Wireless suggestions for a big house?

Hello.

I need some suggestions/consultations on settuping wireless for a big one floor (but on a giant slope hill as if it had two floors) house. About 88 feet seems to be the longest distance from a small room with the new cable modem. This is based on Google Maps' aerial shot with its ruler:

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side/east is a huge hill with trees; green pin is where the cable modem is).

Building Information: Ground Level Entry (No Steps) Stucco Exterior Concrete Tile Roof Cathedral-Vaulted Ceilings Full copper plumbing

3,900 feet Built in 1986 16 rooms (4 bedrooms and bathrooms) Split-level and contemporary style

Just for kicks, I tried an old 15" MacBook Pro and a Linksys WR54GL wireless router (both were from late 2008) in it. Here are the wireless results:

Kitchen's tables next to windows = 2-5 bars

Downstair/Lower Elevation Family/Living Room: Couches and table = 1-2 bars ; laggy when ssh to an outside server; a few packet losses to router. Behind the bar counter = 0 to 2 bars

Room Near Kitchen and Garage = 3-4 bars

Garage = 4 bars

All other rooms look good/high.

So it looks like they will need a network cable/repeater/something to the downstair area if using an old Linksys WRT54GL router. However, the folks did not want network cables in the walls, attic, etc. so it would have to be wireless, coax cables (over the air (OTA) and cable services are already using them though), or power cables (already crowded on the outlets with strips).

Are there any strong/better wireless routers that can reach farther and be stable/stronger? If not, then which wireless routers can do it? It would be nice to have third party firmware options like Linksys WRT54GL routers. Also, fast speed like gigabits for fast local file transfers between computers in the big house if possible. 100mb/sec is slow these days!

Thank you in advance. :)

Reply to
Ant
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On 8/26/2012 12:14 AM PT, Ant typed: ...

Here are two previous owners' photographs/photos. of the downstair family/living/den room, with its bar, with the weak wireless:

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(facing the direction where wireless router is; note the kitchen on top left)
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Reply to
Ant

3900 sq ft and 15 rooms? That's 244 sq ft per room average which is not much bigger an a king size bed plus walk space. The place must have lots of tiny rooms or is setup as a dormitory. Note that closets, utility rooms, and enclosed stairwells, are not considered rooms.

Looks like there's a crawl space about the kitchen for duct work. Put an access point up there. With a split level design, you should also have some utility space in the upstairs floor and/or downstairs ceiling. Put an access point in there unless you have aluminum foil back insulation crammed into the space.

Not too horrible. Two bars on the MacBook Pro is too low to be usable.

Yeah, I notice that there was only one outlet per wall, nothing near the fireplace, and no power in the open beam ceiling. The signal levels look like there's nothing conductive or absorptive in the walls. Looks like a cheap spec job.

How is the communications utility wiring? Anything available for a HomePNA or HomePlug backhaul to an additional access point?

Yep. The MIMO based routers are better for dealing with reflections and usually have a little more range at the same speed as a conventional router. However, I don't think it's worth the effort. If you put the main router in a corner of the house, and spend some time playing with various directional antennas, you can dramatically improve the signal in the desired direction (at the expense of coverage behind, above, and below the pattern). Sector antennas with lots of gain in the horizontal plane, and very little in the vertical are ideal.

It won't do anything for downstairs, but I think you'll need a 2nd AP downstairs anyway.

Do what? Cover the area? That's mostly a function of the antenna, not the router. Even a piece of junk with a decent antenna will be better than the WRT54GL.

Pick a router, any router:

These days, it's difficult to find a router with an external antenna connector. That's because they do MIMO, which requires a multitude of antennas, which are usually internal. So, your choice is an external antenna or MIMO. I would take the external antenna.

Get real. How often do you think they're going to do file transfers between in house devices? If they do that, have them find a handy gigabit ethernet switch and plug in with a CAT5 cable. No way are you going to see anything like gigabit wire speeds even under ideal conditions. Consider yourself lucky if you get 25Mbits/sec thruput, which is the maximum for 802.11g and a 54Mbit/sec association. If you believe the 802.11ac hype, you can theoretically come close to gigabit, but you won't have much range. I don't have numbers yet, but with MIMO, I get about 30ft before it drops down to 802.11g speeds.

If speed is your major consideration, then you'll probably need one access point per room or area. You should also go to 5.7GHz to avoid mutual interference.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On 8/26/2012 1:05 PM PT, Jeff Liebermann typed: ...

Ah crap. I meant six rooms. Dang typos! I typed them out from a hardcopy. :O

Really? It was OK to me. Not great.

:(

Um, do you mean phone lines? I know the previous owners had a very slow DSL and multiple land lines with Verizon.

Well, the router wasn't in a corner but almost center on the east side of the house as shown in my doctored

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aerial shot.

