WiFi in gites - technical question

[betoulle]

Has anyone any experience of successfully offering WiFi access in gites which are well spread out. We have a WiFi zone in our house which is also a B&B & up till now guests have had no problems with coming over to access the WiFi in our guest living room. The house is open 24hrs a day & the area is comfortable - on occasions we have had quite a crowd in there with their laptops - the youngest last year was 7yrs, the oldest 76....... This year however, I am definitely losing gite bookings because the gites do not have separate WiFi (lost another last night) The gites are approx 100 metres from the house, but the problem is that the walls to both the house & each gite are approx 1 metre thick - solid stone...so no way the signal will reach that far. Digging up the drive to lay cables is not really an option either - anyone have any experience of any of the other methods working successfully??... Thought we had it cracked, offering a huge pool, tennis court, ping pong, giant chess, spacious grounds, gas BBQs, but always seems to be something new they would prefer...last year it was Wii or X-Box (no way are we offering that..they can bring their own..) 2009 it was UK Satellite TV which we have now installed, have always offered WiFi which our competitors have all now installed Just wonder what will be the next demand.

[AnOther]

Perhaps something like this which you could loan to guests ?

http://www.hfield.com/the-wi-fire/

The problem is that it will undoubtedly require it's own software installing which some may be unwilling to do or even unable to if their laptop belongs to their company and software installation requires administrator rights which they don't have.

Without external assistance WiFi can't get very far and the only way to improve the range to what you want is to have a proper external antenna connected to the router. This can be quite a challenge for the inexperienced as it has to be properly designed to minimise the cable losses between the router and antenna but it can be done. 

An expensive alternative would be to have a separate phone line to one gite so it can have it's own internet connection, router, and Wifi, which can be picked up in the others assuming that they are close enough together that is.

[halfblind]

If the gites are on the same power supply as your house then CPL is a workable solution.

[water rat]

A question for you ,AnOther.

I havn't got a wifi icon on my windows xp although it has a wizard and other "stuff" indicating it is able to set it up ,but as hard as I've tried with advice from tech forums ,I can't get anywhere. it's an orange livebox ,btw. Any Ideas?

[AnOther]

Which icon are you referring to, this one in the taskbar ?

[img]http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/windowsxp/images/using/setup/winxp/wireless-network-icon.jpg[/img]

 

[Opifex]

Back on the OP, some years ago I had a Belkin wifi device that said it could be used to extend a wifi network.  Why not try putting the question to Belkin and see what they suggest?  The Belkin website has a contact form.