Wireless @ Home (Big House)

Mickah

Trying to set up wireless at home in my parents place. All running grand, got the broadband in, no bother hooked straight into the wireless network.

Running:

Access Point:
SMC Barricade Wireless G 54 Mbps 802.11g, 4-port switch.

Wireless adaptor
SMC EZ Connect Wireless G Cardbus 54Mbps 802.11g in the laptop.

I've attached a rough layout of the house(bungalow). The walls are pretty thick (about a foot) with extra insulation in all. I want to be able to access the network from the kitchen. But as you can see the Access Point is a fair bit away with roughly 7/8 walls in the way.

In the kitchen, the SMC card scans the network and comes back with a 60/70% signal. I select that network and connect, the strength is 25/30% as is the quality. But I can't connect to a machine or ping.

I've had a look around the internet and found a few options:

1: Hook up a omni-directional or one-way direcitonal aerial to the router.
2: move the router to the centre of the house (only optional if it's in the attic).
3: buy a 2nd router and hook them up via a CAT5 (through attic).
4: HomePlug powerline capabilities, sends LAN traffice through the AC wiring? Just read about this.

If I am going to spend money on more gear I'd like the range to extend to most areas of the house.

I'm still investigating all of these, just wondering if anyone had any comments or advice or a new option?

Cheers

zAbbo

What i would do is, set the AP where you want it, being more central is prefarable but not necessary.

1) You want to connect the client to the AP, dont worry about the DSL just yet. Set the access point to operate on channel 1, test full range in the house using the laptop, next change the AP to channel 2, again test with laptop, repeat through the 13 channels, until you find the optimal channel. If you cant get one you might want to look at any possible interference.

****** You can Use Netsumbler for scanning the channels/signal strength- http://www.netstumbler.com/download.php?op=getit&lid=24 ******

2) Assuming you have the client connecting to the AP, which i think uses an IP of 192.168.2.1, allow DHCP on the AP(use a pool of say .100-.199) disregard the WAN port for the AP for the moment. Set the gateway on the AP to 192.168.2.2(BB modem)

3) Login to BB modem, and switch the IP to 192.168.2.2

4) Any computers connecting to either the LAN ports or the WLAN, will be able to see each other

**notes
Client machines must be on the same network range to initially configure the AP/MODEM

After that configuration you can set them to DHCP clients as they will receive the IP from the AP, and the gateway address of the DSL

---

Thats basically how i have mine setup, and it works a charm, there is possibly an easier way of doing it but hey

Mickah

Any ideas on hooking two wireless routers together via Cat5 or over wireless baz?

I'm pretty sure the signal won't be strong enough to reach from the AP to the kitchen.

zAbbo

Thats the same AP as mine, you can change the settings to allow longer range(under wlan sub heading) might improve its distance, check all the channels tho, what is the distance from AP to the kitchen??

Hooking 2 APs together, would require you to set them up in bridging mode, not sure if the AP is capable of it.

Id enable the longer distance thing as well as nitro, basically mess around with the settings, and a laptop and netstumbler

Mickah

through 7/8 1 foot thick walls around 25/30 meters

hostyle

Why don't you move the AP to a more central location - perfect place would look like the green dot.

<edit>
Sorry, I thought that perhaps you had missed that part of his post, as you didn't get back to it.

Also forgot to mention, though its probably obvious, that you should always remember that wireless access is better directly through walls rather than diagonally through them. Most people realise that, but some do miss it
</edit>

Mickah

hostyle I'm gonna do that tonight. Move the router around test channels like bazh said.

The problem is the broadband comes in at where the AP is at the moment (red dot). If I am gonna move the AP I'm probably going to have to place it in the attic and run some cat5 up there. Which means drilling holes in the ceiling (not good).

I'm gonna test the Wireless router in the attic tonight see if it improves the signal.

Rew

Does the broadband have its own router? if get a Wireless/Eternet Media Converter (eg Linksys WET11) and use that to bridge the gap. You can also use 2 AP's that have WDS to bridge the gap. Either option will cause a preformance hit on the network

Jaden

Faced with such a problem once, I put the AP in the attic, as high up as I could. The most it had to go through was 2 ceilings.

Might Wanna try it.

Mickah

Right, at parents place now. I've put the wireless router on my kitchen side of the house in the attic. Great coverage over that side.

The router I have is a 4 port switch, was reading about a Syslink equivalent to my SMC and how you can daisy chain them with a CAT5. Just make one the master and the other the slave (disable DHCP and make the default gateway point to the master). Sound about right?

The other thing is; when I do a Site survey from the laptop, it says the signal is 67%. Even though I'm over the other side of the house!?!?

When I look at link information it WON'T ping the router unless the Link Quality and Signal Strength is above 50%. The Tx rate is typically 10-18Mbps at this level with a throughput Rx: 2 Tx: 201.

Is that right? I would have thought I should still be able to connect at a signal around 30-50%?????

It's operating in Infrastructure mode btw.

Thanks for all the help...

Stephen

Try setting it all to run at 802.11b/11mbit only, see if that makes a difference to the range you can get.

iano

One other thing is to not give up immediately. When the path is not clear, you can get some pockets of coverage/non-coverage.

In the furthest room from my AP, I get perfect reception (90%+) in one spot and none (<10%) only 6-8 inches away!

This would not be acceptable for a commercial hot-spot application but for a domestic situation, you learn to live with it.

Also try a couple of different channels, you might have some local interference on one channel and be fine on another.

Remember that if you are connecting to 512kbps or 1meg broadband, then you do not need to get a 54mbps connection to the AP. As Stephen says, drop back to 11b mode and see if coverage improves.