ISO:: Multifloor house wireless advice

[mkopel]

Our home is tall and thin. Including the basement, the house has 5 floors. My internet connection comes in at the basement and my router is located there. There is gigabit ethernet to floors 1 (living room),2 (bedroom), and 4(bedrooms). All the gear in the house is Apple (iphones, ipad, macbook air laptops (3)), the router is an apple airport extreme.

What is the best way to cover the house in wifi coverage? Can anyone point me to a good article for a networking newbie like myself to figure out the best configuration of the router and possible access points? How many repeaters (is that the right terminology?) should I use for the house? One per floor? Do they need to be hardwired for best results? What about 2.4Ghz vs. 5Ghz, is there an advantage to one over the other for my situation?

thanks for any and all advice. I have decent coverage right now, but I am sure it could be much better.

 

[chadster766]

Our home is tall and thin. Including the basement, the house has 5 floors. My internet connection comes in at the basement and my router is located there. There is gigabit ethernet to floors 1 (living room),2 (bedroom), and 4(bedrooms). All the gear in the house is Apple (iphones, ipad, macbook air laptops (3)), the router is an apple airport extreme.

What is the best way to cover the house in wifi coverage? Can anyone point me to a good article for a networking newbie like myself to figure out the best configuration of the router and possible access points? How many repeaters (is that the right terminology?) should I use for the house? One per floor? Do they need to be hardwired for best results? What about 2.4Ghz vs. 5Ghz, is there an advantage to one over the other for my situation?

thanks for any and all advice. I have decent coverage right now, but I am sure it could be much better.

Place Apple Access Points on floors 2 and 4.

 

[azazel1024]

Just use access points or routers in access point mode and I'd probably do to, located as Chadster recommended.

I'd play with the orientation of the router/AP. Generally they are designed so that when they are in the "correct" positioning that the emissions patern from their antennas radiate out like a donut with weak coverage above and below, but very strong coverage straight out to the sides. The longer the antenna the more compressed the donut becomes, but the stronger the signal gain in the same plane as the antennas.

Since it is tall and thin, you can probably tip the router/AP/antennas on their sides so that the pattern would like like a donut standing up on its side if you could actually see it with the pattern pointing so that the donut covers front to back of the house and above and below really well, but poorly side to side in the house (since its thin, it doesn't matter much).