extending home LAN wireless coverage

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sbiddle

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#947876 9-Dec-2013 10:55

The 2.4Ghz spectrum is completely saturated these days so anything with gain or high power will simply makes things worse, not better.

If you want reliable WiFi the solution is lower power APs that are within range of the devices you want to connect.

richms

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#947877 9-Dec-2013 10:56

Bigger gain works great to create spotty unreliable coverage with many dead spots.

Richard rich.ms

hashbrown

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#947906 9-Dec-2013 11:49

sbiddle: The 2.4Ghz spectrum is completely saturated these days so anything with gain or high power will simply makes things worse, not better.

If you want reliable WiFi the solution is lower power APs that are within range of the devices you want to connect.

I have a bit of a background in radio, so understand higher power being a race to nowhere as everyone bumps the power (and noise) up, but don't see your point on passive gain. Passive gain amplifies signal and noise equally, so SNR remains the same.

Surely though a higher gain antenna lets you cover a greater area without the need to chew up another 1/3 of the available 2.4GHz spectrum and leave your neighbours with only 1 other available channel?

raytaylor

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#947907 9-Dec-2013 11:49

Regarding the sticky post, here is what I have written up so far.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9U9Djx0lcSIbE1JMnBFcGhpTzg/edit?usp=sharing

Regarding the DHCP range.

You want the master router to issue the ip addresses, and you want all static ip addresses to be outside the DHCP range.

Our rural broadband customers all have the exact same IP scheme in their house (no exceptions) so if someone has an issue and I tell them to ping 10.1.1.1 I know its the router, or 10.1.1.2 and I know its the secondary router. If they want to use their own IP scheme then they use another router with double natting eliminated by a DMZ, then they manage their own network without our support themselves.

So anyhow we have static ip addresses set in specific devices in the 10.1.1.1-10 range, then dynamic from the master router in the 10.1.1.20-45 range for devices to use when they connect.

Secondary routers will have their DHCP switched off so devices dont think they are the gateway and try to get out through them - instead they are to get an IP and go out through the master router.

It works really well because if a home handyman wants, we can remotly program up a slave router mirroring the settings except channel and DHCP from the master,give them a pair of homeplugs or long ethernet cable and have an instant DIY wifi extension package.

Ray Taylor

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raytaylor

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#947951 9-Dec-2013 12:32

hashbrown:
sbiddle: The 2.4Ghz spectrum is completely saturated these days so anything with gain or high power will simply makes things worse, not better.

If you want reliable WiFi the solution is lower power APs that are within range of the devices you want to connect.

Surely though a higher gain antenna lets you cover a greater area without the need to chew up another 1/3 of the available 2.4GHz spectrum and leave your neighbours with only 1 other available channel?

by turning down the power in each AP, you are creating smaller 'cells' of coverage so you are using up more spectrum around your house, but by the time it gets to the neighbours house, the signal will hopefully have died down enough so they can reuse the channel.

Its the same concept as a cellphone network - creating smaller cells of coverage.

Of course if everyone limited themselves to a 3dbi antenna and a very limited transmit power like they are in the UK then we wouldnt have the urban noise problem that I feel telecom unknowingly created when they first started handing out free wifi routers. One could say that Go Large crowded the radio spectrum on the copper lines, as well as the 2.4ghz band :-p

Ray Taylor

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raytaylor

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#947956 9-Dec-2013 12:37

timmmay:

Problem in my place is both APs are accessible from most places, and they tend to hold onto an AP until it can't contact it at all. Separate SSIDs mean I can manually change to the stronger signal. The second WiFi was only really for a flatmate who's left now, I used a router as a switch for the TV and since it had WiFi I turned that on for the better signal strength.

In the windows device manager, if you right click on the wifi network interface, and go to properties, you will find there is a page of advanced radio settings. There is usually one labeled "roaming" or something similar.
Anyhow usually with this slider setting, you can adjust how agressivley you want the wifi to roam to another AP of the same SSID

Ray Taylor

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timmmay

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#948089 9-Dec-2013 14:41

raytaylor:
timmmay:

Problem in my place is both APs are accessible from most places, and they tend to hold onto an AP until it can't contact it at all. Separate SSIDs mean I can manually change to the stronger signal. The second WiFi was only really for a flatmate who's left now, I used a router as a switch for the TV and since it had WiFi I turned that on for the better signal strength.

In the windows device manager, if you right click on the wifi network interface, and go to properties, you will find there is a page of advanced radio settings. There is usually one labeled "roaming" or something similar.
Anyhow usually with this slider setting, you can adjust how agressivley you want the wifi to roam to another AP of the same SSID

That doesn't work very well for my Android phone or Android tablet ;)

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hashbrown

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#948131 9-Dec-2013 15:06

raytaylor: by turning down the power in each AP, you are creating smaller 'cells' of coverage so you are using up more spectrum around your house, but by the time it gets to the neighbours house, the signal will hopefully have died down enough so they can reuse the channel.

Turn down TX power? Let's hope the 5 people who bother to do that move next to each other. :P

tedauction

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#948966 10-Dec-2013 20:57

thanks Ray for your great response to my original question.

Just one thing I am not clear on:
Regarding assigning an IP address to the secondary wireless router. Why is this necessary ?
DHCP and NAT are not active on this secondary router and it is not being used as a default gateway (it is merely functioning as a layer 2 switch). So why does it need a layer 3 IP address? Apart from the IP address allowing remote management, is there another reason ?

Thanks for clarification.

richms

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#948967 10-Dec-2013 20:59

That is basically the only reason for it needing one. You could have it outside the range of IP's on the lan if you wanted to.

Richard rich.ms

raytaylor

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#949057 11-Dec-2013 00:03

tedauction: thanks Ray for your great response to my original question.

Apart from the IP address allowing remote management, is there another reason ?

Thanks for clarification.

Specifically for managment of it.
If the primary router was issuing ip addresses, or your scheme network-wide was 192.168.0.0/24 and your secondary router was in the 192.168.1.0/24 or SMC branded routers use 192.168.2.0/24 then whenever you want to get back into the router to change the wifi encryption or for any reason, you need to manually change your computers ip address into the same range so you can get access to it.

Also you dont want it to conflict with any other device on your network - for example if you used two telecom routers which normally default to 192.168.1.254 as their LAN ip address. You can switch off DHCP in the second router, but you still cannot have two nodes on the same network with the same ip address so you have to make the second router 192.168.1.253 or something different.

Ray Taylor

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