steve ulrich wrote: > > > handwaving about FSO and other technologies aside, putting APs on > buildings downtown is fraught with some different challenges, i.e. - > you'd have to be on top of the tallest buildings within the downtown > area with fairly high gain antennas to compensate for the LOS issues. > > putting antennas on the plymouth building (visi location) is of > dubious value given the relatively modest height of the facility and > the surrounding buildings. getting on other buildings with decent > connectivity might be better but i surmise that this would be priced > a bit rich for our tastes. The tallest buildings aren't always the best for applications like this. In a base to mobile/portable situation where you have fairly low gain antennas, typically 8 db on the base and 5 db on the mobile, the normal usable range for 802.11b without amplifiers on each end is only around a half a mile. To cover much of downtown is going to take alot more than one site. The plymouth building has quite a few taller buildings around it but I believe that it's fairly open to the north so it could be used as a hub for point-to-point links in that direction that will get us closer to the areas that we want to cover. I believe that there's also a path down hennepin ave which could get us to the Walker Art Center. The Walker isn't real high but it is much more out in the open and I think that we could talk them into letting us put something on the roof fairly easily. They'd love the idea of having network access in the sculpture gardens.