Wifi network range enhancement options ?

S

ssslayer

Adept
I have a TP link TL-WR740N wifi router (http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-9_TL-WR740N.html) at my home.

Now the problems is that ever since I have shifted to a larger house, I do not get the signal all across the house.
What are the options with me to "extend" the wifi range?

1. High gain Antenna? Increase the radiation power (by playing the firmware)?
2. Get a another TPlink TLWR740N router and run the WDS (http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-227.html)
3. Get a something labelled as repeater/range extender (http://www.tp-link.in/products/?categoryid=1247)

a) High gain antenna seems to be only a remote possibility. Not seen around. If there is a simple way of increasing the radiation power, that will be fine. But I don't wish to really change the firmware.
b) I was reading about setting WDS and it looks to be a pain in certain cases - people have faced problems. Also I believe this will create a new SSID. Won't this bring a new set of problems while I am roaming across the house and my device tries to latch on to one or the other wifi network?
c) What exactly does the Sr.No.3 do and why is it double the price of a router (Sr.No.2)?
 
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Buy Asus rtn12u d1, and configure it in Access point mode. And keep it in the center of house.

I'm getting my WiFi signals in my Parking lot, 4 floors below.
 
ssslayer said:
High gain Antenna? Increase the radiation power (by playing the firmware)?
2. Get a another TPlink TLWR740N router and run the WDS (http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-227.html)
3. Get a something labelled as repeater/range extender (http://www.tp-link.in/products/?categoryid=1247)
Click to expand...

Forget about a high gain antenna - Not worth the hassle
Repeaters are cheap nay super cheap - just around 1K a pop, Just get one of those and plonk it somewhere midway - They work reasonably well altough LAN throughput over them drops to half (which is not really an issue unless you are trying to transfer big files from the remote corner of the house)
If you have an old router lying, check if it supports dd-wrt/openwrt , that would do the trick as well
 
Access point maintains throughput but requires a wire back to the original router.

A repeater does not require a wire, it just rebroadcasts the signal but as a consequence halves throughput.
 
Final best option will be to get a more powerful router. All the rest will be just experiments.

I have ended up wasting time and money on each option you have listed and unless you go for a enterprise class system (Dumb Access Points connected over LAN to a Controller unit), you end up configuring multiple devices, lose on bandwidth/ speed, cant get streaming to work well, UPNP & DLNA issues in case you use that as well. Data transfers slow down a lot too.

The repeater is a simple DIY option, but speeds suffer notably if you try anything apart from regular net browsing.
 
axeman said:
I have ended up wasting time and money on each option you have listed and unless you go for a enterprise class system (Dumb Access Points connected over LAN to a Controller unit), you end up configuring multiple devices, lose on bandwidth/ speed, cant get streaming to work well, UPNP & DLNA issues in case you use that as well. Data transfers slow down a lot too.
Click to expand...

It's not that difficult to build a quasi enterprise solution at a low cost
I use a mid-end router DIR850L as the controller unit and a bunch (3) old routers (a cheap D Link, an old Linksys and an airport express) collected over the years as dumb access points at different floors and outdoor- The wiring was the existing 4 pair cables running in the house for the phone wiring
I get a solid 40-80 mbps across the house (which I am happy with as it suffices for my needs- which are rather extensive)

Repeaters as you rightly said are a simple solution but it is much more effective than you seem to be giving it credit for - I have helped a lot of friends with this 5 minute solution .. The reduced throughput on the wireless LAN is still (30-35 mbps) enough and more for media streaming
Large File transfers over WLAN are anyway typically not required
 
superczar said:
The reduced throughput on the wireless LAN is still (30-35 mbps) enough and more for media streaming
Click to expand...
With a laptop that is dual stream.

With a mobile which is single stream it will be half as much.

Good enough for youtube ? yes. Or sd broadcasts.

problems start when more than one person wants to stream at the same time. That really is the distinction whether to go with a repeater or access point. Just web browsing was fine earlier on, video is so common today.

Think future.
 
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It may sound funny but I would suggest you to try Windsurfer for once. Easy DIY it is. I have had this old junk UTStarcom ADSL router form BSNL and I put the windsurfer over it definately felt the difference. Then this DIY lead me to further DIYs and I finally made a 18 directors and damn the range was amazing. I could see my signals even from a distance of 200 meters or more. I wont suggest you to go the yagi though.
Otherwise as suggested by other you can always go with using an old router as repeater or a new range extender.
 
blr_p said:
With a laptop that is dual stream.

With a mobile which is single stream it will be half as much.

Good enough for youtube ? yes. Or sd broadcasts.

problems start when more than one person wants to stream at the same time. That really is the distinction whether to go with a repeater or access point. Just web browsing was fine earlier on, video is so common today.

