per second, and uses a frequency of 5.1-5.5GHz. It will work much better. And hence my statement about putting more access points in other people's dorm rooms to increase the range.

No college I have ever seen had the dorms evenly distributed around the campus in a configuration ideal for wireless access points. Thus you are only going to get very partial coverage of campus. The range issue is similar to cell phones. The cells (repeaters) can have all the power and range in the world, but it is the portable device's power and ability to communicate back to the repeater that limits the range. If 802.11a manages to achieve increased bandwidth AND range while using substantially less power, then I must have missed this miracle technology when purchasing my WiFi equipment. I would rely on a wireless network as little as possible. For example, if I wanted to play a certain song not already on my device, I would copy it from network, then play it from the storage card (sort of like hyper-caching the data). Same with games, etc.

Dan East

... ruining all of my dreams in one simple post ...
*walks to bed in shambles and lies down to begin sobbing*

Sorry Moose! Hey, who knows. Maybe the brand I have just sucks (Linksys). I did fire it back up today (I don't use WiFi regularly - no need) because of some other 802.11b questions, and because all this talk of wireless stuff got me a little excited over the technology again. I was as disappointed as ever. Sitting with my iPaq 2 feet away from the WAP, if I held my hand between the two, the signal strength would drop from 100% to 93%. I walked roughly 15 feet away, line of site, with nothing between the transceivers, and the signal strength dropped to 93%. If I turned my back, so just my body was in the way, the signal strength dropped to 60%. I think I'm going to do some more formal tests at my church where I can test the range more exactly, plus see how different types of walls affect the signal (2x4 studs with drywall, cinderblock with drywall, and metal siding with drywall). Those would be often encountered in commercial settings. If I could get ahold of some other brands of WiFi hardware I could compare them as well. Maybe I'll have a review of the linksys hardware ready later this week.

Dan East