Trying to fix my network, need advice

E

entropism

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 23, 2004
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OK, so right now, I have a wireless network set up in my home, and I'm unable to stream HD content from my computer to my 360 as an extender. The only way I have enough bandwidth is if I run a 50" length of Cat5 cable from my 360 to my main router, and it's highly inconvenient. I'm looking to fix this situation, preferably keeping it wireless.


My layout is as such:

layout.jpg


The lines to the left are my staircase, not sure why I put it in there, but yeah... Figure the kitchen is about 12-15' wide, then the routers are on the opposite sides of those walls.

The only devices outside the routers that connect wirelessly would be my Wii, my phone, and my girlfriend's laptop, and the phone/laptop get a decent signal upstairs, but the speed/strength could be better.

My setup is: 2 Linksys WRT54G-TM routers, running tomato. One is acting as the main router in my den, and is wired up to my main computer and my cable modem. The other is in my living room, acting as a wireless bridge, and then wired to my Blu-ray and 360. In between is my kitchen, and since I rent, drilling and running cable isn't an option. I'd be willing to run Cat cable through the AC vents, but it would seem to be a big job and I'd imagine fairly expensive. I looked into powerline adapters, but I'm pretty sure I'm on different breakers between rooms, and I'd like something reliable. I used to have 2 Verizon MOCA routers laying around, but I thought they were useless and I threw them out when I moved. Imagine my dismay.

Right now, i THINK my best bet is to go wireless N for both the range and signal strength, and I was looking at picking up a pair of these:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3641947&sku=N100-2079

If this would solve my problems of having my kitchen and the two walls between the routers, I'd have NO issue spending the $50 to get it done. I'm also under the impression that connecting a G device to the network would bring everything down to G speeds? If that's the case I'd have no problem wiring one or both of my G routers to the N routers to make G access points. Not too familiar with how to do it, but I'd imagine I could figure it out or ask for advice here.

Of course... my other option would be to say screw it, forget streaming HD content, pick up one of those WD media players and turning a spare hard drive into an external, and putting all my movies/music on there.

So, anyone have any ideas?
 
Ok, let's address what you're talking about.

First off, running Cat6 through a vent, provided that they have direct access to each other shouldn't be too hard if you've got some sort of rigid fishtape, 50' of Cat6 from Monoprice is less than $7 + ship.

As far as wireless goes, your kitchen is going to be your problem since the microwave and cordless phone will interfere with the 2.4Ghz N signal- however why you have 2 APs is beyond me since it is such a small space. Also, you're right, streaming HD will require wireless N, not G. Also, your wireless network will revert to the lowest common speed so if you have only an N AP but G clients you're whole setup runs at G. Adding a G AP to hang off your N AP would work, but you'd need different channels, different SSIDs, etc. Since this is an apartment how many other wireless networks are in the area- if there are lots you're going to run into interference from them as well, which actually might be your biggest problem.

My guess is that overall between your neighbors and your kitchen wireless is going to be tough, for $50 feel free to try it but I'm a bit skeptical. If you can run cable, do it as that is cheaper and more reliable than anything else you've got open to you right now.
 
Cable would be my ideal, but since I'm renting here, and my landlord is damn near crazy, I'm looking to avoid anything that he can bitch about. Running cable professionally will also cost me $35/hour, not sure how long it would take to fish through ductwork. The good news is that there's a vent a foot from my desk/router, and about 3 feet from my TV/wireless bridge, so if it can be done, it would be pretty damn convenient. As for the kitchen: Yes, there's a microwave in the kitchen that's barely used, but no phones outside of cellular.

As for the wireless APs, I don't have APs, just a wireless bridge and one AP. The xbox and blu-ray are wired into the bridge, that connects wirelessly to the main router. The Wii, PDA and laptop all connect to the main router as well.

As for neighbors and their wireless setups:

It looks like I have 10 networks in range, outside of my own. 5 are on channel 6, 2 on channel 11, and one each on 9, 5 and 1.

