Extending my wifi - options?

Black_Knight

Hi all.

My Problem
Ive recently got UPCs Horizon package, which has stupidly put everything in one, and has a terrible wifi signal. So much so, that in our reasonably sized apartment, with the UPC box fairly central, I cannot get any signal in the bedroom (all of maybe 20 feet away, through 2 stud walls).

My poor solution
I have a simple edimax AP that I set up as a repeater, but it either isnt close enough to the UPC signal to get decent speed off it, or isnt close enough to the room to get a decent signal off the repeater.

I do however have a pair of Belkin powerline 1Gbps power socket to LAN yokes, which I use to connect a PC to our network. Works brilliant, 120MB off UPC, 120MB over the powerline adapter. Ive recently hooked this up to the Edimax AP I have, and configured it to be an AP which works pretty well. About 15MB from speedtest on my phone in the room. Im happy with that.
This is what I have: http://cdn.cnet.com.au/story_media/339296912/belkinpowerline_1.jpg

My proposal/questions
Ive narrowed down a few options, but shout if im missing one.
1. Buy another Belkin Powerline adapter:
They used to come in ones, but seem to only find the 1Gbps ones in pairs now. About €60 off ebay. Is this a bit pricey considering what I get out of it.
2. Buy a different powerline adapter and hope that it works with my belkin ones. Not sure how compatible they are. Anyone?
3. Buy a better wireless repeater that will pick up the signal and boost it better. What kind of money are these? Any recommendations?

Any other ideas on ways to boost the range of my wifi signal?

shanec1928

a cheap 5 port switch on the side where your pc is and cut out the need for another set of power plugs?

ED E

Your powerline adapters arent the problem here for one. If you're getting 120Mb throughput on them thats all you need and is quite good.

Limiting factor is wireless throughput. You're in an apartment block, pretty much the WORST place possible for wifi. Most wifi APs work on 2.4Ghz, as does bluetooth and a load of other things. This means apartments tend to have total saturation of those frequencies. The horizon box is useless in a detached home, so it fails horribly as youve seen in your place. The edimax is a little better, so you get some throughput but not enough.

What will solve this *somewhat* is going to the 5Ghz space. Its got less penetration/range, but theres far less going on in those frequencies so until everyone else cops on to it you'll get much better speeds. If you buy a 5Ghz AP you should get 50-70Mbps real world traffic on a decent device. Without going to the expensive 802.11AC and upgrading all your devices you wont get to 120 over wireless, tech isnt that far along just yet. 50Mb should be plenty for whatever a roaming client needs.

Also, repeaters degrade everything, dont bother with them.

Black_Knight

shanec1928 wrote: »

a cheap 5 port switch on the side where your pc is and cut out the need for another set of power plugs?

PC is the far side of the apartment to the bedroom. Not gonna work.

Black_Knight

ED E wrote: »

Your powerline adapters arent the problem here for one. If you're getting 120Mb throughput on them thats all you need and is quite good.

Limiting factor is wireless throughput. You're in an apartment block, pretty much the WORST place possible for wifi. Most wifi APs work on 2.4Ghz, as does bluetooth and a load of other things. This means apartments tend to have total saturation of those frequencies. The horizon box is useless in a detached home, so it fails horribly as youve seen in your place. The edimax is a little better, so you get some throughput but not enough.

What will solve this *somewhat* is going to the 5Ghz space. Its got less penetration/range, but theres far less going on in those frequencies so until everyone else cops on to it you'll get much better speeds. If you buy a 5Ghz AP you should get 50-70Mbps real world traffic on a decent device. Without going to the expensive 802.11AC and upgrading all your devices you wont get to 120 over wireless, tech isnt that far along just yet. 50Mb should be plenty for whatever a roaming client needs.

Also, repeaters degrade everything, dont bother with them.

So a 5Ghz router connected directly to the back of my UPC box? If I get 0-1 bars of signal in the room currently, what's to say a 5Ghz router would give me a stronger signal?

Ive checked around the house using some wifi app to see what channels the surrounding wireless systems are on and moved away from those. No change.

ED E

Black_Knight wrote: »

So a 5Ghz router connected directly to the back of my UPC box? If I get 0-1 bars of signal in the room currently, what's to say a 5Ghz router would give me a stronger signal?

Ive checked around the house using some wifi app to see what channels the surrounding wireless systems are on and moved away from those. No change.

