Haystack

This may be worth looking into BT Openzone in a box.

The BT system is interesting, but it involves charging for the access and selling openzone vouchers. We are planning a free system.

I'm not sure about that. You certainly have the option to charge, but it does mention that it is suitable for business uuse, which presumably would not be charged for.

Having said that, I have no love for BT.

"We want to have free WiFi at and around our sailing club. The coverage should be in the main large room, downstairs in the office and outside for maybe 20 feet or more down to the water's edge"

I'd use something from this page

Most people around here seem not to like the socket system but there are items on here that you plug into the socket and which are also WiFi transmitters.

Too simple for words.

TP

I've just kitted up round the house starting with a Devolo dLAN 200 AV Starter Kit for my main PC and modem with another couple of them for good measure elsewhere round the house.

Fast internet all round the house now. Wherever you want to use your laptop just plug it into the mains using one of these. Simple to install. Brilliant kit which works so easily and fast. Secure too.

In fact it's very nearly as good as Sky+

Haystack

Regardless of what system you use, as it will be an open network, make sure that you put a firewall between the wireless network and any computers that your sailing club uses.

The club PCs already have firewalls and anti virus software installed. Anyone using the network will be warned of the dangers.

Haystack,
The std way to cover larger areas is with seperate wireless access points transmiting using the same SSID but seterating the channels by at leaest one but better two channels. Each of the access pionts is connected to a central router via ethernet cables (max 96 meters). The central router could also be an access point.
skg

The problems Wifi has are with going through walls. If you are just looking to do upstairs, downstairs and outside around the clubhouse then a bog standard wireless router has a good chance of being fine for the job.

Wot K said. Also, if you do use multiple wireless routers or repeaters, remember that 802.11 b/g channels have quite a lot of frequency overlap. Off the top of my head, only channels 1, 6 and 11 have no overlap. It shouldn't matter because it's spread spectrum (try saying that after a few glasses of wine).

Haystack

I'm not sure whether your clubs network is secure enough!

A serious home or a business network should have software firewalls and AV on each computer (the Win XP SP2 firewall is not as bad as some would tell you). In addition, there should be a seperate hardware firewall at the point of connection to the internet.

If you are connecting a semi public WiFi network to the same internet connection, then this should be connected to a totally seperate network segment so that anyone on the WiFi network can't access the fixed network any more than someone on the internet can.

Yes. We do have firewalls and AV on each PC that belongs to the club.

Just a comment that having installed AVG I still ran my F-Prot in tandem.

This morning I uninstalled the F-Prot and gosh the PC runs a heck of a lot quicker.

I read recently that it might be dangerous to run two ante-virus progs at the same time as they might both open the same file and mess up the operating system. This was what inspired me to remove F-Prot - but the gain in speed was unexpected and a true joy.

TP

supposed to have been upgraded by BT today to 8mb broadband and am getting 2mb download and 200k upload , any comments by anybody?

will moving from the voyager router to the bt hub speed things up?

Your router is probably connecting at the highest speed it can manage. The 200kb up doesn't look good. If you can get from your router the values it shows for attenuation and noise margin (it will be on a statistics page) then I can probably help further. Also key in your details on the broadband checker and on the BT ADSL tab look up the speed it thinks it can support and the distance to the exchange:

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php

kayak , tried the link it says:

Bt wholesale say my line will support 6mbps or greater with adsl max

standard adsl RAG results 2mbps adsl (whatever this means)?

'Should' rather than 'will'. Some might say 'might' :-)

The 2mbps confirms that you would get that on a fixed 2mbps line, i.e. what you probably had before, rather than the up to 8mbps connection which you now have.

On an 'up to 8mbps' connection the speed the router can connect at depends on the quality of the line, hence the need for the router statistics.

How to get your router statistics

PS. If you end up having to put an address in your browser to check on your statistics, don't forget to save it in 'Favorites'.

Although I'm not with BT Broadband, when my line was upgraded, the advise was to frequently reboot the router for the first 2 weeks before max speed would be achieved.

says the following:

self test passed
standard T1.413
local tx power 9.55
local line atten 14.0
local line snr margin 30.5
up svalue 1
up dvalue 1
remote tx power 19.57
remote line atten 5.5
remote snr margin 29

no idea what any of this means , is it what you want?

maddoctor