Help with network range

[chadcf]

I recently moved to a new house and have found it rather difficult to get my wifi network set up. The house is about 90 years old and has a few extensions off the back, generally the wifi signal is adequate everywhere in the original area of the house but cannot reach into the extensions at all. My current router is a Linksys EA2500 which has served me well. To try and fix this, I purchased a Linksys RE1000 range extender. This does get wifi access to the two far rooms but, barely. After playing around with locations at various electric outlets I can at best get reliable but slow internet speeds in the farthest room (for example, the xbox back there has been working on downloading a 400mb game for over an hour).

I'm contemplating 3 different options and trying to figure out how I can do this without blowing any money unnecessarily...

1) Purchase another RE1000 so I can keep the first repeater in a stronger signal area.

2) Purchase a base router with a stronger signal (such as a N66U or EA4500) so that I can get more bandwidth to the repeater.

3) Install DD-WRT on the EA2500 and try to boost the antenna.

I'm tempted to go with Option 2, but that's a significant investment in $$$ and I have no idea if it would actually work.

Open to any other suggestions as well!

 

[stevech]

Your home may have lath and plaster walls. Those are less RF friendly than is drywall.

The usual way to improve two-way coverage is to add Access Points(s) that connect back to the WiFi router via: Cat5 cable; MoCA; HomePlug. Very bad last resort is a WiFi repeater a.k.a. range extender. DD-WRT won't improve the RF coverage despite its misleading power choices; they're just not real for reasons we could elaborate on.

Lots of info on these topics on this forum's prior posts and FAQs on the main pages.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Range Extension

First I will confirm that the power settings on DD-WRT have no detectable effect on signal strength. I have a couple of 54Gs flashed with DD-WRT and changing the transmit power from the lowest the the highest setting doesn' impact the signal I see when I am looking at it using inSSIDER.

If you can't run hard wire connections to where you need to install additional APs you might want to try using Powerline adapters. That is how I have my remote APs tied into my router. Based on the utility that came with the hardware I get a fairly consitent connection of between 40 - 60 MBPs using older first generation equipment. The only interference I get is when someone turns on the garbage disposal.

 

[remixedcat]

Please see my review here http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=8909

on the Amped Wireless SR20000G I did some xbox live testing and it worked very well!!!

 

[chadcf]

I've considered powerline adapters, however the problematic part of the house is in an extension built probably 60+ years after the main house. There is a jumble of wiring in between, and the wiring in that area is totally different (all grounded, compared to ungrounded in the main house area). I suspect whether a signal would travel through the power lines is going to be somewhat of a crapshoot as well...

 

[CaptainSTX]

I've considered powerline adapters, however the problematic part of the house is in an extension built probably 60+ years after the main house. There is a jumble of wiring in between, and the wiring in that area is totally different (all grounded, compared to ungrounded in the main house area). I suspect whether a signal would travel through the power lines is going to be somewhat of a crapshoot as well...

If you can't run Ethernet cables then Powerline is worth a try. Just purchase a pair from a store with a liberal return policy and give it a shot.

As for your electrical wiring at the very least you should buy an inexpensive outlet checker and be sure the hots/ grounds are not reversed on any outlets.

 

[chadcf]

Well I may give it a shot...

Here's my plan so far... I'm going to pick up a Amped Wireless R10000. My E2500 is a bit spotty anyway, so even if that doesn't work towards the back room it should improve my network regardless. If it does manage to serve teh back room, great. If not, I'm hopeful that maybe it will extend the range enough that the RE1000 range extender can work for now (though I realize this is not ideal). Eventually what I should probably do is get powerline adapters and make the E2500 into an access point serving the extension. I believe I could position the access point in the laundry room, which is right next to the 2 extension rooms but is still part of the original house wiring and should have no issues with getting a signal through the powerline.

I suspect with the R10000 as the main router and the E2500 as an access point right next to the extension, that would give me a pretty solid network. I hope...

 

[remixedcat]

The R10000 is a powerful router by itself! I can stream HD vids from 120 some feet away thru 5 walls and outside around 125 ft from the router!

