Upgrade to AC or just to add another N access point?

[Brian Hanley]

We have an older house (built in 1931) with thick plaster walls that seem to absorb a lot of our wifi signal. We have an old school linksys WRT54GL next to the cable modem that was providing decent coverage to the first floor, but coverage on the second floor was spotty.

So I set up a wired connection to the 2nd floor (using MoCA over existing coax) and put in an ASUS RT-N12 as a wireless access point for the 2nd floor. It's single-band but has high-gain antennas.

Oddly enough, though, there are parts of the 2nd floor where the signal strength shows up as strong, but my throughput sometimes drops to near zero.

We do have baby monitors that run in the 2.4 GHz band.

Does this sound like a signal penetration issue, a 2.4 GHz interference issue, or both?

To maximize wifi coverage, would it make sense to add another access point on the 2nd floor?
Or would it be better to upgrade the existing access point to dual-band AC?

 

[System Error Message]

sounds like interference. Although 5ghz is better and less crowded with less interference the best thing you can do is place your wifi router in the middle of the house. If you do go for a new access point getting AC wifi is a good idea but you will need to configure all your APs at 2.4 Ghz to work on the same channel.

5Ghz has less range and penetration but better data rates.

You can go for inexpensive APs if you just want an AP or you can get the expensive ones. There are many cheap ones such as tp-link C7 or lower, ASUS AC56U that are quite reliable as a basic AP but the ASUS does do well as a router too and the AC68U/P is the same as the AC56U but with better antennas (supposedly).

You can get better penetration by using a directional antenna but only if you arent distributing wifi all over the place.

 

[thiggins]

Shut off the baby monitors temporarily and see if the problem goes away. Unless the baby monitors are Wi-Fi based, they act as noise generators that interfere with Wi-Fi transmission.

Since you are getting a strong signal it's not a penetration issue.

 

[Brian Hanley]

Thanks guys.

I think I may upgrade to AC just so I have a 5 GHz signal with less interference for the devices that support it. And I will see if I can't find a better spot for the access point.

Just to clarify, though, for the 2.4 GHz band, do I want my router and my AP on the same channel? Or on different non-overlapping channels (1/6/11)?

Right now I have my wireless router (which is 802.11g) and my AP (which is 802.11n) on different channels and different SSIDs. I just assumed the signals would interfere with each other if they were on the same channel, and that it didn't matter whether they had the same SSID or not.

 

[azazel1024]

I would set different channels. You have more of the spectrum available for use then. Use the same SSID for both.