Wireless drops over hallway

Simon84uk

Simon84uk

Simon84uk

Associate
Joined
25 May 2011
Posts
20
Location
Southampton, UK
Hi All,

I'm having very little luck solving a wireless signal problem I'm having at home at the moment. Essentially we're getting very poor signal in the bedroom, keeps on dropping in and out. Showing 0-1 bars or searching. I know the bars aren't a great unit of measure, but it's an indication at least.

I took a tape measure and estimated that my pillow is a gaping chasm of 2m from the router. However it's a treacherous journey of router > air (12") > wall (6") > hallway (50") > wall (6") > air (18") > me in bed. We live in a bungalow, so all on same level. I know it's the walls, but maybe there's something I can do?

Originally we had the poor-to-average very poor BT HomeHub 4, and I wasn't expecting this to do a lot really. Done the job for the most part. That kind of reached to kitchen and conservatory and as soon as I got on the patio it was teetering between 0-1 bar.

I have recently purchased a D-Link DIR-880L ac1900 router. In the theory it would overcome those whole two metres, but although infinitely better elsewhere in the house won't give me a reliable signal in bed. The kitchen, conservatory, patio all now at full bars, even 75% way down garden it's still only just dropping to two-bars.

My partner has an iPhone 5S and myself a HTC One-M8, I have tried the n/ac @ 5Ghz and n @ 2.4Ghz. Getting much the same result on both devices. The original point in the router was to try and get the Xbox 360 wireless better in the bedroom so I could stream my Plex HTPC to it. But I ended up using ethernet powerline adapters that I was originally running from the router to HTPC originally, but now on a 10m Cat6.

Is there anything I can do to boost the signal in the bedroom? I'm kind of thinking only real next option is to get something like the TP-Link TL-WPA4220. Wifi access point and powerline ethernet. Same as in this kit, but can be bought on it's own (~£35).

YOUR BASKET
1 x TP-Link 300Mbps AV500 WiFi Powerline Extender Starter Kit (TL-WPA4220KIT) £69.98
Total : £78.68 (includes shipping : £7.25).



I'm just a bit reluctant to keep pumping too much more money into the network setup, until I've seen if there's any other suggestions and at least asked the friendly guru's on here if there's any other options?


Many thanks,
Simon
 
Any chance of a map of your current setup? Bit confused here, so do you have a long ethernet cable running to the bedroom? If not then replace "ethernet cable" in the next paragraph with the homeplugs you have lying around.

As a "free" option you could reuse HH4 as a second router, and stick it in the bedroom and hook it up to the ethernet cable, although I'm not sure if the HH4 will like that. Another option is to use the HH4 as the main router again, and stick the D-Link into the bedroom, where it should be ok to use as a second router and gives you the option to turn DHCP off. This way you'll have two access points, one from where the internet comes in, and another on the other side of the cable.
 
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Hi,

Thanks for the very fast reply. I knocked this up quick, hopefully you can see what I mean by it now (should have drawn a chasm in the hallway in hindsight)...



The 10m ethernet cable goes from the D-Link to the Switch on the AV stand. The powerline goes from the D-Link to the bedroom straight into the Xbox. I tried to keep as many electrical devices away from the router as I could, hence why everything is in/near the AV cabinet.

I do like what you say about using another router off the powerline adapter, I'm sure I can find something to do the job. Very good idea indeed! I very much doubt the HH4 can have the DHCP turned off like you say, so will see if I can find anything else about.

I'm not opposed to spending money on it, don't get me wrong. So being "free" isn't an issue, I just want to make sure I get something that will fix the signal problem this time :)

Do you have any suggestions as to what would serve the purpose of a second access point? Going to be some loss over powerline so don't think I'm going to need ac speeds here necessarily. I feel buying that TP-Link powerline one will be blocked by a lot of things and will be down low, so probably do need something I can wallmount or sit on the dresser with the Xbox and TV.


Thanks again,
Si
 
Looks like the cheapest and easiest way is to add a wireless access point to the powerline in the bedroom.

I used this for a similar situation and it did the job just fine, but there's probably better options out there now: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-025-TP&groupid=46&catid=1596

You can then connect the xbox to the second router via cable, and the wireless on it with the same name and security settings as the main router, just make sure they are on different wireless channels.
 
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The more things using your wifi the less mb's you will get even if your laptop is beside the router your mb's will still go down by half (even if it is the only thing using the wifi) if using wireless. What you need is a booster and put it in the room that the signal is lowest but don't put it in the same room as the router as it can cause problems with it. Sometimes they are called Range Extender
 
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I appreciate the more devices using the network the slower the speeds as it gets shared, however I don't believe it affects the signal strength of the router.