 

[chadcf]

The R10000 is a powerful router by itself! I can stream HD vids from 120 some feet away thru 5 walls and outside around 125 ft from the router!

That's my hope. The E2500 worked fine when I lived in a 1300 square foot half duplex, but now I'm in a 2000+ square foot 5 bedroom house with ancient walls and it's not doing it. I haven't been that happy with the reliability of the E2500 anyway so... On the plus side if the R10000 doesn't cut it then at least the E2500 can be used as an access point, and if it does cut it I can sell the E2500 and RE1000 and pay for it.

 

[remixedcat]

You will love it it was sooo easy to set up.... like 3 steps...

 

[chadcf]

Well, the R10000 is now hooked up and I must report as I kind of suspected, it does not do the job either. It does, however, give significantly stronger signal in all the original parts of the house. It does not, however, penetrate into the extensions.

On the plus side it's does give a strong enough signal right to the extension walls so that I can plug the RE1000 in there and get a solid signal to the rooms in the extension. Whereas before I really couldn't use the RE1000 (as there was not a strong enough signal for it to repeat, anywhere close enough to reach the xbox) now I can get a fairly strong signal back there and get a speedtest result of 7mb down and 2mb up in the farthest room. Previously the best I could get back there, with or without the range extender, was about 0.4mb down.

Now this is not ideal, one problem I have with the RE1000 is that sometimes my laptop will randomly decide to connect to it instead of the main router, even when the extender is well out of range. So, I think, ideally I'll still need to pick up some powerline adapters and see if I can use those to set up the old router as a wireless access point with a different SSID.

 

[remixedcat]

Keep the SSIDs different. Does it penetrate at all into the extensions? even with optimal antenna placement?

 

[stevech]

Well, the R10000 is now hooked up and I must report as I kind of suspected, it does not do the job either. It does, however, give significantly stronger signal in all the original parts of the house. It does not, however, penetrate into the extensions.

Don't overlook this laws-of-physics fact:
A million-watt WiFi device providing 10-bars of signal strength everywhere you want it . . . . will not cure this problem: The users' laptops and handhelds have far less transmitted power.

So you can be fooled by the one-way signal strength observation.

Some good WiFi access points/Routers display the RECEIVED signal strength (from the user devices).

The only real ways to dramatically improve range and coverage are
a) relocate the WiFi access device (AP/router)
b) Increase the access devices' antenna gain by a huge amount, say, 10dBi or more. Not easy to do, and modern routers with MIMO prohibit external antennas
c) Add access point(s) at or near weak signal areas. Connect the AP to the main router's LAN port. Do so with a cat5 cable or HomePlug or MoCA (see forum section).

 

[chadcf]

Don't overlook this laws-of-physics fact:
A million-watt WiFi device providing 10-bars of signal strength everywhere you want it . . . . will not cure this problem: The users' laptops and handhelds have far less transmitted power.

So you can be fooled by the one-way signal strength observation.

Some good WiFi access points/Routers display the RECEIVED signal strength (from the user devices).

Yes, I know this and I'm a bit hampered by the fact that the xbox has a terrible wifi antenna. But, my hope was that the range extender would not have such a crappy antenna and a more powerful router (with a more sensitive receive antenna as well) would be able to talk to the range extender ok, which would give it more bandwith to feed to the xbox. And indeed, that does work.

So basically now, the R10000 has indeed solved my issues, almost. The problem now is that every now and then computers will try to connect to the range extender rather than the router, even when it's practically out of range, since all it does is repeat the signal for the same SSID. Now the only way I can get around that is to replace it with a access point, which would require hoping my 90 year old wiring will transmit a decent signal through power lines...

 

[remixedcat]

are you using 3rd party wifi management software... some have the option for preferred access point...

 

[stevech]

So basically now, the R10000 has indeed solved my issues, almost. The problem now is that every now and then computers will try to connect to the range extender rather than the router

The only solution I know of is to not use a range extender (WDS) but rather use a WiFi Access Point (AP) which can be a re-purposed WiFi router. Set the SSID for this AP to be unique. The you can control which SSID the game device or your handhelds use.