My current set up is a home office on the north east corner of the house, my wireless router is located here with 2 pc's hard wired to it. In the south west corner I have a "nerdcave" set up, it has a 28 port switch (from my old company) and is connected to the router through an ethernet cable. This room has 4 pc's set up in it with room for friends to set up. How ever if they don't want to hard wire in they can only get wifi near the entrance to the room. The house has a lot of interference in it, aluminum wiring etc. I would like to add a wireless access point to give the basement wifi access. Does any one have suggestions as to models etc? And how do they work? As in how does a laptop, xbox, ds etc get the ip from the access point? Never used one before. How ever I have had the headache of using two or more wireless routers and trying to configure them to work with each other. Is an access point easier or?

If I follow your description, your friends are able to connect to the wireless router in your home office IF they stay by the door to your "nerdcave". If that's correct, then if you just increase the power of the signal from the existing wireless router a little, then people could probably connect anywhere in the room. If you have a conventional consumer wireless router up in your home office, with the little 2dB antenna sticking up from the back, then just increase the efficiency in the direction of the "nerdcave" with a parabolic reflector: http://www.freeantennas.com/ The site shows many designs of different reflectors which can be made for next to nothing. I've used them and they work very well. If you still want, or need, even more power, then invest in a 7dB antenna to replace the 2dB which is currently on the router. Just improving your effective antenna power can save you a lot of money and configuration headaches.

Just a couple of things........ 1)Wireless sucks totally for gaming, so if you can avoid connecting via wireless, your gaming experience will be more pleasing. 2) Buy a wireless AP. Plug it into your switch (which I wager only has 24 ports) and configure it correctly and then anyone inside the nerd cave will have a very very strong wireless signal.

I am an idot you are right it is a 24 port switch. I will have to grab an access point and get it set up. And yes I agree it sucks for gaming. They are wanting to surf, code etc.