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Got a lady I'm doing some side-work for who needs to boost the signal on her Linksys G router. It doesn't look like you can get a booster for anything above a B, prolly due to the FCC or maybe even Bush himself.
So if I bought an identical router or another piece of hardware, could I configure it do the same thing as a booster?
Any suggestions would be coo.
Does she just need more coverage area? If so it would probably be about the same if not cheaper to just by another ap and wire it in. This will help with throughput as well because ap's work just like hubs (shared bandwith) and if she has say 10 clients right now on one ap she is sharing 54mb between 10 computers where if she had two aps with 5 clients each they would get much better performance. If you really want to get your feet wet try getting a higher gain antenna. In this case I think you would need two. One for the 2.4ghz range (802.11b) and one for the 5ghz fange (802.11a,g) but this just get's complicated.
Final word: Get another ap.
Agreed Gollo, but 11g is 2.4 ghz:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gollo
"802.11g describes a wireless LAN that operates in the 2.4GHz frequency range. It provides a data transmission speed (over short distances) of up to 54Mbps using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology. The 2.4GHz range is already crowded, however, with microwave ovens, cell phones, PDAs, Bluetooth, and other devices, so signal interference is a risk."
At any rate, it would be nice to have a little more information about what youre doing Darkstar, and what your goals are. If you have an AP that needs to transmit through walls better, then get either a omni-directional (usually has a 3 db net gain) antenna on both the AP and the client, or consider getting a directional antenna and pointing it at the client. Knowing what you need to accomplish is pretty important when trying to design a solution.
There are MANY things you can do with APs and antennas to overcome wireless issues you may run across. You can get pretty creative and extend the range of an 11g (or 11b) to well over 1000 feet using directional antennas, and a clear LOS.
Correct correct. My bad. 802.11g uses 2.4 and 802.11a uses 5ghz. (I was thinking trimode for some reason)Quote:
Originally Posted by Shalafi
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gollo
:) You must be at that point where you learn one thing, at the expense of forgetting another (or more...).. I think Im forgetting more than I learn anymore.. heh
Gotta love your tagline, one of my favorite phrases is:
"Common sense, isn't"
or...
"The more you learn, the less you know" (or at least you realize you know less than you thought)
...anywho, now that I veered WAY off-topic.
Darkstar, I hope this helped you, please post more info if you need any other ideas.
Shal
Thanks for your input, guys. What I'm trying do is pretty simple. There's a router upstairs acting as the AP and she wants to get a connection to it from downstairs on the other side of her house (huge old kicka$$house). Money's not a huge object for her, but I'd like to keep the cost at or below the price of another AP, if you think that's what it'll take.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shalafi
What I was thinking is I could just get another AP, put it within range of the original's signal and have it somehow relay the signal a little further. I have no idea if this is possible.
Yes it is possible BUT there is one thing. On the ap that is extending the range you will only get actual throughput of 5.5mb (plus your ip overhead so in reality more like 3) This is do to the fact that you are using half of your bandwith to communicate with the other ap. Best bet (if it is possible) is to run a cable to the ap. if you can't then get another linksys (wap11) and set it up as a repeater and you are good to go. But I would only suggest this if she's only using it for casual internet access. Cheers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkstar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gollo
She's finally calling on me to do this project, try as I have to delay it. I don't mind cutting the bandwidth in half in this case. Does anyone know of some instructs on how to add another AP to do this?
First off what ap does she currently have? You will need to match brands and make sure that they can do range extending (you can't just throw an ap as a repeater onto another ap). From what I read it sounds like she has a linksys. If so then the wap11 "SHOULD" work fine for what you want to do. Newegg.com has them for 55 bucks right now. Get back to me with what she has and we'll see what we can come up with. Cheers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkstar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gollo
Cool! She has a WRT54G which is actually a wireless router/ap handling her DSL connection. Think the WAP54 would work for range extending with it?
Check this out: http://www.hawkingtech.com/prodSpec.php?ProdID=143
Quote:
Originally Posted by DocPC
Interesting. That might be the easy way to do this. I gotta go to CrapUSA tonight so I'll look for one.
I am bit skeptical of Hawking, though - we had about 10 or so of their 4 & 8 port switches that all died within a couple months of each other. Their power supplies were so bad the plastic would actually melt. When I called to get them replaced, the said that while the switches have a 3-year warranty the power supplies only had a ONE MONTH warranty. Total BS. Anyway, I digress.
That's one way of doing it but you'll end up getting better coverage with a second ap (specially if you'd run another cat5 to it ;)) Anyways from what I read in the manual the wap54g does NOT support repeater mode. The good news however is that you can connect a wap11 via repeater mode to the wrt54g. But one thing that I do not know is if by default it will drop down to the lowest common deminator (in this case 802.11b 11mb) on the wrt54g. Maybe you could buy one and test it out. If it doesn't work then return it.Quote:
Originally Posted by DocPC
If you think that the antenna is going to be the way to go then check out fab corp. Great prices. EXCELLENT service and they know their stuff. Shoot you could email or call them with your dilema and they would be able to fix you up right.
I remember reading that running a 802.11g consumer AP in mixed mode resulted in dropped throughput on the AP. So it will only run as fast, or maybe a little bit faster than the 802.11b. The best way to do it IMO, and I have done this in my house, is to use a second AP and wire it via CAT5 to the existing network.
You can look at this page for some wiring ideas. Check out page 6 and 7. They use a wireless bridge instead of Cat5, but the Idea is the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kymera
Yeah that's what I thought.
I agree that the best way would be to setup the other ap with cat5 running to it. This will improve performance all around. Only page 6 is relevant to what he wants to do (unless he wants to buy 3 more aps and put two of them in bridge mode and the other two as aps on each end of the bridge).
Thanks for your help, y'all. I think I'm gonna try one of those Hawking antennas, but if that doesn't work I'll try a wap11 as a repeater.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gollo
I'd love to just run cable (if it was my house I would) but I'm sure she doesn't want cable lying on the floor throughout the hallways.
Those antennas are pretty cool! 50 mile range would be nice.
Just make sure you stay withing fcc regs (specially since your using g). I'm not all up on that stuff but you could run over to the netstumbler forums and ask there. Those guys know their stuff. Cheers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkstar