That bridge actually has a built in directional antenna and requires you have two of them pointing at each other in Line-of-site. I'm sure its 10 miles with two identical ridges and 2 mile without one of these and another I'm sure has something to do with antenna theory and the like. Also, with those 10 miles you will NOT be getting 54Mbps. If you ever notice, when you use your laptop around in different parts of your house it'll say Excellent or Good or Low or whatever for the connection. If you look closer you'll see that at excellent your at 11Mbps (this is on 802.11b, but it holds true for all of them), good will say 8Mbps or so, Low is 2-4Mbps and so on. We have a wireless bridge set up in at least three sites at work and this is jsut how it is. One thing that 3com info says that holds true is that it'll be faster than a T1. T1 = ~1.5 Mbps. You have to have a pretty bad connection with 802.11b to get those speeds. I hope this info helps.

 

Also, companies piss me off sometimes with they way they describe the way a product works.

 

Unless they put some insane boosting db antenna on the roof or wherever I doubt it.

I'm on wireless using my neighbors connection. But he's the next house over. Using my d-link di-624 with a 7db gain antenna just for good measure.

 

There are plenty of WiFi transmitters/receivers that will reach much farther than you'd imagine. Several miles in fact. HAMs are now beginning to tap into that spectrum and local clubs, in conjunction with emergency operations in cities throughout North America, are installing devices that work to cover a huge area. I was amazed when I found out about this.

You wife may very well be able to receive the signals, but will she be able to transmit back to the access point? She may need to upgrade to a more powerful card herself in order to get two-way communications.

I had a link to a site that sold a PCMCIA WiFi card that could output at 3W, but can place my mouse on it at this moment.