I do remember some years back when Plasma screens were in, that putting the house one on completely obliterated powerline internet, but then the set also obliterated almost all frequencies from medium wave up to about 24mhz, goodness knows what nasty power supply was in the thing, a Sharp I seem to recall. Brian
And it shouldn't be too long a stretch to get a client to 'see' there is an alternate station (on the same SSID but possibly different frequency and other details) that is stronger and switch to it (and have that as an option in case one AP is not connected to the Internet etc)?
I'll check them out.
Cheers, T i m
Not always, there are systems where a device will be forcibly kicked off one AP that is weak it, when the system knows there is another AP that will be stronger for it.
I don't know of any that chain together. The way I use mine is that the relatively low traffic stuff goes over powerline ethernet - printers, internet radio and email/web browsing of seldom used computers.
It works sufficiently well for me that even across different consumer units for the original house and extension the printer throughput is not noticeably affected. Speed isn't great like that. I put a new repeater Wifi node to fill in the worst gap at the furthest end of the house same password as the master, but with a different SSID and channel.
You have to experiment to find what works best in your circumstances. Units likely to have big suppression capacitors on like fancy sockets for hifi, fridge freezers and oil burners tend to rob signal.
That's essentially what a mesh system does, plus it automatically sets all the WiFi 'servers' to the same SSID and password.
As I understand it now (after quite a bit more reading aboout it) there is nothing particularly special about a mesh system except that it sets everything up to make it as easy as possible for client systems to roam.
Adding APs 'manually' and setting them up with the same SSID and, possibly configuring some of the 'advanced' defaults (if the user interface allows it) to help roaming will get essentially the same result as a mesh system.
According to (most) things I have read about it this is a 'bad idea'. APs should *never* kick a client off, the client should *always* control this. An AP disconnecting a client is a last resort action and indicates that something has gone wrong.
I remember decades ago that next door's TV (just through the wall) made nasty whistling noises on our Radio 4 Long Wave mains valve receiver.
We just put up with it though. People did in those days.
Owain
Tell that to Cisco (yes enterprise systems with dedicated controllers managing hundreds of access points are a different kettle of fish to a home mesh system).
That can be awkward.
I had wanted the powerline adaptors for my smart telly but discovered ordinary strength wifi does a far better job, even through two solid brick walls.
It always used to do that, even if there isn't a TV anywhere near. The interference appears to be mains borne, and can be remedied by means of a parallel capacitor (if it can stand the current without burning out).
Like getting Radio 1 on the toaster :-)
In a similar way I got a very early practical introduction to display screen security.
I had a VIC20 setup at school, feeding a 12" B&W TV via its RF output. However said TV was also used for TV watching via a portable Labgear log periodic aerial. The reception conditions were not ideal, so an Antiference set back style aerial amp helped. To save titting about moving leads each time, there was a 2 into one splitter/combiner being used to merge the aerial and RF output from the computer. On one occasion this had been setup with the combiner feeding the input of the amp. In effect adding some gain to both the live TV feed from the aerial and the computer's display output. One day we got a visit from lads from the room above to announce they were watching me playing Astro Blitz[1] on *their* TV. Their TV tuned like mine with a continuous rotating control and no presets. So you either just twiddled until you found a decent looking station, or made a mental not of the channel number printed on the knob bezel. However that did mean you could end up unintentionally doing a visual scan or anything and everything that the TV Was able to pick up just by changing channel. Turns out my aerial setup was also broadcasting the computer output well enough to get a fuzzy picture on a TV 20' away.
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