Wireless Repeater

S

shackrock

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 15, 2008
Messages
150
I have an EasyTomato setup and it works flawlessly in the house, it's awesome.

However, by the time you reach my back yard (my router is in the front of the house), I no longer get a wireless signal. I'm wondering what the cheapest wireless repeater I can build will be. DD-WRT offers an easy way to make the repeater, but what's the cheapest hardware? Or, is there another solution that's even cheaper?


My fall-back, if this is too expensive, is to run a CAT5 to the back of my house and plug it into a cheap belken router I have and set it up as a wireless bridge - but I would rather go the full wireless route. Thanks all.
 
Wireless repeaters by design cut your available wireless bandwidth in half. I would try to run the cable to the back of the house and set-up a second cheap router running as just an AP.

If the cable is too difficult you could try powerline networking - your level of success may vary - these are $30 right now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704164

As far as cheap routers that can act as repeaters - I'm using this at my parents house - $16 with promo code EDDIMSX20:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-315-105

It's set up as a wireless bridge but has had no issues since putting it in about 6 months ago. The GUI is a little bit engrish-y but there are guides online for just about anything you want to do (bridge,repeater, etc).

Thinking about it - you could buy two of the Edimax routers, connect them together with a network cable, and set-up one as a wireless bridge (a client for your current AP) and the other as just a dumb AP broadcasting on a different channel. That should mitigate the loss of bandwidth from a repeater - I'd still try to run wires though.
 
Thanks.

So, the wireless repeaters cut bandwidth in half for the entire wireless network, or just when you get onto the repeater's waves instead of the original router?

It's just for my backyard, and really it's just to control the stereo and audio devices inside, so I really don't mind low bandwidth, as long as it's functional...
 
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