Help: Best Method to Extend A Home Wireless Network

[znfdl]

Recently we moved our youngest son to a basement bedroom which has a cement wall between him and the wireless router. Needless to say he is getting poor reception from the Verizon N based router.

He will be doing some beta testing for a Kickstarter financed / developed on-line game and needs better reception. I really do not want to tear up a wall to run him an Ethernet cable, what do you guys suggest to overcome this situation?

Thanks.

[Brandon White]

I've used this for over 2 years with only requiring a few reboots. There is a newer model now. I have a horizontal coverage problem. This goes in the the middle with a decent directional line of sight to my wireless router.

Amazon.com: Diamond Multimedia 300Mbps 802.11n Wireless Range Extender - WR300N (Old Version): Electronics

Edit: by decent line of sight, I mean there is only a wall (with a circuit breaker) and wood cabinet the range passes through to get to the extender.

[znfdl]

That might work, as I can have a direct line of site with only a wood floor to go through to the basement.

[SteveP]

what about a 2nd router?
we have 2 in my house ( fios) for some undetermined by me reason but it works well.

[davids]

Kitchen table.

[sonnybiker]

second router, antenna, or move the existing router.

[quickag]

check if the airport express can be used as an extender. There's a whole bunch of arguments about apple products, but the airport series is truly top notch. plus it makes an awesome travel router.

[j44ke]

Go with a Powerline adapter. That's the best thing I know to get through a cement wall. Plug one into the wall (has to go into a wall plug, not a UPS) near your cable modem/router and connect it to the moden/router with ethernet. Then take the other one to his room, plug it into an outlet and connect it either to a wireless router or to his computer by ethernet. If you connect the Powerline adapter to a wireless router, set up the router as a separate network from the house WIFI network, but give router in the bedroom the same name and password. That way his computer will hop over to it once he leaves the rest of the house and enters his secure bunker bedroom.

We use these Powerline adapters. They work very well. Pick your data and port speed.

[spopepro]

I'd be careful about the power line option. For online games bandwidth isn't as much as an issue as latency. I'm not sure the adapters can keep up. Also, if you have any audio equipment with linear power supplies you *might* get buzz. Different people report different results.

I'd suggest another router/extender ap to extend the network and look into antennas. A directional antenna in the right spot might do the trick. Buy local at a place with a generous return policy. You won't know if any option works without trying it in situ.

[Too Tall]

FWIIW I just switched to Apple Time Capsule which is just a Airport Extreme with a hard drive and that suk'r lite the place up. It is a really powerful wireless router. I'm getting full power even in parts of the house where I could not get wireless before.

[spopepro]

oh, and this is dumb and probably doesn't matter, but just in case...

Walls + a electronics dense house/neighborhood can be a bad combination. Wifi is nominally either on the 2.4 or 5GHz band. In my house, the 2.4 is nearly unusable--every device, its brother, sister and long lost relatives is on the 2.4 band (phones, bluetooth, wireless keyboards & mice, some microwaves, etc...) and I'm in a dense urban area. The 5 is pretty clear... but the higher the frequency the worse it penetrates solid objects. So if your airspace is both noisy and you are trying to go through multiple walls... it's probably not going to happen.

[j44ke]

Recently we moved our youngest son to a basement bedroom which has a cement wall between him and the wireless router. Needless to say he is getting poor reception from the Verizon N based router.

He will be doing some beta testing for a Kickstarter financed / developed on-line game and needs better reception. I really do not want to tear up a wall to run him an Ethernet cable, what do you guys suggest to overcome this situation?

Thanks.

If none of the above work, tell the Kicksters to get him a line of his own. What, he's supposed to work for free?

[maunahaole]

Going onto the 5ghz is worth a try. I did it here and it helped with some problems. However, you may need to change to 5 ghz wireless nic in all your devices. Some have already, so check.

[Noteddy]

Another endorsement for considering replacing/extending with the Airport Extreme. I have one of these which worked fine to cover the other end of the house and basement, but was fiddly to set up. When I replaced my base wireless with the Airport Extreme, I was able to kick the Hawking to the curb. And the set up could not possibly be simpler.

[znfdl]

I figured out a way to run an Ethernet cable without tearing up a wall. I just need to run a 100ft cable.

[ThomasRZ]

You could try running an ethernet cable through ductwork, if you have ductwork that is. Look for plenum-rated cable.

Running Ethernet thru the house duct system - Ars Technica OpenForum might help illuminate the issue.

[David Tollefson]

Okay, so we got one of these that was suggested in the first reply on this thread. It works okay, but it seems like it cancels out the original signal from the router as far as our smartphones are concerned (Droids). It registers a full-strength wireless network, but the icon remains white instead of turning blue (the indication of working 'net signal). Any ideas why this might be happening?

[AJPM44]

Recently we moved our youngest son to a basement bedroom

I'm more interested in how to accomplish this...

[EricKeller]

I hate myself for this because I consider my networking skills to be adequate. However, I got tired of wireless and went with power line networking. I got one of THESE You hook an ethernet cable to your router, plug it in, preferably somewhere away from a computer. Then you plug in the other device, preferably not near a computer. And then run an ethernet cable to the device(s) you want to hook up to the internet.

I was previously using a similar setup from Netgear, and it sucked. It always seemed like it would go out 5 minutes after I started using my computer. I have read about firmware problems. Dunno, the devices are in a box.

[znfdl]

I'm more interested in how to accomplish this...

We asked him if he wanted a larger more private bedroom, he said yes and we moved him.