Recommendations for more powerful home WAP?

[Adam Funk]

I've been running a Linksys WAP54G for years. It still works fine, but I'd like something with "more power" to give better coverage in the corners of the house & the garden. Any suggestions?

[Scott M]

If it's got a detachable antenna, then they do higher gain versions. Or a second router tied to the first and have a front/back configuration.

[Scott M]

, if CAT 5 can be run easily, then

(Grr, lost the inplicit cabling first time round - adding 2nd routers wirelessly buggers up throughput.)

[Peter Crosland]

Remember that wireless links are two way and however good one end of the link is the other needs to be comparable. The benefits of "a more powerful" router are probably illusory because the devices you connect to it will still be running the same power. Whilst there are higher power WI-Fi adaptors available for laptops they are very costly. A dual band N WAP might be the way to go but that obviously that would depend on all the other wireless kit to be upgraded as well. You don't say if you can run ethernet to the WAP(s)

[Adrian]

Yes and no. A bigger, higher-gain antenna on the router will certainly help borderline communication with anything on the other end, since that antenna both sends and receives. It's not only shouting louder, but listening harder, too.

[Dave Liquorice]

fine,

Legally they are limited to a maximum power, some can go higher than those limits if you dig through the setup. Wouldn't be legal tho' ...

garden.

I think that box is just an access point rather than the very common combined ADSL/Cable, router, switch and AP. These tend to get placed convient for the phone line rather than the best place for the AP. Is yours nicely high up and out in the open or just stuffed at the back of a desk jammed up against a wall?

The picture has two, perhaps one could be extended to cover remoter parts? Depends a bit on why it has two, one TX one RX or diversity.

Higher gain aerials tend to be directional, could be swings and roundabouts.

If a second AP is required, cable it. Using the wireless side halves throughput straight away.

[Mentalguy2k8]

If the "iffy" signals are all in the same general area, you could Powerline/ethernet connect a 2nd router/repeater to the existing one and place it in the middle of the "low signal spot".

Another suggestion would be to try setting a different channel number on your router setup page, other than channel 11. Older routers (like the one you have) often come factory set to channel 11 and in my experience, most people tend to leave it that way which can cause interference between neighbours and low-spots because you might have 5 or 6 routers in a smallish area all fighting over the same channel. I've got an app on my phone which tells me what channel number each transmitting router in my area is using (mostly 11), and I've found that my own signal is much better if I set mine to a number that isn't currently in use. Try each setting from 1-10, reboot and test to get a true result. You may be surprised at the improvement.

And make sure you have the latest official router firmware installed on it, of course.

[Mentalguy2k8]

From memory I think there were a few "3rd party" firmwares around for those Linksys routers which uncovered hidden "power output" settings but I also recall it wasn't legal to crank it up to max and interfere with transmissions across 7 postcodes :)

[Dave Liquorice]

Assuming you have neighbours that close. B-)

But probably doesn't show point to point links, APs with hidden SSIDs etc. I doubt it gives traffic levels either, a dozen APs all on the same channel but with only sporadic email/web may well be a better channel to use than one with a just few APs but all streaming video. These apps give you an idea of what is in use but not the full picture.

Only channels 1, 6 and 11 are mutually interference free. All the others overlap with those.

[Brian Gaff]

What sort of power are routers. One really has a more difficult problem though. the return link is much more important, and unless you can somehow boost that signal as well, all you can really do is get better aerial locations to pick it up more reliably. Brian

[Dave Liquorice]

10 watts or so but that is the answer to the question you actually asked not the one I think you intended to ask:

"What sort of RF power are WiFi access points?"

The answer to that is around 50 mW.

[John Rumm]

Not so bad if you get MIMO ones with two radios that are designed for meshing.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Cranking up the power also increases the size of the area over which you are sharing bandwidth, and thus can reduce the bandwidth available to you.

When WiFi first appeared, a friend did crank up the power so his could reach the pub garden at the other end of the road! But there weren't any other WiFis visible locally at the time. (Nowadays, the pub probably has one for its customers anyway.)

[Muddymike]

When mine packed up last year I just bough the only one the local PC shop had, it was a bit more expensive but the difference was incredible. I now have strong wi-fi throughout the house and most of our 1 acre garden.

Mike

[Tim Watts]

On Wednesday 25 September 2013 17:26 Muddymike wrote in uk.d-i-y:

+1 TP-Link kicks arse.

Mine supports 4 SSIDs onto 4 VLANs allowing for some fun...

[Brian Gaff]

Yes I have never seen quoted the power of, say a built in laptop system, and even then the ERP depends on the aerial and any gain or attenuation it might have with the guts of the computer!

Brian

[dennis]

I doubt dual band will help unless the 2.4g band is congested. The 5g band tends to have less range but more bandwidth.

The multi aerials would need both ends but they are quite cheap for single band ones.

I would just put in a cheap repeater and forget about the bandwidth loss while I was in the far corner of the garden.

[polygonum]

I fitted a TP-Link card to my work PC the other week. An excellent performer.

[fred]

Do these actually exist?

I wanted to stretch the coverage on a home/office site and got all excited to see that Solwise had some listed but on close inspection all had been discontinued. Further searching brought up wireless (only) meshing for large sites (caravan sites etc) but at a cost.

What I really wanted was a couple of wireless access points (wired over cat5e) that would hand over a client connection between them seamlessly but it seems too much to ask for. I've given up and settled for 2 separate SSIDs with manual changeover which is far from perfect.

[Bill Taylor]

Ubiquiti Unifi is supposed to do that.

The basic

Installed 3 yesterday, they seem to work, with good signal strength. How effective the handover is remains to be seen.