And crap, I forgot to try tilting Linksys WRT54GL router's antenna(s/e) during my yesterday's tests. I had them perfectly vertical. I should have tried at angles and horizontal. :(

Aww, I was thinking of getting a NETGEAR Wireless Router - AC 1750 Dual Band Gigabit (R6300) to see if it was any better than an old Linksys WRT54GL router. Is this even considered MIMO based? Hmm, can I add something to an old Linksys WRT54GL antenna then to improve signals? If so, then what?

Ah.

Ah OK.

Thanks. I already told them not to expect fast speeds in the farthest areas.

Reply to
Ant

I mean anything that can be used as a backhaul between the upstairs and downstairs radios. That means phone lines for HomePNA, CATV coax for MoCA, and power lines for HomePlug. Ideal would be a conduit suitable for running CAT5 or fiber.

That's 802.11ac. Are all your clients 802.11ac compatible? Are they even running 5.7GHz? If you're on 2.4GHz, then 802.11ac is a waste of money.

Yep. It's 802.11ac which is MIMO. Lots of speed but little range. If you're trying to solve a range problem, this isn't the answer. A better external antenna will have a bigger effect. However, you'll still need a downstairs access point. A better antenna will simply borrow signal from unused directions and put it where you want. I won't deal with the downstairs problem even if you tilt the antenna.

Reflector. The exact shape varies depending on what you're trying to cover. With what looks like a 120 degree beamwidth to cover the house, I would use just a flat plate reflector (aluminum foil) taped to the wall behind the router antenna. Also see:

Try a simple test. Lock the mode to 802.11ac or whatever high speed mode is available or pick a fixed speed in the wireless router. Start a big download to a laptop and start walking away from the AP until it craps out. You can also use ping. My guess(tm) is you might make it out of the room but not much further. You can definitely lock the mode to 802.11g and 54Mbits/sec and run the same range test. My guess is about 30-40 ft maximum.

Range, speed, or reliability. Pick any two.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Ah. However, they don't want to add more cables inside the house's walls. So, it will have to be current internal wiring/cables like coax (used for over the air (OTA) and cable services), phone landlines, and power.

Currently no, but we should think about future upgrades/replacements like new computers (e.g., laptops/notebooks), wireless devices, etc. that will have ac and whatever latest current technologies. Even the current "N" will be good to have for the future.

Little range as less than a Linksys WRT54GL's range? :(

So something like a radar dish. Can I just use a regular flexible aluminum foil to do this or does it have to be specially designed? I assume these will work with all wifi antenna(s/e) like an old Linksys WRT54GL and a new NETGEAR Wireless Router - AC 1750 Dual Band Gigabit (R6300) [if my client gets one]).

Thanks.

Range and reliability now. :P

Reply to
Ant

Not cables. Just one cable to go between the main wireless router and the 2nd access point downstairs.

It's difficult to predict, but yes, the range will go down upstairs if you move more RF into the downstairs direction.

It varies. With a single antenna, it's fairly easy to build a reflector. With the multitude of antennas needed for MIMO, it's not so simple. The reflector can be almost any size, but the minimum is usually twice the length of the rubber ducky antenna. I really don't know how a MIMO router will respond to a reflector. The antennas are internal to the wireless router and distributed around the PC board. With beam forming as a key feature, my guess is that it will do some strange and unexpected things. Basically, the reflector is more suitable for single and double antenna systems, not MIMO.

Yes.

No or at least probably not.

Then go with a commodity router, with an external antenna connector, and a real antenna (sector or panel). 8dBi 2.4GHz panel antennas are cheap. You can plug it into your WRT54GL and run some easy tests.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I have a friend who is nuts about wire. They have a lot of Macs, and Macs are just shit on wifi. He has personally snaked CAT5e to all the rooms. You can share an outlet box with the phone. Of course, in the future, we will probably all have SIP phones at home. They stream audio and video around the house. Netflix and from their own media server. Wire is just so much better for that task.

I think wired LAN is a good investment. The reality is PCs are cheap enough that homes have multiple computers, and wired always kicks ass. IPTV will be the norm in a decade.

I suggest following the Jeff Lieberman rule of having outlets on either side of the doorway so cables never have to cross a doorway.

I'm not sure I'd trust large file transfers over wireless. Don't all the routers insist firmware updates are done via wire? Only cellular seems comfortable with OTA updates, probably due to significant ECC.

Reply to
miso

They still don't want that. I even suggested going through the air ducts (also won't work since they are not connected to that area). :(

Ah.

OK.

Hmmm, I was thinking of buying a new NETGEAR Wireless Router - AC 1750 Dual Band Gigabit (R6300) but it doesn't seem to have any external antenna(s/e) like the old wireless Linksys routers to use with reflectors. DOH!