I'll possibly look into getting some software/tools to measure it all so I have some metrics to work with at a later date. I'm not too worried about the speed to an extent for now, just getting a reliable "strong" signal about as far as my 1yo can throw from my router.

For now the second router or range extender seem like good ideas. I'll do some research into these, I do like the control panel of the D-Link one, but may be worth getting a different manufacturer so I don't get them confused. Thanks for the suggestion of that TP-Link one, will look at this first. I don't fully understand the range extenders, so need to read up on that too. Whether they pull from an ethernet port or wireless I don't know enough yet.

I'll post back after some reading and thought and see what you guys think if that's ok.


Thanks again for the help,
Simon
 
Hi,

I know you said bungalow but do you have any neighbours nearby?

First I would use a free app called 'inSSIDer' from their website (.com) ideally on a laptop or other Windows portable device so you can move around your property to see what signals are being picked up.

If you don't have a less congested wifi channel then I would test moving the router to the hall just outside the lounge door.

Personally, as you're in a bungalow what I would do is run cat6/cat6a to all the rooms. Something like the following;

6x Ethernet (yes 6, come to that later) from router to loft and back down to a hall cupboard or a small wall mountable network cabinet in a room you wont mind seeing it, perhaps the gaming rig room.

Patch panel at above location

Now depending on whether the lounge tv must be in its present corner or whether it could go to the opposite corner so it would be back to back with the gaming rig wall. You could then take 6 (for behind lounge tv) or 10 x Ethernet from patch panel through loft and down either one wall or two walls depending on siting of lounge tv.

8x Ethernet from patch panel to xbox bedroom. I would wall mount a tv above the xbox and put 2x Ethernet behind tv plus a brush plate. Below xbox at normal socket height 2x Ethernet plus another brush plate connecting to the first. Now the other 4x Ethernet, well you may as well put those through the wall to the other side since most the work has been done getting them thus far. If the room on the other side is a bedroom I would do the same as the xbox bedroom and split the 4x Ethernet to be 2 at tv height and 2 at normal height with a brush plate next to each.

So, from a possible 3, maybe 4 vertical wall chases you could have the switch and nas located with the patch panel somewhere discreet. You could loose the powerline adapters. You could place a wireless access point, something like a D-Link DAP-1665 at any ethernet socket without it being encumbered by powerline performance. Alternatively, once you have the central patch panel feeding Ethernet to the loft you could run an Ethernet anywhere to mount a PoE ceiling mounted WAP.

Oh I mentioned 6 Ethernet from the router at the start of this, well those are, 3 for redundancy in case the switch falls over, or spares if you outgrow the switch or you wanna move and not leave a switch behind. 1 of course to connect to the switch. 1 can be connected to the phone socket to connect phone line(s) to patch panel. This then enables any data socket to be used as a phone socket, via a patch cable between desired ports on the patch panel and a small adapter plugged into the desired data socket. The last Ethernet cable is just intended as a spare.

Whilst considering that I would also consider aerial requirements, perhaps running an aerial cable from lounge to patch panel location and from there to any room you might want to distribute sky to from the return feed on the longe sky box. Also you could run some shotgun aerial cable from the loft to any other rooms that have tv's with plenty of spare cable in the loft so you could then run it from the loft to the sky dish with a suitable LNB to connect the number of aerial cables.
 
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Are there any electrical devices that are always powered on near your bed when you're in that room?

Tea-maids,snazzy alarm clocks,anything that could be interfering with the wireless signal?

Where are the radiators?
 
Hi,

thenewoc said:
I know you said bungalow but do you have any neighbours nearby?

First I would use a free app called 'inSSIDer' from their website (.com) ideally on a laptop or other Windows portable device so you can move around your property to see what signals are being picked up.

If you don't have a less congested wifi channel then I would test moving the router to the hall just outside the lounge door.
...
Click to expand...

Yes, although detached there's neighbours either side and across the road from us. Thanks for the suggestion, I will look into this, as I know I'm picking up about 2-3 SSID's other than my own from my gaming pc. I did change between "choose best channel" option to a few specific ones (1, 3, 11 I think I tried). But this has got me thinking, there is the baby monitor in the bedroom which is on overnight so need to check the frequency and channel of this also.

thenewoc said:
...
Personally, as you're in a bungalow what I would do is run cat6/cat6a to all the rooms. Something like the following;

6x Ethernet (yes 6, come to that later) from router to loft and back down to a hall cupboard or a small wall mountable network cabinet in a room you wont mind seeing it, perhaps the gaming rig room.

