Increasing the range of my Broadband

Mickey07ie

Hey

I have eircom broadband and have a eircom netopia box! I can not receive the broadband in the upstairs of the house! Is it true that if i buy a wireless router and plug it into my eircom netopia box that it will increase the range??

Cheers

watty

It's more complicated than that.

You can fit a longer phone cable and move the netopia for better reception.

Or change the channel it's on. Maybe there is interference from other WiFi, video Senders etc.

Ballboy

just while where on the topic..

Can anyone recommend a good wireless router please..

Mickey07ie

well see i dont wana have to be moving it! basically i want wireless broadband through out the house! so what should i do?

watty

Try a different channel.

It depends on house construction. Some houses it's not possible.

Also moving it even 3ft / 1m can make a huge difference.

Mickey07ie

the house is about 2500 sq feet in size! how do i change the channel on the broadband?

PogMoThoin

Mickey07ie wrote: »

the house is about 2500 sq feet in size! how do i change the channel on the broadband?

Concrete floors? Netopia should cover that, although signal will drop when further away from it. Your not trying to cover the other side of the house from the opposite side, ie have You got the netopia somewhere central?

Mickey07ie

no its not central! yeh concrete floors! 3 storey house!

_Nuno_

Mickey07ie wrote: »

the house is about 2500 sq feet in size! how do i change the channel on the broadband?

go to the address bar on your web browser and paste this:

http://192.168.1.254/

Then choose expert mode>configure>wireless>advanced configuration settings and change the default channel.

You should do a site survey to see what channels are people using next to you but the software you use may not have this feature. If you can't do a survey try channel 7 and possibly 13, as these don't overlap with channel number one, which is what everyone uses.

If interference from other wireless devices is your problem that may sort it.

Since eircom ships all of these with the same default channel there are a lot of issues like this. In the end make sure you save changes and let it reboot (the netopia).

PogMoThoin

Mickey07ie wrote: »

no its not central! yeh concrete floors! 3 storey house!

Well there ya go then, Your gonna be pushing things with concrete floors. Move it to a more central position to give the best chance.

_Nuno_ wrote: »

Since eircom ships all of these with teh same default channel there are a lot of issues like this

In reality Eircom don't supply them for the convenience of the customer, they do so to purposely create noise to hinder wireless providers in the area using 2.4Ghz, but thats another story......

Changing channel may not have any effect with concrete floors, but its worth a go.

Ricky91t

PogMoThoin wrote: »

In reality Eircom don't supply them for the convenience of the customer, they do so to purposely create noise to hinder wireless providers in the area using 2.4Ghz, but thats another story......

Changing channel may not have any effect with concrete floors, but its worth a go.

Wow really?Never knew that

OP you could always buy a cheap netger router(have it in argos)And set it up as a repeater on the second floor near your Eircom router,The Netgear has good range anyway

mukki

is it for a pc or laptop, for a pc a homeplug ethernet adapter should work

if its a laptop try swapping your eircom box for the zyxel one with a single antenna (perlico and talk talk use them), they go for miles,
well thats an exageration, but 400m outdoors is tried and tested, my neighbours are sooo greatful

Sponge Bob

use powerline , eg the Solwise gear , plug and play .

AlanD

buy yourself an 802.11n wireless router. Get an 802.11n adaptor for laptop then. It will broadcast at 5 ghz giving more bandwidth and greater coverage. Its also faster. Apple make a good one called airport extreme base station. Buy an airport express base station then again to extend your network even further.

Sponge Bob

5ghz has worse penetration characteristics than 2.4Ghz does . No signal on 802.11g means not a hope on 802.11n

silversurfer

i'd recommend a Belkin G+ Mimo router.
I'd already replaced the old router that i got from BT with a wireless one
And while it was a bit better, it wouldn't work in all rooms.

I checked up and came across the belkin G+ Mimo, bought it over a year ago, it's brillant, works in all rooms of the house, even through the over two foot thick walls in some parts of the house, in short I get reception everywhere.

There's a better one again, I'm thinking of getting so I can get proper reception in the garden for the summer, it's the Belkin N1 Vision. The garden is a bit away from the house and up a hill, so the G+ one won't reach, but the Belkin N1 should

I use the Modem Type as broadband comes though the phone line.

The router works with 4 physical Lan connections and then wireless, I've had 4 wireless laptops working from the same Belkin router with no problems.
Loads of protection on the Wireless side, including hiding SSID and MAC address filtering, as well as the normal stuff

silversurfer

If your reception is sporadic, then make sure the router is up high, I was told by one of the guys that the signal mostly travels out horizontally from the router and then down.

So it's best to place the router up high.
I have mine about mid way up the wall on a tv that's on top of a small filing cabinet in my computer room.

I was also told that large amounts of metal will kinda soak up the signal from the wireless router and so should not be between the router and the portable PC

PogMoThoin

silversurfer wrote: »

i'd recommend a Belkin G+ Mimo router.
I's already replaced the old router that i got from BT with a wireless one
And while it was a bit better, it wouldn't work in all rooms.

I checked up and came across the belkin G+ Mimo, bought it over a year ago, it's brillant, works in all rooms of the house, enven through the over two foot thick walls in some parts of the house, in short I get reception everywhere.

There's a better one again, I'm thinking of getting so I can get proper reception in the garden for the summer, it's the Belkin N1 Vision. The garden is a bit away from the house and up a hill, so the G+ one won't reach

I use the Modem Type as broadband comes though the phone line.

