wireless network in multiple buildings

We have not this on this scale. I would recommend Cisco hardware, what we have appear to be alright. We use Central Networks for cabling (www.cnt.co.uk).

HTH
Fred

Yip agreed CISCO are the guys to choose.
What your saying is the you have two buildings with good LOS, what you need is to bridge those two buildings together using a wireless (preferably 802.11a) hardware.
At that distance, distance is not an issue, 802.11a wireless hardware will give you 54mbps instead of the 12mbps that 802.11b hardware will give you.
Different manufacturers will have different utilities that come with the hardware so look around and ask many, many questions.
The APs canbe either indoor with antenna diversity, meaning you can stick an antenna onto it and still keep the AP inside away from the elements, or have fixed antenna).
DSSS or FHSS systems, DSSS will give you greater throughput but doesn't give you the extra "security" or protection from narrowband interference due to the channel diversity that FHSS systems give you.
Both APs at both building that will be forming the bridging link may very well be wired straight to a switch or router or can act AP forthe clients to wirelessly connect to.
I hope you are aware of the security issues with wireless, I would advise watch the gain to reduce the size of the Fresnel Zone in order to reduce the area of listening by outside sources ie hackers.
Also whattype of security does the AP have, will it use WEP 64/128 bit, because the wireless beacons are sent in the clear WEP is actually not secure at all, firewalls in place at the AP, maybe MAC filters also, and since you are mounting an antenna outside look for a good reusable lightning arrestor and make sure the impedance value of al connector are the same ie 50olms.

Hope this is of use.

After re reading your question it now looks like you actually have 16 seperate buildings.
If this is the case then instead of directional antenntas would maybe omnidirectional be better, if this is the case then you will be looking at a hub and spoke network topology, again watch the wireless Fresenl Zone, don't worry about the chance of possibly not having elec outlets, your client must have money to spend thereferor you may want to buy a PoE and wireless gateway devices.
All other security issuse as with the two building senario still stand.

Again hope this helps

In Larry Birenbaum (Vice President and General Manager of the Ethernet Access Group) words: “From Cisco's viewpoint, the Wireless Internet is a logical extension of how we use the Internet on a wired network. Wired networks aren't going away, but wireless solutions get us closer to the reality of "anytime, anywhere" access to the Internet or corporate intranets”. In the same note Birenbaum says: “ …. (802.11x) provide the benefits of traditional wired LANs without wires-- allowing users to access networks without being tethered by network cables. This enables a wide range of handheld devices, like PDAs, to be connected”.

If you need to deploy a corporate LAN spread over a 16 building campus, and with 24 offices per building, wireless technologies are just a “Techie-game” and not a professional solution. Please don’t let the vendors design your network and your company’s business future based on new trends that offer poor performance, less availability and limited scalability.

Jose P. Mir
jpm@jpmir.net

Wireless, at this moment, is intended, primarily, for mobile use and not for enterprise campus backbone. In some other office applications could be useful, but unless you company expect to have very little traffic, the 11 or even 54 Mbps is nothing!
Remember that almost every corporate user has today a 100 Mbps bandwidth, usually in switched environments. Most downlinks to servers are 1 Gbps. And the industry is already next to the 10 Gbps Ethernet. Do you really think that 54 Mbps are a serious alternative? Of course you will be able to use multiple links, but this increases cost and complexity (lowering MTBF and rising MTTR).
I’m sure that if you analyze deeply the different possibilities you will find professional ones.

Regards,

Jose P. Mir
jpm@jpmir.net