Wireless on Linux and on your network

Waring. There are a number of things that can screw up your wireless domination plans. First, wireless, or rather 802.11b specifically, operates within the 2.4GHz spectrum. Guess what else likes that space? Microwaves, cordless phones, and other 11b equipment outside your control. That's right, all three can add noise into your chunk of the spectrum. If you have any 2.4GHz cordless phones, they may interfere with your setup even when they're in their cradles. (I have an 800MHz cordless, so I'm off the hook.) There are other physical barriers as well, like copper piping in your house and even large mirrors in unfortunate locations.

I am first starting to setup a large wireless gateway. I have my office upstairs using 192.168.1.1 network.

I have a Linux box in the garage with two wifi texas cards inside these are your basic 15db acx111 cards, my understanding is that they are not that powerfull. On these I have one with the standard antenna and one with a yagi 18db antenna. I am using these for test purpose (strenght etc). I have a compaq wifi router in the office which is quite old but very reliable and a msi wifi card with bluetooth in my office computer.

First things first is that I am OK with Fedora which I have found is difficult with wifi cards, don't get me wrong it sees the cards but doesn't auto install the drivers. Suse is much better for wifi but I am not happy with other parts so back to fedora we go.

After 24hours I found the Texas acx111 drivers, firmware etc and installed it, also found a how to rebuild the kernel to suit. Kernel stuff scares me a little. I will find the link and add it later.

All well and Fedora shows the wifi cards, jobs a good one.

Right I wanted to get down to discovering every wifi router on the planet, first of all my work router at the business address 2km away from my garage. No chance at the moment. I think it's a power thing.
I thought well lets see if I can just discover routers locally and if I rotate the Yagi will it improve the strenght etc. Using 'iwlist scan' I could locate about seven devices on the Yagi and about 4 on the normal antenna card, but on the Yagi one one have good strenght and quality and on the normal card all had about the same. Basically the garage indoors is not very good for detection and in the loft space would give better reach and quality.

For quick testing I have a 'Safecom' harddrive enclosure that has linux built in with wifi, very nice piece of kit, so I attached the yagi to this and attached a long piece of cat5 and chucks away. I will update once I get the results. I am also looking to use amplification, many boosters are on the market in the US but the UK has a 100db restriction.