Advice for Wifi island

[arduus]

Hello folks,

I'm hoping someone could provide me some advice for my home network. Unfortunately, wired networks are not an option for me since I live in a rental property. Most of my wired devices are in my office, approximately 12 meters from where my internet comes into my home. Currently, I have a (Netgear WNDR3700 v2) running OpenWRT in the office serving the home office. The WNDR3700 is connected wirelessly via 5Ghz to a (Ubiquiti NanoStation loco M5) for uplink to the internet. This is all working pretty well, and the NanoStation is providing sufficient speeds through the interior walls.

Across my home, another 50' through more internal walls is where my media room is. I would like to be able to stream HD video from my office PC to the TV. In addition, this is a poor quality wifi zone. The 2.4Ghz from the WNDR3700 can be seen, but has very poor connections from this side of my home. I'm looking for a solution to get a 1) fairly high-speed connection to the office (5Ghz point-to-point bridge?) and 2) serve up wifi over 2.4GHz for phones/iPads/etc on this "island".

I like the idea of the UniFi or similar access points for this purpose (e.g. UAP-PRO, UAP-AC), but I'm concerned that I can only use the wireless uplink to another UniFi device. Since I'm running OpenWRT on the WNDR3700, potentially I could create a second client bridge to the AP in the media area.

Anyone have suggestions or experience in similar wifi scenarios? Thanks in advance.

 

[sinshiva]

well, it sounds like a wireless solution may not be the best route for you to take, and 5ghz even less so than 2.4ghz.

if you still want to try, you might want to look into some kind of directional antennas; ubiquiti can probably help you out, there.

otherwise, it might be worth finding a local retailer that sells some kind of powerline ethernet solution with a good return policy. if you have coaxial cables in the walls that run over there, that would also be worth testing.

is your house made of stone, etc? i know the building material quality over there is a whole different ballgame than in the US

 

[arduus]

There's nowhere to route the cables here, so wired is regretfully not an option. Potentially, I could buy another NanoStation loco M5. But then I would also have to purchase another wifi router. Building material is fairly normal construction. I could try my Loco M5 as a point-to-point and see if I got the necessary bandwidth or not.

Thanks though.

 

[RogerSC]

How fast of a connection do you need? Powerline networking or MoCA might work to be able to use a wireless/wired access point (AP) in your media room. You might check into those to see if either of them meets your requirements. The hardware for both of those are reviewed on this site, and there is also a user forum here for powerline networking and MoCA concerns.

 

[stevech]

Right... in lieu of cat5 to media room (really should have that), either

PowerLine IP (HomePlug, et al)

MoCA (IP over existing TV coax). I use this to get LAN to TV and Blueray where I can't get cat5 due to odd construction of town home.

MoCA is much more reliable once setup.

There's a section in this forum on those two technologies.

 

[jlake]

I would try powerline (homeplug) first. If it doesn't work for your situation, then take it back and go with plan B.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...best-way-to-get-whole-house-wireless-coverage

 

[remixedcat]

On homeplug I get 8Mbytes/sec average transfer speed. but its very stable

 

[arduus]

I tried HomePlug in the past (Trendnet TPL-401E's), and the connection was inconsistent and I ended up unplugging them at least once a day to resynch. Very annoying.

I hadn't considered MoCA -- very cool technology. Unfortunately, I don't have COAX at both endpoints to make the connection.

I did some testing tonight, and moved the Ubiquiti Loco M5 (direction 5GHz AP) over to the media room. I got fairly good results when elevated high on the wall. It was sufficient to watch most of the movies I intend to stream without issue. A small delay at points issue streaming the full 1080p "Big Buck Bunny" digital short (where the bit rate got very high).

Based on the results of my testing, I'm planning to likely order a NanoStation (non-loco) M5 to be used as a wireless bridge, and connect that to a UniFi LR to extend the 2GHz coverage over into the dead space.

Will do some final testing tomorrow -- I need to make sure I can create two client connections on the same radio in OpenWRT. Will post how this all turns out. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[sfx2000]

Across my home, another 50' through more internal walls is where my media room is. I would like to be able to stream HD video from my office PC to the TV. In addition, this is a poor quality wifi zone. The 2.4Ghz from the WNDR3700 can be seen, but has very poor connections from this side of my home. I'm looking for a solution to get a 1) fairly high-speed connection to the office (5Ghz point-to-point bridge?) and 2) serve up wifi over 2.4GHz for phones/iPads/etc on this "island".

(snip)

Anyone have suggestions or experience in similar wifi scenarios? Thanks in advance.

Move your media room perhaps - can't fight the laws of basic physics...

Consider not using OpenWRT/DD-WRT - and go back to the factory releases - just saying... open source/hackability doesn't mean better wireless...

Also, consider moving your access point a few feet, you'd be surprised at the effects of this - it's rician/rayleigh fading, and it can be a 3 dB difference at the other end...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rician_fading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_fading

sfx

 

[stevech]

I tried HomePlug in the past (Trendnet TPL-401E's), and the connection was inconsistent and I ended up unplugging them at least once a day to resynch. Very annoying.

I hadn't considered MoCA -- very cool technology. Unfortunately, I don't have COAX at both endpoints to make the connection.

I did some testing tonight, and moved the Ubiquiti Loco M5 (direction 5GHz AP) over to the media room. I got fairly good results when elevated high on the wall. It was sufficient to watch most of the movies I intend to stream without issue. A small delay at points issue streaming the full 1080p "Big Buck Bunny" digital short (where the bit rate got very high).

Based on the results of my testing, I'm planning to likely order a NanoStation (non-loco) M5 to be used as a wireless bridge, and connect that to a UniFi LR to extend the 2GHz coverage over into the dead space.

Will do some final testing tomorrow -- I need to make sure I can create two client connections on the same radio in OpenWRT. Will post how this all turns out. Thanks for the suggestions!

Media room needs cat5 or IP on power line or MoCA. WiFi will always be a disappointment - mid-movie..