I did not have a chance to get up to the mountain today. Mary is in Boston visiting with her parents, so I won the breakfast shift this morning. By the time I was done, I received a "present" from UPS that I had purchased from Amazon.com the night before.... A Linksys WRE54G Wireless Network Range Expander.

Guests at Birch Ridge have had wireless access to the internet for about a year. The system was originally built with a 802.11b (caution...geek speak) wireless access point connected to our internal ethernet network. Coverage in the building was spotty. Most guests accessed the network from either in the Great Room, or in the Sitting Room, as the access point was located at the Front Desk. With the new computer at the front desk, we have upgraded the network to 802.11g.

In testing the network, I found vast dead zones in coverage in the building containing rooms 5 thru 10. After some investigation, I decided to procure a Wireless Range Extender to increase network coverage. Most of my day today has been spent running network tests to determine the optimum place to install the Range Extender. After about 4 hours of testing, it is now in and working for guests to use during their stay with us.