Advice appreciated to go wireless

Tell the fornicator to go buy a 802.11G router/switch and 80.211G USB client card.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:23:43 -0000, "Jerry and Ce" wrote in :

If there are multiple wills involved, consider powerline (mains) networking of a wired router instead, which does a better job of going through multiple walls; e.g., NETGEAR XE102G (kit of two adapters).

John Navas hath wroth:

Agreed. Going through more than 1 wall can be a problem, especially if there is aluminium foil backed insulation inside the walls. That's what got me today, when I installed a new 2-wire modem/router/wireless box. The house was divided roughly into thirds, each seperated by a wall full of aluminium foil. With the wireless access point at one end of the house, I would get 54Mbits/sec in the same room,

11Mbits/sec in the adjacent rooms, and 1 or 2 Mbits/sec or nothing at the other end of the house. I'll be back tomorrow to install power line networking as this wireless installation isn't going to work.

Power Line networking:

Also, phone line networking:

Also, CATV coax sharing:

(sorta, maybe)

Incidentally, Netgear has some products newer than the XE102G. See:

I might try them to see how they work.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:29:28 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I've found them to work well, but they are considerably more expensive than the older XE102G, and overkill for typical home users.

Thanks for your help so far. Walls are plasterboard with no foil, so would this

the job? Do I need anything else with it? Is it 'plug and play' because I'm really not a PC expert. Jerry

Is there any reason to believe that the slightly-pre-N wireless stuff would overcome the wall problem?

Also, for what it's worth, my Buffalo HP G router does regular stud/wallboard walls (no foil) pretty well. The laptop just has a regular G card. I suppose it would do even better with an HP card.

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:57:45 -0500, Peabody wrote in :

Possibly. Likewise high-gain antenna(s). But the only real way to tell is to actually try it.

One, sure, but this thread is "other side of the house", which I take to be multiple walls.

Probably, because you have a HP router.

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 09:31:26 -0000, "Jerry and Ce" wrote in :

That (piss poor) web page doesn't provide much information, but it looks to be the Buffalo WBMR-KG54

Buffalo is good gear, about as easy as it gets, but USB dongles have crappy antennas, and you may need a better antenna given distance and walls. Higher power at _both_ ends might help.

Also, I generally recommend against combo products (ADSL modem + wireless router) because of inflexibility -- better to use a regular wireless router with your existing ADSL modem.

So instead I'd recommend:

• WHR-HP-G54 high-power wireless router

• WLI-TX4-G54HP high-power wireless Ethernet converter [client bridge]

(connects to remote PC by means of Ethernet network port)

Only go with the kit you found if it's readily returnable.

Well, in fact, to get to my back porch, I go through five walls, one of which is mostly windows. But it's only about

60 feet LOS, which may help. I haven't used it much there during cold weather, but haven't noticed any slowdown. I get three bars there, out of five, whatever that may mean.

All I'm saying is that the Buffalo HP stuff, with that bit of extra power, might be good enough to work in a marginal situation where standard-power gear would not. And it's about the same price. I've been happy with my router, still using the stock firmware. My only complaint is that it doesn't always handle WAN lease renewal well.

Peabody hath wroth:

Your problem, my problem, or the original posters wall problem? Each one is different, depending on what's in the walls. I'll answer in reference to my problem. Please advise if this is not what you meant.

Methinks not. Real MIMO technology (i.e. Airgo) is great for reducing the detrimental effects of multipath and reflections. These become more signifigant as the signal is reduced. MIMO and other technologies has to have a signal to work with and a shielded aluminium foil wall is fairly impervious to 2.4GHz. The only signal going through the walls was through two doorways, both at right angle to primary coverage areas. RF does not like to turn corners. I could have done it with leaky coax and multiple access points, but those cost more than just running the CAT5 wires. The power line networking solution is going to be a temporary until the owner can determine where to locate the CAT5 ethernet end points.

While crawling under the house, I did find that the owner had run CATV coax to all the rooms, but not installed wall outlets, apparently to allow the option to locate the cable jack as needed. I may use the coax to run 10base2 (Cheapernet) at 10mbits/sec, or some method of coax sharing. Dunno yet.

A repeater at the junction of each of the 2 shield walls is another option. It might work, but I suspect performance through 2ea repeaters might be a bit flakey. I asked the owner for priorities and was told that uptime and reliability was paramount. Never mind convenience. I interpreted that to mean run CAT5 if necessary.

Incidentally, the house was custom built with fire control in mind. The 3 sections of the house are isolated by heavily insulated firewalls with metal cores in all the connecting doors. Were a fire to start in one part of the house, it would be largely confined or delayed in that part long enough for the sprinkler system to do its job. Such construction is not very common in commodity housing, but very popular in upscale custom houses.

There is a sort of basement and an attic where I could have tried locating the wireless router. The problem is that both the floor and ceiling also have foil backed fiberglass insulation. Bummer.

I've installed several Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless routers and had great results with coverage in conventional (no foil in the walls) type of houses. There was one story I related, where I had to punch a hole in the foil insulation and string an antenna on the other side of a wall seperating the house from the garage. Local construction codes require a fire retarding wall (i.e. insulated) between the houe and a connecting garage. In general, I don't use the stock antennas.

"Jerry and Ce" hath wroth:

How many walls? Plasterboard (gypsum wallboard?) has a measureable attenuation. There also seems to be a plague of foil backed fancy wallpaper that I keep running into. Realistically, the only way you're going to know is to try it. Whatever you buy, make sure it's returnable.

I've never seen that particular unit and have no opinion. However, I do like Johns recommendations of hardware. You'll also need a seperate DSL modem.

Nothing in wireless is plug and play or this newsgroup wouldn't be necessary. There's a certain amount of configuration that needs to be done. Buffalo has AOSS for automatic setup for the SSID and encryption key. That will save having to do exactly to configuration steps, both of which are described in excruciating detail in the documentation. If you approach this systematically, you should have no trouble. Some hints:

1. Setup the DSL first. Plug your computer directly into the DSL modem with a CAT5 ethernet cable and get it activated, running, and tested.
2. Plug in the router. No wireless yet. Use a CAT5 ethernet cable. if you have to drag your computer over to the router, do it. Setup the router WAN connections per your ISP's instructions. Once you can browse the internet, setup the wireless in the router: SSID (system name) Enable WPA-PSK encryption Set a messy >20 characters pass phrase. Set a router password.
3. Last, configure the wireless client radio to the same SSID, encryption, etc.
4. Test for performance to make sure it's work. Move the PC over to its designated location on the other end of the houes and try it.

tHANKS FOR THE ADVICE jOHN AND jEFF. tHIS IS STARTING TO SOUND MUCH MORE THAN MY LEVEL OF COMPETENCE CAN DEAL WITH. May have to get someone else to do it. I was hoping to substitute the router for my ADSL modem and plug the USB thing into second PC and away we go. Oh well......

Thanks again, Jerry