Oh FFS, Don't recommend a Belkin router, Honestly

I work with these every day and Belkin have nothing but issues. Linksys if he's buying one, You set them once and they just work.

_Nuno_

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Oh FFS, Don't recommend a Belkin router, Honestly

I work with these every day and Belkin have nothing but issues. Linksys if he's buying one, You set them once and they just work.

I agree. I have never used anything by belkin that worked as advertised without issues. 3com, would be another good brand.

watty

mukki wrote: »

is it for a pc or laptop, for a pc a homeplug ethernet adapter should work

if its a laptop try swapping your eircom box for the zyxel one with a single antenna (perlico and talk talk use them), they go for miles,
well thats an exageration, but 400m outdoors is tried and tested, my neighbours are sooo greatful

Sponge Bob wrote: »

use powerline , eg the Solwise gear , plug and play .

Unfortunately the plt/homepug/solwise etc all seem to skip the proper EMC CE certification and use a simpler non-radio gear office equipment self certification.

They all generate enough interference to destroy AM, SSB and DRM transmission reception up to 10m away from outside of the house.

mukki wrote: »

i
If its a laptop try swapping your eircom box for the zyxel one with a single antenna (perlico and talk talk use them), they go for miles,
well thats an exageration, but 400m outdoors is tried and tested,

Outdoor range on any WiFi can be up to several Km. In Dublin from one end of apartment to the other the signal was bad, but picked up about 17 WiFi through the window. Due to Video senders sharing the same band also, if you are in a built up area rather than rural, changing channel may result in a big improvement. Does the PC/Laptop detect any other WiFi? It simply shows a very low signal if the problem is Video Senders / Baby Monitors.

On the chimney with external aerial I can pickup outdoor WiFi 9km away.


Re: a second WiFi point.
That would need CAT5e cable run. Which is best solution. If you only use the laptop at one place on the other floor, use wired ethernet.

eircom don't deliberately generate 2.4Ghz interference.

Belkin gear is not good. They even paid shills to talk it up on Amazon and talk down other brands.

802.11n won't help at all.

A MiMo airpoint is of more value when there are multiple WiFi clients. I've tested single aerial, diversity and MIMO. Note that many WiFi points have a 2nd internal aerial (diversity reception). A USB dongle usually has a single aerial but most laptops with built in WiFi have two aerials.

Moving the Router/WiFi Base or the latptop slowly up to 60cm can find a much better spot than is achieved with diversity or MIMO systems which really help more with multiple clients or airpoints.

rom

1. You need to do a site survey.
a. use a stumber app to check what else is operating in the 2.4GHz spectrum as 5Ghz is not an option for you.
b. using a channel close to a network that is using low traffic is better than using one near a network where lots or traffic is going on. you can capture all this with the correct app. this is if you are in a congested spectrum area for 2.4GHz.
c. turn off your cordless phones as it may be causing problems. if they are then you can get 5GHz version. note some are 5GHz to handset and 2.4Ghz back so you want to avoid them but this is probably not the issue.
d. choose a good channel. 802.11g channels overlap so much that channels need to be 5 channels apart so they don't overlap in a coexistance multiple network setup. if you had 3 networks in clear airspace for 802.11g then you would use 1, 6,11 channels as they are no overlapping. other channels are also
allowed but bearing on your equipment you may have issues if a laptop was bought in the US as they have some channels reserved that we used in europe on the 802.11 2.4Ghz spectrum.

2. Move your main base station to the highest point possible. I have mine in the attic.

3. use a repeater. there are many solutions here.
you can buy a cheap linksys and put hacky firmware on it or oyu can buy a nice looking http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/ to do the job instead for you. this will relay you network. multiple these can be used.

if interference is the real issue then using 802.11n on 5GHz may be an option. I use it with wide channels. basically 802.11n on 2.4Ghz that uses wide channels used about 75% of the spectrum and that causes problems as you can guess. using widehannels on 5Ghz is ok. i recommed an airport base station or the one above for that.

81.41 euro on the educational apple store. order online and they wont ask for proof of you being a student if they do then you are buying for a student. order over the phone and they will ask you to fax in crap.

you can also use this to stream audio to your hifi etc

i use a Time Capsule, Airport Extreme in bridge mode connected with cat 6 to the attic (sitting room wall socket) in bridge mode i need gigabit for my apple tv streaming on boxee 802.11n and avi's aint great as the files are not ordered correctly for stream usually, and i connect a airport express in bridge mode also to for a 802.11g network for my iphone. it works flawlessly.

A 500MB file take about a min to transfer wirelessly over this 802.11n 5Ghz wide channels network to a macbook pro what else.



hope i offered some help

Sponge Bob

what distance and how many concrete walls Rom ??

watty

All LEGAL CE marked cordless phones are a different band to WiFi. Only some illegal US imports would interfere.

Apple stuff has a 50% "Steve Jobs" surcharge. Plenty of non-Apple gear.

802.11g actually overlaps 3 or 4 channels.

802.11n won't do anything for Internet access. The higher speeds on 802.11n fall back to turbo 11g (108Mbps/125Mbps) or 11g (54Mbps) or even down to 1Mbps with loss of signal. In poor signal conditions 802.11n won't help at all. The 5.xGhz band is usless for 3 floors.

yoshytoshy

Do add on antannae give you extra distance ?
Nearly sure I seen one that you actually plug in.