I am ordering stuff to build a wireless network and have been advised to buy a DrayTek Vigor 2800 Firewall VPN ADSL2/2+ Router. Will this do the job. I want to plug this into 3 wireless access points with each access point also used to plug in an IP camera.
I have been told that it is possible to daisy chain wireless Ap's provided I drop the IP cameras. This is worth considering as the wiring for this will be a big job but how much more complcated will the set up be if I don't hardwire the AP's. Also which are the best AP's is is there any real difference between them.

 

The Vigors are very good, we have used them for years, they only seem to get better, more feature packed, now with dual dsl and voip vpn etc etc

they rarely if ever fail too

 

Very good for the money. tonnes of features.

Shouldn't be too hard to setup they generally have a nice web front end.

 

Was very happy with my 2600G, great features and rock solid

 

Hello

They are very good apart from the ADSL2 bit, as mine didn't work with BE* very well (speed was capped) and had to buy a Netgear in the end.

Steve

 

As per comments above. DrayTek 2800 series is very good for the price while a good wireless-G access point is the Buffalo High Power which supports wireless repeating (WDS)

With regards to your AP setup. Daisy chaining or known as wireless repeating, isn't advisable for creating a wireless network especially for a business wanting to stream IP cameras.

Wireless repeating is great for quickly and easily patching up “dead spots” within a wireless network or extending the wireless range based on a 1 hop setup, not 2 hops in your case. In the past, I have recommended a 2 hop or maybe a 3 hop repeating setup but this was for when wireless bandwidth wasn’t a concern because the applications took minimal amounts of resource.

With repeating, every time you repeat, you half the bandwidth because the repeating AP has to use half of its bandwidth for the wireless uplink back to the master AP. Below is an example when you repeat 2 times with 3 AP’s.

Wireless-G AP1 (master) has about 22Mbps “true speed” on full signal strength without encryption.

Wireless-G AP2 (repeat1) has 11Mbps “true speed” on full signal strength without encryption

Wireless-G AP3 (repeat2) has 6Mbps “true speed” on full signal strength without encryption

As you can see, by the time you are on AP3 the performance isn’t that great and this example is based on each AP being on full signal strength (unlikely) and without encryption (use WPA2 for businesses).

If wiring is a concern, I have suggested for small networks using homeplug technology as the backbone of the network with the AP’s being AP’s.

 

thanks.
got the router two wireless ethernet over power boxes and 1 rangemax AP to be plugged in with network cable.