Changing channels on 2.4 wont really help. There are 13(11) channels available but the bands overlap so CH2 degrades CH1 and CH3, CH3 degrades CH2&4 and so on, so in apartment space all frequencies are covered. Even if you cant see SSIDs on each frequency performance wont be great.

You can connect the 5Ghz AP either to the horizon unit or to the homeplug in the other room. Itll get the full 120 either way. Pick whichever location will be closest to most devices.

Without going out and doing a site survery nobody can guarantee 5Ghz will increase your throughput in the other room, but its very likely. None of your neighbours likely use that band so interference will go from very high levels to very low levels. Additionally 5Ghz channels dont overlap, so even if somebody close does use it, you can co-exist just fine.

BTW those bars dont mean a huge amount. RSSI is a very rough estimate. Go on what actual speed you get.

Black_Knight

ED E wrote: »

BTW those bars dont mean a huge amount. RSSI is a very rough estimate. Go on what actual speed you get.

Oh I know. Wasnt there an update to ios some time ago that changed what defined full bars, meaning that your phone show'd full bars more often.

Speeds I was getting were terrible though. Massive pings, timeouts, 1MB/sec.

Any recommendations on a 5Ghz router? Ideally not spending over the €60 the powerline solution would cost.

ED E

My own post for another thread has some options
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=90202761&postcount=34

Alun

ED E wrote: »

If you buy a 5Ghz AP you should get 50-70Mbps real world traffic on a decent device.

I actually get around 100-120 Mbit/s (avge. 12.5 MByte/s on file transfers) on 5GHz between my TP-Link router and my HTPC using a TP-Link USB WiFi adapter. It's probably about 10m away with an internal wall in between.

However out in the back of the house in the conservatory, with the same adapter, I barely get a usable signal.

Going back to the 2.4GHz band, one of the problems is that many people leave their routers wireless channel setting on AUTO, and worse than that, switch them on and off at night, at least they appear to do around me. This means that any particular router's AP jumps from channel to channel from one day to the next, making any attempt to nail down a relatively free channel almost impossible.

Also as far as I know, it's better to share one of the 3 non-overlapping channels (1,6,11) with other weaker AP's in your area than to try and slot in between on say 3 or 9. The AUTO function on most routers doesn't seem to honour this unfortunately.

motownman

This might be slightly off topic but i got an e-mail from UPC today recommending this:

http://www.theconnectedsolution.com/2014/#!/~/product/id=30635719

I do have an issue with Wifi range in my house. Does anybody have any experience/expertise regarding these?

Thanks is advance.

ED E

The OP uses em already.

1. Thats expensive, go with amazon instead.
2. If your house has two fuseboxes(granny flat, outside office) it wont work across them
3. Not all houses suit powerlines, if theres a lot of ground noise they perform poorly, only way to know is to try them though.

That all said, when they work they're great. A family member has a 3 story narrow home, with a UPC modem on the floor on the ground floor and a desktop PC with a poweruser on the 3rd floor. Old generation powerlines give them a good 70Mb throughput up to the top, destroying the few megs wifi provides up there.

motownman

ED E wrote: »

The OP uses em already.

1. Thats expensive, go with amazon instead.
2. If your house has two fuseboxes(granny flat, outside office) it wont work across them
3. Not all houses suit powerlines, if theres a lot of ground noise they perform poorly, only way to know is to try them though.

That all said, when they work they're great. A family member has a 3 story narrow home, with a UPC modem on the floor on the ground floor and a desktop PC with a poweruser on the 3rd floor. Old generation powerlines give them a good 70Mb throughput up to the top, destroying the few megs wifi provides up there.

Thanks for that. I will give it a go via Amazon

bk

I just bought a new wireless router today and my experience might help some people.

I bought a TP-Link Archer C7 wireless router:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-AC1750-Wireless-Gigabit-1300Mbps/dp/B00CEB53MS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400016089&sr=8-1&keywords=archer+c7

It is an 802.11ac model, but I didn't buy it for ac, I don't currently have an AC devices!! I bought it as it's reviews show that it has some of the fastest 802.11n speeds of any router on the market, while it is about the same price or slightly cheaper then other top brand N only routers. So the AC is the cherry on top for when I do eventually get some AC devices.

I have the router plugged into my UPC Thomson router with 120mb/s UPC. The router is in my living room against an external wall.

And boy have I been blown away by this router!

I'm getting 200mb/s on 5GHz in the same room!! and in the bedroom two rooms away, the furthest distance from the router, I'm still getting 60 to 70mb/s !!

Super performance.