wireless repeater

gooner99

Hi.I Have an Eircom Netopia modem.I have a garden office.The router is placed in the window of my house directed at the garden office and I can get a 4-5 bars wireless signal around the window area of my garden office.But when I move the laptop to the back room of the office,then the signal drops to 2 bars.I have been looking a various options,but I think that a wireless repeater may be the best option.

Do you think that this is my best option to boost the signal in the back room of my office?

If it is,can you guys suggest a model that would work well with the netopia modem?

open to all suggestions

Thanks.

mehmeh12

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi.I Have an Eircom Netopia modem.I have a garden office.The router is placed in the window of my house directed at the garden office and I can get a 4-5 bars wireless signal around the window area of my garden office.But when I move the laptop to the back room of the office,then the signal drops to 2 bars.I have been looking a various options,but I think that a wireless repeater may be the best option.

Do you think that this is my best option to boost the signal in the back room of my office?

If it is,can you guys suggest a model that would work well with the netopia modem?

open to all suggestions


Thanks.

Have you set the wireless signal to maximum transmitter signal strength?

2 bars you say-whats between the house window and your office window in the garden?

gooner99

Not 100% sure how to set the max wireless signal.Do I do this on the Netopia modem or on my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop and how would I go about it.

The window of my office is at about a 45 degree angle to the one in my house,but there is nothing between them.The wall between the front room (room with window) and back room of my office is standard 4" solid block.

any ideas?

thanks

Sponge Bob

2 bars should be 12 megabits or so on a 54 megabit connection , what is the problem ???

gooner99

2 bars is still workable,but of course i would like to get 4 or 5

Sponge Bob

but if your broadband is 3mbits you get no gain surely ??

MunsterCycling

Maybe they have told her indoors that its an office but it really is a Den and he wants to stream all his movies etc there?

gooner99

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Maybe they have told her indoors that its an office but it really is a Den and he wants to stream all his movies etc there?

How did you guess,haha.

Seriously,I am not up on this,but I thought that if I had 4-5 bar signal that I would have better and more reliable speeds than 2 bars,or am I wrong on that.The work I do involves downloading customer designs and engineering them for manufacture and uploading them again.The download files being quite a bit larger then the upload due to different formats.I find that I seem to get a faster download/upload speeds when I have 4 or 5 bars.Does that make sense?

Sponge Bob

It does. What is wrong with running a Cat 5 cable by any chance ??

gooner99

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It does. What is wrong with running a Cat 5 cable by any chance ??

Didn't really think it was feasable to run cat5 from my house to the office at the end of the garden!

MunsterCycling

Limit in real terms for this is 90m.

MC

gooner99

Thanks for all the replies so far,but I am still at odds as to what to do.

So what are my best options to wirelessly boost my signal in the back room of my garden office?

Just to recap.

1. Netopia 2247 Router in house,located in window.

2. Garden Office window located at 45 degrees to the house window probably 60-80 feet away.

3. Wireless signal at the window in the front room of the garden office with my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop is 4-5 bars.

4. Wireless signal in the back room of garden office is only 2 bars.One 4" wall between the front room and back room.Distance from front room window to back room is approx 10 foot.But I guess when I am not dirrectly at the front window,the signal has to come through the outside cavity wall and then through the dividing wall.

Is my best option to place a wireless repeater in the window of the garden office,which should possibly catch a good signal from the Netopia router and then transmit on a strong signal to the back room of the home office.Am I right on this?

If so can someone recommend a repeater(s) that works well with the Netopia 2247 router. If not can anyone recommend another wireless solution(s).

Many thanks.

gooner99

gooner99 wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies so far,but I am still at odds as to what to do.

So what are my best options to wirelessly boost my signal in the back room of my garden office?

Just to recap.

1. Netopia 2247 Router in house,located in window.

2. Garden Office window located at 45 degrees to the house window probably 60-80 feet away.

3. Wireless signal at the window in the front room of the garden office with my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop is 4-5 bars.

4. Wireless signal in the back room of garden office is only 2 bars.One 4" wall between the front room and back room.Distance from front room window to back room is approx 10 foot.But I guess when I am not dirrectly at the front window,the signal has to come through the outside cavity wall and then through the dividing wall.

