Furthest vertical reception you experienced...

[rasmasyean]

I just wanted to get an idea of how many floors from the AP have you guys gotten your wi-fi to work? What kind of degradation have you gotten? Do you have any experiences with different brand's/units and does it seem to make a difference?

Thanks!:)

[spiderbite]

This is usually not a good thing. I have seen such poorly designed sites that were able to pick up AP's from two floors in either direction

[james]

There are quite a number of factors which go into this... specifically what the floors are made out of and what's on the floors inbetween. For example, there woule be a world of difference between an empty floor and a floor that contained a metal machining workshop, or a floor with a few wooden desks and little computer equipment compared to one with full office with wireless networks or possibly other wireless devices. I'd say depending on the factors it could range anywhere from 1 - 10 floors (assuming an approx. 10' floor), give or take a few. As far as equipment goes, do you just want something with raw power and that's it? If you give us a little more info about your setup or what you're trying to achieve that would help a lot.

[rasmasyean]

Mostly the structure is wood. Walls are drywall with wood beams. Floors are wood. There might be fiberglass fire retardant in between floors, but I'm not sure. The external is brick layed. A few panasonic 2.4 cordless phones. Some microwave ovens. A couple of computers. Basically...a 3 family residential setting / with basment. Doors are wood. Water pipes are lined up on the sides of the house mostly, if that makes a difference.

[tripwire45]

To the best of my knowledge, the water pipes would be the biggest issue. Since you're probably talking about an access point with a standard di-pole omni-directional antenna, your horizontal coverage will be slightly better than the vertical coverage. The way it works though is that the higher the signal gain, the more the coverage area "flattens" so the horizontal coverage gets better at the expense of the vertical coverage.

Also, omni-directional antennas aren't absolutely "omni-directional". There's a bit of a "donut hole" above each antenna that's not covered by the RF signal since the signal can't radiate along the length of the wire.

All that should not have an appreciable impact on your vertical coverage but does provide for some interesting effects sometimes. Remember though, you horizontal and vertical coverage will be impacted by intervening objects, especially if they are either metal or otherwise dense. A waterbed might be a problem as well.

One other thing...signal strength and thus data rate is impacted by distance so the further you go in any direction, the slower the data rate is.

[rasmasyean]

I think I see what you are saying. If you are an adapter and you look at the antenna as it angles toward you, it will look shorter and shorter until it points at you and looks like a dot. As it does this, the "amplitude" gets smaller proportionally with the "appearance" of the antenna until the dot has no amplitude.

The water pipes are on the sided of the house and I don't think they block any line-of-sight paths (assuming signal penetration between floors). Or if the signals "bounce" instead, will it be absorbed partially by the pipes when hitting the walls? Would it help to angle the antenna horizontally instead so it radiates up and down penetrating the floors as opposed to sideways? Maybe the "axis" of the antenna can point in a direction that will not have computers?