There was a great article over at ComputerWorld about making sure that you get the most from your wireless setup. Besides just being able to get reception in that far bedroom, isn’t it also nice to know you have knowledge that you can utilize in your workplace?
Most of the stuff is rather straightforward and perhaps evident to you already: but this article puts it all in one place, and shows you some ways to improve your recieption that you may not have thought of (such as Flatwire!).
If you go ahead and enhance your wireless signal range, you’ll have to deal with the possibility that nefarious people don’t find your network and go for a ride at your expense. Rob Flickenger has a short piece on the O’Reilly Network about how easy it is to break into a wireless network that isn’t properly secured. George Ou wrote over at ZDNet clear back in 2005 about the Six Dumbest Ways to Secure a Wireless LAN – and followed it up two years later with Wireless LAN Security Myths that Won’t Die. He also collected some of the best wireless LAN security articles into a free ebook called the Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Wireless LAN Security.
It may have been now three (almost four!) years since that article George wrote came out, but I still hear some of these myths even today.
UNIX Administratosphere 
Unfortunately, some very high level certifications and even the PCI credit card security standard mandates some of these bad security schemes like suppressed SSID beacons. Not only is that worthless in terms of security, but it also puts you at greater risk because all of your clients are forced to probe.
When the Access Point beacon is on, the clients don’t have to probe. When the AP beacon is forced off, the clients are forced to probe with the SSID which is announcing to the world you’re trying to connect to a certain AP. Since it’s impossible to hide a wireless infrastructure, shutting off AP beacons is useless. But forcing the clients to go all over the world blasting out the SSID in the client probes is just plain reckless!