If you need more signal strength, purchase another WAP11 (set it up as AP CLIENT) and place it in the center of your house. You're wireless devices should select the 2nd WAP11 and your signal strength will be great!

You will need seperate IP addresses for each WAP11 (the second one can end with .80) Be sure to set the REPOTE AP MAC address on the 2nd WAP11 (AP CLIENT) to point to the LAN MAC address of the 1st WAP11 (Access Point). Good Luck!

I have a WAP11 (and am purchasing a second for my work place), and out of the box it is a breeze to set up. I have a house separate from my garage/office, and running a wire between the two for internet access is impossible/prohibitive. I set up my WAP11 with my main network and was able to get a good signal with my laptop and my WPC11 (Linksys) PCMCIA card. However, the card orientation is not the best for longer distances.

...

Antenna orientation with these units is everything! On the farthest reaches of my garage (100 ft from the WAP) I received no signal. But, when I tilted my laptop on end (a bad typing position :-) ) suddenly I receive a 40% signal strength. I began to do a little research and talked with a couple of antenna manufacturers. The summation was that this unit is VERY extendable if you want to drop a little extra money on an antenna ... The antennas on the WAP11 are removable and a much more powerful antenna (with pigtail) can be added. However, I found this to be unnecessary. I went ahead and decided to try the WUSB11 (Linksys) and see if the "proper antenna orientation" thingy really was the trouble. Out of the box, it worked. Throughout my house, and out to the farthest reaches of my garage and beyond! I did find a couple of weak areas, but moving the WUSB11 (it is on a 6ft USB cable) around a bit got me the signal strength I desired.

The WAP11 comes with the unit (with two removable antennas, an important feature you don't find described anywhere, even in the LinkSys literature), a power supply, a CD-ROM with driver and installation software (really unbelievably easy setup, and please, please turn on the WEP feature!), and an easy-install guide.

As far as interference? I have a 2.4Ghz cordless phone and have yet to notice anything (jury is still out), but so far, so good.

Really a terrific unit for the price. Just be aware that there are limitations with the out-of-the-box unit and you will be fine. I definitely recommend this unit.

I set up the WAP11 Ver. 2.2 off a 10/100 ethernet switch connected to a Linksys BEFSR41 firewall/router which is tied to my cable modem. Ran the enclosed CD on my main home PC, set it for DHCP from the BEFSR41, changed the SSID from the default (duh!!) and set up the WEP information. This step is highly recommended for security reasons...you don't want just anyone you don't authorize accessing your internal network. Very simple if you've read any of the wireless recommendations posted. One note, I did read that the height you set the unit affects the reception so I put it on top of a 6 foot bookcase in my home office.

I then installed the WPC11 Ver 3.0 on a Gateway 600X running XP. XP found and installed the card just as advertised. Immediately I received the broadcasted SSID however it told me it was unavailable. It did take me a few minutes to remember that I had to go into the setup for the physical card (Adapter Properties) to set the channel, SSID, and WEP key information.

As soon as I applied the changes, WHAM! Online baby!! (thanks Dick Vitale). I've tested every application that I use: IE, email, VPN, streaming video (300K), internet radio, whatever, and it's just as good as my wired connection. I've wandered throughout the house (modest single story) and onto the back patio and my signal strength hasn't dropped below "very good". Granted I haven't exceeded about 60 feet and 3 walls but that's the most I would need anyway.

I also read in reports and reviews that some have had problems with 2.4GHz phones interfering. I have two Seimens 2400 base sets (one is right next to the laptop/WPC11) and 6 handsets in the house and I've made test calls sitting right next to the PC and I haven't noticed any change in the signal strength or throughput.

My particular installation doesn't address any issued with anything other than XP but I can't imagine the installation being that much more difficult.

I installed the unit in about 5 minutes; simply plugged it into the switch coming off the cable modem, and Voila! The configuration was almost instantaneous. Even after purchasing a Sony VAIO laptop with built-in wireless card, it worked immediately and with "option tweaking" that can sometimes last hours when trying to get a particular piece of hardware or software to work.

I have had no problems with the WAP11, although every great once in a while you have to disconnect the power to "reboot" it. That hasn't happened in over a month, and only 2-3 times since it was installed 8 months ago.

The only reason it doesn't have a 5-star rating is that it doesn't consistently deliver 11Mbps in a very wide range throughout my home. A more powerful transmitter might be needed, or an antenna that needed less tweaking.

I personally think that having a separate hub/switch, broadband router and WNAP is a good thing. It allows upgrading of different components as your needs change and/or standards evolve. If you buy an "all in one" product you're stuck with upgrading everything. But it does mean more cabling and probably a bit more power draw.

the range, as other reviewers have been saying, is quite respectable. we once tested a block down the street. i can take my laptop into the garden.

it's freedom. it's the way we were meant to compute.

For home or business, please have some level of authentication to access your critical files and folders. People are known to scan neighborhoods and business centers for unprotected wireless networks.

Although possibly outside the scope of this review, it may be worth mentioning that I'm very happy with the Linksys WMP11 PCI Wireless NIC that I bought as well. It has an actual real antenna that sticks out of the back of the PC and which can be adjusted to get the optimum signal strength. The only problem I had was with the Windows XP wireless networking setup utility doing battle with the utility provided with the one that shipped with the card. I suppose I could have let the Windows-provided utility handle the card but, in the end, I unchecked the box that allowed it to manage the card. This let me use the Linksys utility to handle the setup and things were smooth from then on. Signal strength is excellent - much better than from the SMC PCI card I'd been using earlier. Whether this was a function of having the antenna, rather than SMC's back plastic PC-card type protrusion, I don't know.

One more thing, Linksys makes easy work of updating drivers, utilities and firmware from its very well-organized web site. It's worth availing yourself of these updates.

Linksys claims that although the drivers have not been certified with Microsoft they will work on XP. My experience has been that the product WILL NOT work with XP.