What's the best router or extender to penetrate concrete exterior walls?

[Soylent]

I've got two Ring doorbell cameras on the exterior of my house, which has concrete block walls. I have an old Asus N66U in the center of the house, and I put a small Netgear extender as close as possible to the front door. Even with the extender, the signal is still unreliable.

Both Rings are streaming 1080p video over a single 802.11n extender. I'm looking for a better solution, any suggestions?

Edit: The Ring devices only support 2.4ghz

 

[thiggins]

There is no good solution for getting WiFi through concrete or other stone. Which NETGEAR Extender are you using? It should be at least 2x2 (N300).

Are you sure the Ring is connecting to the extender and not the ASUS? Is the signal level good, but connection is flaky?

 

[Trip]

Along the line of Tim's point, make sure your endpoints (the cameras) are connecting to the intended edge AP, and in turn, your edge AP is properly connecting back to the base AP. Assuming that is true, I would try re-working your radio layout to move your broadcast blanket closer to the place you're having trouble with. That will allow you to use lower-power signals and have higher throughput with less errant signal.

If relocation isn't possible, would it be possible to somehow add a wired connection for your remote AP through ethernet (first choice), MoCa (second choice) or powerline (typically last choice)? If so, you could hopefully move the edge AP closer to the concrete as well and even forgo wifi repeating altogether, which would give much better backhaul bandwidth, lower latency and a freedom from any of the myriad of LAN issues than can be created from generic repeating.

If you can't alter your wired infrastructure or relocate radios, then a swap for a better class of radio and more radios is your next and probably last option. The most simple first attempt is via a bigger/stronger all-in-one to serve as your base AP (R7800, AC-86U, etc.), seeing if its signal alone may be enough. If not, then an AP or all-in-one with dual 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios would be desirable as your extender. If AP link distance is long, you might want to use 2.4Ghz for that, then 5Ghz for your endpoint connections, or vice-versa, depending on what performs better.

 

[Soylent]

There is no good solution for getting WiFi through concrete or other stone. Which NETGEAR Extender are you using? It should be at least 2x2 (N300).

Are you sure the Ring is connecting to the extender and not the ASUS? Is the signal level good, but connection is flaky?

It's the N300, (the wall plug with two antennas). I created a different SSID for the extender, so I could force the Ring onto it.

So the connection speed seems good enough to stream live 1080p, and it stays connected while streaming. But when idle, it frequently drops out and can't reconnect unless I restart either the Ring or the extender. There's also a long delay before it even pulls up the video stream.

 

[thiggins]

It's the N300, (the wall plug with two antennas). I created a different SSID for the extender, so I could force the Ring onto it.

So the connection speed seems good enough to stream live 1080p, and it stays connected while streaming. But when idle, it frequently drops out and can't reconnect unless I restart either the Ring or the extender. There's also a long delay before it even pulls up the video stream.

Ah, well that's an entirely different problem. I suspect the extender is dropping the connection due to some power saving feature.

Can you keep Live view open for a few hours as an experiment to see if the connection drops?

 

[Marica Calma]

Try using powerlines to act as giant ethernet cables. Just get generic or super routers and link it via powerline adaptors. You can use one router to connect to the internet and the rest be switches which are basically USB hubs.

 

[degrub]

do the Ring cameras work fine if they are inside the house eg. no dropping offline ?
or do they also drop the connection after a while ?

 

[itchyscratchy]

Good suggestions in this thread. Genie GUI...

Manual

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/EX2700/EX2700_UM_EN.pdf

...might have what you are looking for. Make sure your firmware is up to date. If you have an iPhone or android mobile, there’s apps to gauge signal strength to all SSIDs within it’s earshot around the home and your possibly noisy neighbors (won’t detect your 2.4GHz microwave, the destroyer of wireless b/g/n). Hopefully Tim can set you straight. You might need to switch to a different channel (1,6,11).

Trip and others brought up some cool alternatives to wireless via MoCA and poweline adapters, if that’s acceptable or compatible with you and your equipment.