Think future.
Click to expand...
For a nuclear family, if watching a Video over LAN, you'll almost always be watching it at the same time (and this is more than good for HD) .
At least for my use case, concurrent video streaming is several years away by which time 802.11 would have reached another incremental alphabet and 4x faster hardware would be 1/4th the cost :)
No point future proofing when it comes to technology

As for a AP vs a repeater, I would anyday pick a AP (Not just throughput but overall reliability) but keep in mind that running a free cable across the house ( if the house wiring does not have a redundant twisted pair) is usually very difficult for most
 
Do not buy those cheap chinese repaters which sell for $12 and such (usually under 1K on ebay India). I have one and although it does the job and works, it screws up the available bandwidth. I have tried in India where I had 2 Mbps speed (on main router) and through the repeater it was less than 0.5 Mbps, even worse most of the time. Constant fluctuations in signals and the strength / dB power of these repeaters is also miniscule.
Now I have a 15 Mbps connection which is full speed on main router but when I plugged in the repeater and did a speed test on that, I got less than 2 Mbps, and I was standing right in front of that repeater.
My roku also wasn't able to stream content properly and HD channels became blurry. SD channels worked though but with pauses sometimes.
 
Now I am getting slightly confused with all the recommendations.
No high gain antenna.
No playing around with firmware to radiate more power.

OK
What about buying a new TP link router and using WDS? The issue I see is that it will create a new SSID

1. There was an option listed about windsurfer - looks to be harmless enough for trial.
2. New access point is no-no, since I cannot run additional wire
3. Asus rtn12u d1 looks to be a good option based on the online feedbacks - however, can it act like a repeater (which means use the same SSID as the existing one of TP link)?
4. People are advising against the repeater option because of reduced throughput. How much reduction do you foresee? I have ~10 mbps internet connection.
 
ssslayer said:
4. People are advising against the repeater option because of reduced throughput. How much reduction do you foresee? I have ~10 mbps internet connection.
Click to expand...
The theoretical reduction is 50%
A decent repeater like the DIR-505 should get you quite close to that number
Check the throughput on your existing router by standing near it and 1/2 it
Any wired connections that you may have will continue to work at the original throughput
 
Reduction of throughput is often too simplified when they say by 50%. Why they say so is because now there is a perpetual air time hog in the AP to AP traffic. It may or may not have a significant effect on your overall throughput. It depends on how much traffic is traversing the AP-AP air link and how much air time it needs to serve those requests (insert RTS/CTS, client power v/s AP power, etc CCIE level mumbo jumbo here).

If someone can explain that in better low-level way, I'll be glad. I used to design and implement WiFi projects and often assisted OPs on Sev1 issues. Now I don't do WiFi stuff anymore. Forgot the details.
 
For simplification its probably fair to say that it would add another 10% overhead so say 40% of the original throughput

In real life, What I can tell you is that a typical HD stream (locally stored on a network server) works without a hitch (I use a repeater setup for my fallback ISP, Airtel 4g)
You dont want a repeater setup if you intend to transfer files locally or have multiple people streaming videos concurrently (like blr_p already pointed)
If its a one person setup with an ISP speed up to 10 mbps, it does fit the bill
 
Please forgive me if it appears I am acting daft, but why should internet speed be reduced by 50%?
I can understand the bit about throughput reduction. Which means my WifiLAN (150 mpbs capability) will get reduced to 75 mbps, when accessing through this repeater.
But why would the internet speed suffer?
 
Okay tell me what's the harm in getting a tomato/dd wrt/open wrt supported router which already has high gain antennas and with custom firmware you could push the limits.
Better than managing multiple APs hassle just for home use.
 
itspriyank said:
Okay tell me what's the harm in getting a tomato/dd wrt/open wrt supported router which already has high gain antennas and with custom firmware you could push the limits.
Better than managing multiple APs hassle just for home use.
Click to expand...
Wifi routers that already come with high gain antennas are pretty expensive. Not much inclined to spend that money. If you can show me cheap ones ... I may consider. (drkrack has suggested a good one, I believe)

WRT can be done on my existing TP Link too, but I have no idea whether it will really increase the usable range. Plus it is working right now, I don't wish to encounter a possibility of bricking it.

A new TP Link router can be had for about 800-900 to act as a bridge using WDS, but as I said earlier - my apprehension is that it will create a new SSID. And then I will have roaming issues. Has anyone tried doing this? Can we use the same SSID in this case?


BTW, yesterday night I did some signal strength measurements:
Right next to router: 36 dBm
Most of the places: 60-80 dBm
Problem locations: 80-90 dBm
 
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