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This is going to be a networking / wireless question, so if you don't know more than I do ('I bent my wookie.') you can probably skip this.
Okay so, by the fine tradition of relatives volunteering other relatives for jobs, I'm tasked with getting a few older PCs in a senior citzen's center on to the internet, presumably so little old ladies can start flamewars and look at lolcats. The center already has a business class internet account from Verizon, so thankfully that step is done and installed. The setup they have now is that there is a wired/wireless DSL router (a Westell Versalink 327W) in the director's room, 3 doors away from a medium sized room full of old (Win98/Win2k era) PCs.
The building itself is a big concrete death bunker designed somewhere around WW2, so the only way to actually run a new cable for a phoneline or network cabling to the room with the PCs would be to get a big honking drill and go through a wall, which is not something I want to do, and especially not something they want me to do. 
Fortunately, the DSL router in the director's room provides a very strong signal to the PC room, so that's probably the most reasonable way of getting the PCs connected. Now the old PCs are well... old and none of them have any innate Wifi capability, though they do all have ethernet cards. As I see it I've probably got 3 main options that I'm aware of:
1) Buy wifi net cards / USB dongles for all the PCs
2) Set up the newest PC with a wifi card/dongle, set up a LAN in that room and have the wifi-equipped PC run window's internet connection sharing.
3) Buy a ________ that'll do the job of the PC in #2.
If they don't expect to use more than say 4 or 5 PCs, what's the best choice for them? Also, what should the name of the doodad in choice #3 be: bridge, router, AP, hub?
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You could get another wireless router and set it to use the first wireless router as it's internet gateway. It's a bit tricky but i've gotten this to work. Then just plug all the pc's into the second router and you should be good to go.
PSN ID: Stric9
Or a wireless access point
If I'd known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself
Wireless access points normally only have one ethernet port. So I think getting a router would work better in this circumstance as with an access point you would still need to get either a switch to hook it into or a wireless card for every computer.
PSN ID: Stric9
Or make sure the ceiling is concrete, too? If not, run a cable up there? Or see if there's a power plug on your side that matches/meets one on the other side and run a cable there?
They're getting electricity to these computers somehow, and to the router in the other room.
It ***might*** be the easy way. I never thought I'd say that about snaking cable through a ceiling/wall, but if it's industrial construction, there are probably industrial conduits somewhere.
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They also make wireless bridges so you can then connect a hub/switch in the room to the PCs and bridge and viola. They know that if they're all surfing or playing WoW at the same time they're going to get some lag right?
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Actually this is probably the best way.
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My first thought exactly
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Once upon a time, two or three years ago, this would have been hard. Fortunately, it has a simple answer these days.
What you need is a wireless access point that will function in 'client bridging mode'. The cheapest and easiest way to do this is with a Linksys WRT54GL. I don't think the stock firmware will do this; I think you need to replace it with DD-WRT (or, possibly, Tomato, but I *know* DD-WRT will work). The stock firmware may even include this function now, as Linksys has incorporated other features from the open source guys, so take a look before replacing it.
What's client bridging? Basically, the Linksys registers with the other access point as a standard device; it looks more or less like any other laptop would. Then, you plug the PCs in the PC room into it, and it automatically bridges them onto the wireless network, so they can get DHCP addresses and so forth from your existing router.
Wireless also offers a native 'bridging' mode, which some access points implement. Everyone uses different names for it, too. Don't get confused and try to use that, because it sucks. In standard wireless bridging, every access point becomes a broadcaster; they all repeat every frame that every other AP sees. So, for every AP you add, your bandwidth drops to 1/X; 2 gives you 1/2, 3 gives you 1/3, and so on. This is good for range extension, but you don't care about that. And it's a giant PITA to set up; you have to configure every AP to know about every other AP. And not all APs will work with each other, when they'll even do this kind of bridging at all.
Client bridging, on the other hand, doesn't give you any extra range, but you get all your bandwidth, and it's really easy to set up, about as difficult as falling off a chair. It's basically what you'd EXPECT from 'a bridge'. The official bridging is stupid and wrong for what most people want to do. It should be called 'range extension', not 'bridging'.
Be sure to use 802.11g with WPA2 encryption. Don't use WEP, as it's easily hacked, and a senior citizen's center will be a tempting target for drivebys, since they'll figure everyone in the center is too ignorant to notice a hacker. (which may, sadly, be true.) If the existing AP doesn't support WPA2 with AES, I strongly suggest replacing it too. You could probably use two 54GLs, one in standard AP mode, and one in client bridge mode.
Note also that the L in 54GL is crucial. The 54G and 54GS don't run Linux, and are much harder to replace the firmware on. The 54GL is more expensive, but has more memory, and is highly hackable. You can usually only find it online.
Completely agree with Malor. I've prattled on before about client bridging with dd-wrt firmware routers and its quite handy. I might add a few points though that I've found in my experience.
On some setups WPA2 won't work and only WPA will so try and start at WPA and see if it works. Only use v23 and not the lastest v24. DCHP is broken in client bridge setup in v24. Personally I use the v23 sp3 21/7/2007 (look under obsolete/beta/v23 sp3) and it hasn't given me issues. Apart from those two little pitfalls as long as you follow the wiki guide is quite simple to setup. Here is a nice HOW-TO if you want
If you have to replace the AP you might look at the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 as an option. I was looking to jump a large gap and I landed on these babies for the answer. They are pretty impressive as an AP because they have an amplifier which really aids in coverage and range. Netgear and Belkin do have model with amplifiers but lack of cost and hackability ruled them out. I was very impressed at the range of these devices what with getting ranges of 300m+. It seems a few on the dd-wrt forum like them as well and I may have a router to replace the WRT54GL as my favourite.
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What Malor said.
Well, I now have nothing useful to add...
Except to say that I don't think Buffalo wireless gear is again an option yet... unless they had that injunction overturned on appeal.
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I got my mother a G125 before the injunction, and it was indeed excellent. It's a pain to replace the firmwares on the Buffalos, though, because they try hard to lock you out. The routers have a hardware 'brick recovery' mode you can get to with a batch script running in Windows, which will load a replacement firmware before the Buffalo code runs and locks you out.
It definitely seemed like the range was significantly improved on that unit over my (very old, before nerf) 54GS. But it sounds like range isn't an issue in this case, and the ease of updating the 54GL (not to mention buying it) is probably the winning choice here.