My son recently moved into a house, and he wanted to have a particular wired phone base station in his office. The problem is that there is no telephone jack in this room. To avoid the hassle of running a telephone wire to the room (or paying the telephone company $140 to install it), he decided to use a device (Southwestern Bell Wireless Phone Jack) that uses the electrical wires in the home to deliver the telephone signals. He connects the existing phone jack (in a different room) to a device that plugs into a nearby AC outlet. He then connects the phone base station to another small device that plugs into an AC outlet in his office. These types of devices modulate a low frequency carrier signal similar to modems in computers in order to carry the telephone signals through the electrical wiring, and for $70 it's much easier than running wire. This quasi-wireless solution enables throughput of about 56Kbps for even networking computers together.

I often travel through airports and other public areas in search for Wi-Fi hotspots. I've found that a Wi-Fi finder gadget comes in handy for this. I'd done some research and found that the Wi-Fi finder from Canary Wireless is the only one that differentiates between secured and unsecured networks (in addition to displaying the SSID).

When connecting to a wireless LAN as a user or conducting a RF site survey, be aware that the radio card makes a big difference in performance. A Cisco radio card, for example, allows much better range than a Netgear radio card in my laptop. When performing RF site surveys, try to use the same radio card in your RF site survey equipment as the ones that users will have in their mobile devices. This might not be possible with some products, such as Airmagnet, if the site survey software is licensed to a specific radio card. Airmagnet does, however, let you license their RF site survey software to a specific laptop, which enables you to interchange radio cards as needed.

When performing a RF site survey today, I found that a row of ceiling-high file cabinets causes significant attenuation approximately 15dB. Keep this in mind (as well as other metal obstacles) when identifying the preliminary locations for access points. Of course be certain to fully test each access point location to ensure proper coverage throughout the facility.