I have a customer who wants their home networked to share a DSL connection as well as printers. The house is a medium-large 2-story house, and I frankly don't know how reliable wireless will be. I've used it in a setting where the WAP was in the room or in a room adjacent to the users but not in a multi-story home. We all know Cat5/5e is very reliable, but running it in some homes is quite difficult. Any thoughts? One suggestion I've gotten is to use the Linksys USB wireless network adapters, so if the reception is poor, it can be helped by moving the adapter to another location in the room. Any help is appreciated.

I've set up a multi-network base in a huge house a few months ago. They had wire runs all over the house, but the end user didn't care to hook his laptop to a wall plug 20 feet away. So he got hard wired access to a hub and wireless for his laptops. That way he could hop on a LAN or Wireless wherever he was, including the pool outside. I had a Linksys Wireless, running the WAP 11 cards, and it went through to the 3rd floor (4 floors) and I still got a signal. It did not go through the kitchen appliances though.

I'd go with the wireless, and maybe hook up a few network drops if they want to do some gaming or something at a workstation. But wireless in the first place is going to save them big bucks. Wire runs round here go at $125 each, which is the price of a WAP PCMCIA card plus tax and beer. I'd go mix and match if the runs aren't too hard. Depends if they have a basement, attic access, etc...