The signal on these are so weak, however, my phone can only pick up 4 of them, and each has next to no signal. On my router, the signal quality on the wireless survey is all under 20, but I'm not sure how that's quantified. Could be percentage, could be decibel, no clue.
 
You will run into a few issues with Wireless N that I would like you to be made aware of. Also, I have that exact router (v2) that I paid $20ish for it over at Newegg during a refurb sale.
Theoretically it'll work. But I do not know how much signal degradation will happen over that distance. FORGET about wideband, there is just too much interference in the 2.4ghz range to make it feasible.

Here is one of my test setups. I had the wrt160nl on the top floor of my house, and the wnr834b in client mode on the other side of the house in my basement. Both running OpenWRT. (Yes, tomato and dd-wrt are great and all, but OpenWRT is that much better) I had a strong enough signal to stream a mkv 1080p version of dark night to my ps3. I was able to get a solid 3.2mbyte/sec which was more than enough to keep up with the stream. The distance was about 40 feet through 2 floors and a wall. Your mileage WILL vary. Who knows, those cheapie routers may overheat after long periods of time. They may crash periodically. All I can say is neither of mine gave me issues in the time I had it set up. I did have a wire there the whole time, I just experiment with solutions from time to time. Being a network tech, I'm always looking for cheap working solutions to install in customers homes.

You will want to pick a channel as clear as possible and set the routers to N only. You will want to have another access point on one of the other clear channels to broadcast G signals. 802.11n 2.4ghz only has three clear channels and those are the only channels you should ever set a wireless router to. 1, 6, and 11. Since you don't have a spectrum analyzer, do a site survey and see which channel has the weakest signals from other routers. channels 2-5 interfere with 1 and 6 the most while 7-10 interfere with 6 and 11 the most. 6 is generally a poor channel choice due to all the interference it gets from sitting in the middle.

I'd say go for it. The worst that could happen is you waste a whole bunch of time and learn a lot about the nature of wireless. But from what you've shown it "could" work, but of course running a wire would be your best bet. But you know that already. Good luck!
 
I was debating it, but it seems the most expensive choice of them all. Probably $150 when all is said and done, for both adapters.
 
What wireless channel are you running on? If you're on 6 try switching to 1 or 11 and see if that improves things any. Since you're in an apartment I'm willing to bet there are a few other wireless networks and they're probably all set at the default channel 6.
 
Well, it's a townhouse/condo, so it's not as bas as you'd think. The surrounding networks were listed in the third post in the thread, closest to me is my next door neighbors, running a WEP signal on channel 9, -91dBm. Everything else is barely even showing up, at -99dBm.

That being said, I don't think it's interference as it is network speed. My bridge is showing as a -50dBm connection, same as my phone and my Wii. Now, I'm just guessing here, but would switching from 54mbps G to 300mbps N help me at this point? I'd rather drop $50 on a pair of routers rather than $150 for a pair of MOCA, or $200 for a wall fish.

(And yes, I'm hardwiring Cat6 when I build my house, that's for damn sure.)

Edit: I swapped from 6 to 1, connection seems to stay the same. Doing a site survey shows 3 other networks besides mine were on 6, but they were barely detectable. Only one other on 1, so i figured I'd play it safe and make the swap.
 
entropism said:
Now, I'm just guessing here, but would switching from 54mbps G to 300mbps N help me at this point? I'd rather drop $50 on a pair of routers rather than $150 for a pair of MOCA, or $200 for a wall fish.
Click to expand...

300mbps N would probably cause a degradation of speed as it's wideband and more subject to interference. Running in 150mbit mode with a -50dbm signal would probably get you around 3.2mbyte a second stable which should be enough to fix your issue.

To the guy asking about power line adapters, I have used them in homes and they can be reliable if they are on the same circuit. But once you go circuit hopping, you have to cross your fingers and hope.

If you can, Google iperf and setup a server on one end of the wireless and a client on the other end, and see how reliable your current setup is. You should be able to get good latency and throughput ratings from it.
 
Edit: nevermind.

Main router started to fail on me today, so I ordered 2 WRT160Ns to play around with, we'll see if this fixes anything.
 
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