Is my best option to place a wireless repeater in the window of the garden office,which should possibly catch a good signal from the Netopia router and then transmit on a strong signal to the back room of the home office.Am I right on this?

If so can someone recommend a repeater(s) that works well with the Netopia 2247 router. If not can anyone recommend another wireless solution(s).Maybe a wifi adaptor for the laptop or new ariel for the router may work?

Many thanks.

Was thinking of the following solutions.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-Wireless-Universal-Range-Extender/dp/B000IE8STS/ref=dp_cp_ob_ce_title_0

http://cgi.ebay.ie/HIGH-GAIN-EXTENDED-RANGE-WIRELESS-WIFI-ADAPTER-DONGLE_W0QQitemZ350187117691QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_Networking_SM?hash=item5188c75c7b

http://cgi.ebay.ie/5x-Range-WiFi-Extender-Antenna-For-Wireless-Lan-Card_W0QQitemZ350267024366QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_3?hash=item518d8aa3ee


Also added a picture of my setup

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nv1bmqd2lzd/wifi.gif

Sponge Bob

1 Belkin is crap
2 You will interfere with everybody elses wireless in the area

gooner99

Sponge Bob wrote: »

1 Belkin is crap
2 You will interfere with everybody elses wireless in the area

Nearest house is 100 foot away.Which option will interfere with others,all?

pizzahead77

Have you considered using powerline ethernet adapters such as these

http://www.dlink.co.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Product_C&childpagename=DLinkEurope-GB%2FDLProductCarousel&cid=1197375406664&p=1197318962342&packedargs=ParentPageID%3D1197318962321%26TopLevelPageProduct%3DConsumer%26locale%3D1195806691854%26packedargs%3DProductParentID%253D1197376488476&pagename=DLinkEurope-GB%2FDLWrapper


There are cheaper ones out there. I have 4 of them running in my house and they are great

gooner99

pizzahead77 wrote: »

Have you considered using powerline ethernet adapters such as these

http://www.dlink.co.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Product_C&childpagename=DLinkEurope-GB%2FDLProductCarousel&cid=1197375406664&p=1197318962342&packedargs=ParentPageID%3D1197318962321%26TopLevelPageProduct%3DConsumer%26locale%3D1195806691854%26packedargs%3DProductParentID%253D1197376488476&pagename=DLinkEurope-GB%2FDLWrapper


There are cheaper ones out there. I have 4 of them running in my house and they are great

Thanks. Only problem is that the office is on a completly different supply to the house.

Wireless is my prefered solution at the moment.anyone?

Some_Person

I'm not familiar with Netopia modems but if the antennas are removeable you could replace one with a higher gain directional antenna and aim it at the office.

Or use a Ubiquiti Nanostation2 Loco which is directional, simple, weatherproof and inexpensive. It would act as a bridge.

BarryM

gooner99 wrote: »

Thanks. Only problem is that the office is on a completly different supply to the house.

Wireless is my prefered solution at the moment.anyone?

Before going powerline read this -

http://www.techtir.ie/forums/showthread.php?p=2814#post2814

FWIW, I think Sponge Bob is right, you won't get much improvement on a 3Mb (nominal) link; your not getting anything like 3Mb anyway....The external aerial, if you wan't to go ahead, is probably the best/cheapest solution.

gooner99

Some_Person wrote: »

I'm not familiar with Netopia modems but if the antennas are removeable you could replace one with a higher gain directional antenna and aim it at the office.

Or use a Ubiquiti Nanostation2 Loco which is directional, simple, weatherproof and inexpensive. It would act as a bridge.

That looks like a inexpensive solution with a long range.Does it need to be mounted outside, or could it be placed in the window of my house?

Some_Person

It's indoor/outdoor, use it wherever needed. You can use a Window Mount for easy mounting.

gooner99

The Nanostation loco 2 seems like a good solution then.Looking at the spec for it,it seems to have a long range,which I take it is somewhat omnidirectional?
In that case would I need to introduce security over and above the standard wep or wpa that is on the router?

The netropia router has 2 antennas.So would a good option be to replace both with higher gain aerials as was mentioned earlier in this thread.If so anyone have good results with a particular antenna on a netopia 2247?

Thanks for all the help so far.

Some_Person

The Loco2 is directional but you'd still get a signal from it when behind it etc.
For best security use WPA2 and MAC filtering.