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relaying a signal

Hi -

I have a linksys wrt54g in my basement that sends a wireless signal to three machines in my house. One is just across the room, one is one floor up, and the third is my laptop. The machine across the room and the machine one floor up get their signal just fine, but the laptop gets rather poor signal when it is positioned on the small desk next to my bed on the top floor of my house. Moving the wrt54g isn't really an option due to the way things are set up in the basement, and I'd strongly prefer not to rearrange the furniture in my bedroom. So what I thought I might be able to do is to place some sort of device on the ground floor (physically connected to the machine on that floor, if neccesary) that receives the signal from the wrt54g and "forwards" it onto further points in the house. I think if my laptop were to be pulling its signal from that part of the house, it would be able to get the signal upstairs just fine. So, a few questions:

A) what device would perform this function? would another wrt54g do the trick?

B) The machine on the ground floor receives its signal via a linksys WUSB54G. Does this device have any capability of performing this task? My belief is that it doesn't, but I am not sure.

For the sake of consistency, I'd prefer whatever device I use to be a linksys device, but I'm not entirely opposed to looking at other manufacturers.

Thanks in advance -

Brian Mc

Reply to
Brian McCabe
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On 25 Nov 2006 06:38:35 -0800, "Brian McCabe" wrote in :

Have you tried angling the antenna on the WRT54G horizontally so it better "illuminates" upwards? Have you considered using a higher gain directional antenna? A repeater will cut your network throughput in half.

Any Linksys device with WDS. Depending on model of your WRT54G, 3rd party firmware can be a good option. See wikis below.

It doesn't.

Stick with the same brand.

A better solution for extending wireless is to install a remote wireless access point (same _unique_ SSID, different channel) connected by wire (Ethernet, powerline networking, phoneline networking, coax networking) to the original wireless access point.

See wikis below.

Reply to
John Navas

I did try the Linksys "higher gain" antenna kit that is widely available, and it made no difference whatsoever. However, I simply positioned them in the same manner that I had / have the included antennae positioned, which is straight up in the air perpendicular to the router box. I will monkey around with the positioning of the antennae in a bit.

I've examined that option, and a friend helping me out informed me that v5 of this router doesn't have any good third-party firmware out there. I will look over the wikis though to verify.

Didn't think so! thanks for clarifying.

Assuming that the positioning of such a device is crucial, this solution would essentially involve drilling a hole through the basement ceiling / main-level floor. I am not sure I am willing to do this.

Thanks for all your advice. I will read around mess with the antenae positioning and see how that goes.

Reply to
Brian McCabe

I am wondering, with regards to the linksys wrt54g v5's antennae: is one antenna assigned for reception and the other assigned for transmission? If I were to build an antenna, I am not sure which I would need to connect it to. Would I need to build two?

Thanks -

Brian Mc

Reply to
Brian McCabe

On 25 Nov 2006 07:57:23 -0800, "Brian McCabe" wrote in :

Only Ethernet involves drilling -- the others don't.

Reply to
John Navas

True, but ethernet is the only option I would have any idea how to work with.

Reply to
Brian McCabe

"Brian McCabe" hath wroth:

No. The antennas are switched to form a diversity receive system to eliminate frequency selective fading in a reflective environment. Grossly over-simplified, the receiver selects the best antenna for a given client and uses only that antenna for the client. The same antenna is used for xmit. If the receiver starts to collect data errors and noise, it then tries the other antenna to see if there is an improvement. Diversity reception offers considerable improvement in reception reliability in a highly reflective indoor environment.

Heavy reading:

If you were to build a high gain antenna, it would connect only to one of the antenna ports. You will need to either remove or disable the other antenna. The problem is that a random client radio MIGHT connect to the wrong antenna. You may get rotten performance until the access point decides to switch antennas. This effect both breaks the benifits of diversity reception and sometimes offers even worse performance. See the case study in the Cisco article above on the golf course for details.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

"Brian McCabe" hath wroth:

Drilling a 1/4" hole in the floor for CAT can easily be hidden. If you have telco or CATV cable running in the walls, it can be routed through the same conduits or same routes. The real problem is hiding the CAT5 coming from the ceiling down to the basement. It should be hidden in the wall. I have a 5ft flexible drill (with extensions) for drilling through fire breaks and such. Also a "yellow tongue" (fish tape) for pulling the wires. Most electricians have such tools. Given the proper equipment and some clues, running the cable is not very difficult.

If your basement has concrete block walls, surface mount electrical conduit should work.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Jeff Liebermann hath wroth:

I forgot to mumble something about "flat" CAT5 cable. It can't be used for much distance, but it sure is handy for hiding behind trim and panels:

Lots more...

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On 25 Nov 2006 09:44:49 -0800, "Brian McCabe" wrote in :

Both powerline networking and phoneline networking are very easy. See

Reply to
John Navas

Reply to
John Henckel

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