That Netgear wireless router doesn't have any external antenna ports from its photo(graph)s.

Really? I didn't see any external antenna port holes on mine. Where? Or are you referring to the two antenna(s/e) that have to be removed for stronger ones?

Are these sector and panel antenna(s/e) small like

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and
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?

Reply to
Ant

It's hard to understand how a person can object to something they can't see. Do they understand that the cable would be hidden inside the wall or are they assuming it would simply be tacked to the outside of the wall, hillbilly style?

Reply to
Char Jackson

They just don't want more wiring/cabling. :/

Reply to
Ant

While I like the idea of placing Ethernet jacks on both sides of a doorway, I'm not sure I see the big picture here. In my own server room in my basement, I've had Cat5 draped across a doorway since about

2002 or so. No problems so far and I don't expect any. Of course, it looks like crap since it's exposed, but hey, it's the inside of a room at the far end of the basement. It's not like I bring company down there to visit.

On the other hand, if it was a room I cared about and I had to cross a doorway, I'd probably just remove a section of drywall, run the cable through small holes drilled in the studs, and patch it up. It's very easy to do.

Anyway, why would a person have to replace the cable so often? What is it that's causing the damage?

Reply to
Char Jackson

Like I said, hard to understand. In this case, I completely don't get it.

Reply to
Char Jackson

I suppose you could run the fiber dark, but you will be guessing at a future standard. I see fiber interface cards in the junk shops, so I gather standards have changed. They seem to use two fibers per outlet.

I thought you ran those funny named tubes rather than conduit. A string in the tube means you can always add something else later.

Is shielding effective on CAT wiring? I buy the shielded patch cords out of paranoia.

Reply to
miso

Foot traffic, kids, dogs, wheel chair, loose throw rug, etc. It's across the front door of a large trailer home with high foot traffic. Most of the damage seems to be done when the rug slips on the floor and "grinds" the CAT5 into the floor or threshold. I've tried flat CAT5, but the moving rug causes it to "curl". Nailing or taping down the carpet was vetoed by the owner. I now have RJ45 jacks on either side of the doorway, with about 4ft of easily replaceable CAT5 in between. The owner could do the replacing herself, but she's rather feeble so I have to do it.

As for the issue, slip and fall liability is my big fear. It's a lousy installation and should be done correctly by drilling holes in the trailer home. I talked to my insurance agent who indicated that if someone slips and falls, sues, and is able to prove that I knowingly and willfully created a hazard, I'm screwed. I'm holding my breath, but would have preferred to avoid the whole thing by correctly running the cable.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

It just dawned on me that "across" has an entirely different meaning for you than it did for me. I thought you meant "up and across the top of the door frame, then down the other side", while you simply meant "laying on the floor, spanning the doorway".

I'm absolutely not a fan of placing Ethernet cable on the floor where it can be walked on, and so far I haven't been in a situation where I've had to do that. You have my condolences.

Reply to
Char Jackson

Sorry. I wasn't very clear. Yes, it's on the floor.

The grand plan was to remove the door moulding, and mill a slot into the moulding for the CAT5. I've done this before and it works well. However, I've never tried it with a mobile home. No nails. It's all glued together. Worse, the plastic moulding seems to be hollow as in a web structure to reduce weight and plastic use. I could easily replace it with wood or solid plastic channel moulding, but I'm afraid of trashing the wallboard when I remove the glued moulding. So, everything went under the carpet.

Now that you have me inspired, I should probably try the flat CAT5 cable again, this time using carpet tape to hold it flat.

Anyway, it's horror stories like this that inspired my suggestion to put RJ45 jacks on both sides of doorways.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

No problem. I'm probably the only one who misunderstood.

I rented a mobile home for a few months back in the 80's. You're not bringing back good memories, I'm afraid.

I didn't mean to inspire anything. That sounds like work.

Now that I understand what you mean, I'm totally with you. Most people wouldn't want the cable draped *up* over the top of the doorway. At least with regular drywall, it's easy to open an area and put the cable inside the wall.

Reply to
Char Jackson

They're old picky/stubborn people. :(

Reply to
Ant

So are all my customers. They wouldn't pay my exorbitant rates if they thought they could get it done right by some part-timer or by the Geek Squad. The trick is to figure out what they REALLY want. That's usually something that does not come up in the negotiations and is often assumed to work. For example, I sold a VoIP system to one picky customer who just assumed that it would allow her to make endless international long distance calls for free. Although I mentioned it a few times, it never was really discussed. For internet connectivity it's much the same. Find out what they're really doing to do on the internet and bid the system accordingly. Unless your elderly and stubborn customers are into home theater and wireless video, they don't need the speed. What they probably want is a no hassle system that doesn't require endless maintenance and tweaking. Wi-Fi doesn't even come close. Wired systems are far more reliable.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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