[KLUG Members] Minimum req. signal strength.

[Adam Tauno Williams]

I started the signal strength meter on my GNOME panel and was checking
the singal strength around my house...

So I'm curious what people find to be the minimal signal strength to
have a reliable connection,  and at what signal strength throughput
starts to noticably drop off.

Six inches from the WAP is about 96%

The upper floor is 67-86%

The lower floor is 68-76%

The very back corner of my yard in the tool shed is ~50%, the sidewalk
is ~75%, the sidewalk on the other side of the street is ~65%.

I've studied for the HAM radio test (never got around to actually taking
it) so I'm not really surprised that signal strength doesn't seem to
have a direct and strong correlation to distance,  but it is going
further than I expected (I'm going to walk the whole block when I get a
chance).

I haven't tried moving it around yet to see how location effect it. 
Will taking the time to mount it way up in the attic actually throw the
signal that much further? (About 15ft higher that it is now).

I intend to run this open to the Internet with a VPN server between the
WAP/firewall segment and my own home LAN. (floppyfw has a nice little
DHCP server).