Re: N vs G Range with G devices

Steve,

Thank you very, very much for the detailed information.

I do have the 7db omni antennae on the WAP54G. In addition, I have the
do-it-yourself "WindSurfer" parabolic reflectors on the antennae. I
have done some very limited testing and am pretty convinced that the
reflectors offer a small, but real, improvement.

The reason the WAP is on the second floor is that the only wired room
on the first floor is the awful (for signal) built-on-a-slab room.
It's just not a good place for the WAP. (The outside porch to which I
want to get signal is just outside that room.)

I have set something up that now gets very good signal to the porch.

I resurrected the Linksys Range Expander and placed it on the first
floor, at the opposite end of the wired-room-with-no-signal. It is
behaving well and getting great signal to the laptops.

In the first floor room next to the porch, I added a Netgear wireless
router configured as a repeater of the Linksys WAP54G. It's giving me
great signal on the porch.

But ... I'm more the "tweak it until it's as good as possible" rather
than "don't fix what ain't broken" kind of guy. And I don't mind
spending a few more dollars.

So ... would I be better off using the WRT54GL in place of both the
WAP54G and the Netgear? Or replace the Netgear with another WAP54G
configured as a repeater (since they'd both then be Linksys)?

I don't need the extra ethernet ports of a router in any location. Is
a router configured as a WAP better than a dedicated WAP? It seems
counter-intuitive to me.

Finally ... it seems the best configuration given the constraints of
my house are ... the WAP in a middle room on the second floor, a
repeater/range expander at one end of the first floor, and a repeater
at the other end of the first floor (in the "dead" room). Which
device(s) do you recommend for the 3 locations? Three WRT54GL's, one
configured as a WAP and the others as repeaters?

Thanks a million.



On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:13:36 -0700 (PDT), seaweedsl
<seaweedsteve@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 18, 7:25 pm, Bill <opchi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks very much for the help.

I have an older, brick, plaster-walled house. There are two stories
and a finished basement. I have a Linksys BEFSR81 router in a room on
the second floor into which the Comcast cable comes and my main
desktop PC lives. This room is wired to 2 bedrooms on the second
floor, one room on the first floor, and the main living area in the
basement. In one of the bedrooms on the second floor, I have a Linksys
WAP54G with the 7dB antennae. I put the WAP in a bedroom because the
room with the cable has a ton of electronics. The room on the first
floor has not been good for the WAP because it's built on a concrete
slab and really is apart from the rest of the house. That room has the
family computer, wired to the BEFSR81.

I have 2 daughters in college who use their laptops when they are home
for breaks and the summer. They work in a room on the first floor that
gets good, but not great, signal. I'd like to get better signal in
that room.

On the first floor, just below the WAP, I have a TiVo and a music
device (SquuezeBox) that essentially plays music from the internet. I
don't use it to connect to a music server in the house. I also have an
iPod Touch and a cellphone with wifi that I like to roam with. We have
an outside porch and I get no signal there. In addition to better
signal for the kids' laptops, I'd love to be able to get signal on the
porch.

I have tried the Linksys range expander. It worked well for signal to
the laptops (but not the outside porch), but kept disconnecting from
the WAP. I kept having to reset it.

OK. That's great that you have ethernet everywhere already. I'm not
totally clear on the setup, but close enough, I think, to offer
suggestions and comments:

First, consider the 7dbi omni antenna on your existing WAP. It
radiates in a disc for 360 around the antenna. Because it's 7 dbi,
it's actually a narrower disc than the doughnut shape of a stock 2dbi
omni.
So, ff you have it pointed up (normal) on the second floor,then
anything above or below it is in the dead zone. Or weak zone.
Tilting it down so that the side of it points to your most distant
area (porch) may help. Putting a reflector on it should help even
more:

http://users.picknowl.com.au/~gloaming_agnet/ant2.html
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

Try it with your old stock antenna as well as the 7 dbi one to see
which works better with the reflector.

But I wonder if upstairs is where you want the WAP. Is there any
client upstairs that connects wirelessly? If not, more it downstairs
and you can even try a reflector there towards the porch. Anything
in the room with the AP will probably work no matter what you do with
the antenna pointing, so you are looking for improving the most
distant point that needs to connect to the router.

If this doesn't work or you need to keep that WAP upstairs for some
reason or another, add on another inexpensive wireless G Access Point
or router to your ethernet in a strategic location downstairs - closer
to the porch. Because you have brick construction, it's going to have
to be pretty close to the porch to work, but you'll see. Play around a
bit. The reflector may allow you to place it a little further if you
point towards the porch.

Location in the room is important. Higher is often better for distance
to other rooms, as there are less things in the way.

I mentioned getting a wireless router because it can also act as an AP
and has the advantage of acting as a switch and allowing you to
connect 3 more items to the back, thus multiplying one ethernet
cable. The ethernet from your main router connects to one of the LAN
ports, not the WAN on the additional router-as-AP.

To find a decent router, just go to Newegg.com and start with the
cheapest until you find one with good ratings by a lot of people. Or
just get a Linksys since you already are familiar with the interface.
The WRT54GL (L important) has several advantages over the plain
WRT54G, so get that if you are willing to pay $60. http://tinyurl.com/3q8e3u

Come back with setup questions or whatever else here.

Steve
.

Relevant Pages

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