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Using my "thick" kitchen wall as giant reflector

Summary - WRT54GS router in the back half of house. WAP54G access point running in repeater mode for front half of house. In between is a "thick" kitchen wall that causes 10's of dB of signal loss.

After banging my head against the wall, something got knocked loose and I remembered there is a layer of really awful-looking foil wallpaper underneath the drywall.

The solution is to run a cable past the kitchen wall and run the WAP in access point mode.

Google Groups link -

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If I locate the WAP next to the kitchen wall, the foil wallpaper will act like a giant 8ft x 8 ft flat reflector. Is this a good or bad thing?

Lance

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Reply to
Lance
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Probably the most practical thing to do is to run a tempory wire through the house to test the setup and see how it actually works.

Reply to
Si Ballenger

Yep. Nice shield room.

Hopefully, it was something from the wall that came loose, not your head.

Good and bad depending on location. The foil will reflect signals, but there's little control over where they end up. If you're lucky and have a eliptical, circular, or parabolic kitchen, all the signal will bounce towards the access point. However, a flat plate reflector isn't so convenient. A signal might bounce off the wall, but who knows where it will go. Probably not towards the access point. In addition, if you have two paths to the access point (one direct and one via a bounce) you could easily have the two signals cancel, interfere, or otherwise make things work. Should you get clever and move the access point back and forth until you find the point of reinforcement, that will only facilitate communications to one specific location, and not the entire house.

May I humbly suggest you bash the hole in the wall, run a 2nd access point, and be done with the problem.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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