Working around 3ft thick walls

CR 7

As above, I have a Netopia 2247 router placed almost exactly in the centre of the house downstairs, but it's mounted to a 3ft thick wall. It works perfectly all over the downstairs part, but the upstairs part, behind the wall it's on has a very weak to no signal. There's an Xbox 360 in the part with weakest signal.

Putting the router upstairs isn't an option, but would this: Wireless Lite N Range Extender extend the signal through the upstairs?

I can run a CAT5 cable straight up to above the existing router, will this device then broadcast the signal throughout the upstairs? It'll then be at the other side of the thick stone wall.

I don't really know too much about this type of hardware. Would it cause any bad effects for online gaming?

Victor

Can it be maneuvered is such a way that there is a minimum of mass between device and router?

I imagine any extra equipment would affect your ping. Not so bad with poker, but can kill you in an FPS.

PogMoThoin

Run a cat5 to the xbox and get an electrician to crimp the ends. You cannot get wireless through a wall of that size. For gaming You need the least latency, wired is best. You'd be suprised how easy it is to hide a cat5, bring it outside and back in if need be.

CR 7

Well, I'd considered running the cable, but wireless would be a lot handier. I'd be mostly playing FPS, so it'll have to be wired then.

It'd be about 30ft of cat5, will that matter?

I might end up buying that Netgear 5ghz Wireless N gaming set if it comes up on iBood again soon. That'd cure the ping problems I'd presume?

PogMoThoin

Park Ji Sung wrote: »

Well, I'd considered running the cable, but wireless would be a lot handier. I'd be mostly playing FPS, so it'll have to be wired then.

It'd be about 30ft of cat5, will that matter?

Ethernet will work up to 100m

Park Ji Sung wrote: »

I might end up buying that Netgear 5ghz Wireless N gaming set if it comes up on iBood again soon. That'd cure the ping problems I'd presume?

Would make no difference, 5Ghz has worse penetration than standard 2.4Ghz.

There's a mass structure in the way, run a cable around it, a cable does gigabit which is 10 times faster than wireless n, its a no brainer.

Edit, You can add a wireless device the other end of the cable later

CR 7

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Ethernet will work up to 100m



Would make no difference, 5Ghz has worse penetration than standard 2.4Ghz.

There's a mass structure in the way, run a cable around it, a cable does gigabit which is 10 times faster than wireless n, its a no brainer.

Edit, You can add a wireless device the other end of the cable later

Thanks, I think I have a good long cat5 cable here somewhere, might have a go at running it tomorrow. I've just become accustomed to having the xbox about 15 feet from the router, in unobstructed line-of-sight, and yesterday I moved it to the opposite corner of the house.:p

roast

Another alternative is homeplugs. Depending on the quality of the devices you get, you won't notice your ping times differing anymore than say, 3-10ms.

PogMoThoin

Homeplugs don't always work well, especially in an old wired house. Besides that a cat5 cable does gigabit and is still at least 10x faster. Homeplugs are just about legal, they are very noisy and can interfere with FM radio, the manufacturers of these devices only get them to pass testing by testing a single device, not two with traffic passing.
http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/powerline.html