Patch panel at above location

Now depending on whether the lounge tv must be in its present corner or whether it could go to the opposite corner so it would be back to back with the gaming rig wall. You could then take 4 or 8 x Ethernet from patch panel through loft and down either one wall or two walls depending on siting of lounge tv.

8x Ethernet from patch panel to xbox bedroom. I would wall mount a tv above the xbox and put 2x Ethernet behind tv plus a brush plate. Below xbox at normal socket height 2x Ethernet plus another brush plate connecting to the first. Now the other 4x Ethernet, well you may as well put those through the wall to the other side since most the work has been done getting them thus far. If the room on the other side is a bedroom I would do the same as the xbox bedroom and split the 4x Ethernet to be 2 at tv height and 2 at normal height with a brush plate next to each.

So, from a possible 3, maybe 4 vertical wall chases you could have the switch and nas located with the patch panel somewhere discreet. You could loose the powerline adapters. You could place a wireless access point, something like a D-Link DAP-1665 at any ethernet socket without it being encumbered by powerline performance. Alternatively, once you have the central patch panel feeding Ethernet to the loft you could run an Ethernet anywhere to mount a PoE ceiling mounted WAP.

Oh I mentioned 6 Ethernet from the router at the start of this, well those are, 3 for redundancy in case the switch falls over, or spares if you outgrow the switch or you wanna move and not leave a switch behind. 1 of course to connect to the switch. 1 can be connected to the phone socket to connect phone line(s) to patch panel. This then enables any data socket to be used as a phone socket, via a patch cable between desired ports on the patch panel and a small adapter plugged into the desired data socket. The last Ethernet cable is just intended as a spare.
...
Click to expand...

If it were my property then I would have wired it by now, sadly we're renting it so don't want to drill anything really. We're in a position to start looking to buy at end of next month, so this will 100% be the route going forward. Planning on running a few Cat6a lines through the house with a spare in case of failure, will probably start another thread with a floorplan and get you guru guys opinions before I start pulling up floorboards. Re: the AV, it kind of has to be that corner as it's the only one which doesn't catch the sun sadly (silly very reflective plasma screen). I could move the AV stuff to a rack mount in the another corner with a long HDMI from the amp, but might be a bit excessive for now. But would solve the young'uns overwhelming need to touch/press/whack/fiddle with my AV toys as It would be in a locked cabinet.

thenewoc said:
...
Whilst considering that I would also consider aerial requirements, perhaps running an aerial cable from lounge to patch panel location and from there to any room you might want to distribute sky to from the return feed on the longe sky box. Also you could run some shotgun aerial cable from the loft to any other rooms that have tv's with plenty of spare cable in the loft so you could then run it from the loft to the sky dish with a suitable LNB to connect the number of aerial cables.
Click to expand...

I wasn't thinking of this initially, but I'm very glad you raised it! This is definitely something I need to consider for the new house.


Thanks,
Simon
 
APM said:
Are there any electrical devices that are always powered on near your bed when you're in that room?

Tea-maids,snazzy alarm clocks,anything that could be interfering with the wireless signal?

Where are the radiators?
Click to expand...

The only devices in the room are two phone chargers, one kindle charger and a lamp either side of the bed. But possibly one killer could be the baby monitor, which is sat right next to the xbox on the dresser.

On the cabinet the router sits on top of there is just itself, the modem, but a cordless phone which again thinking about it could be an issue as it sits between the router and the hallway wall.

The radiators in the lounge are on the walls perpendicular to the front of house (where router is). The radiator in the bedroom runs parallel to the length of the bed starting about 3 feet from the hallway wall.


Thanks,
Simon
 
What frequency? 5 or 2.4 gig? Try switching to 2.4 if not on it already.

There are very helpful (free) Wifi apps that you can use to survey your house and create a heatmap. As others said - you need to be selecting channels that provide the most free air to neighbours. Most of the 802.11n 20mhz channels overlap so you'll find there are only ~ 3 that provide complete isolation without some degree of interference. ac is better in that regard, but range generally poorer.
 
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Simon84uk said:
I appreciate the more devices using the network the slower the speeds as it gets shared, however I don't believe it affects the signal strength of the router.

I'll possibly look into getting some software/tools to measure it all so I have some metrics to work with at a later date. I'm not too worried about the speed to an extent for now, just getting a reliable "strong" signal about as far as my 1yo can throw from my router.

For now the second router or range extender seem like good ideas. I'll do some research into these, I do like the control panel of the D-Link one, but may be worth getting a different manufacturer so I don't get them confused. Thanks for the suggestion of that TP-Link one, will look at this first. I don't fully understand the range extenders, so need to read up on that too. Whether they pull from an ethernet port or wireless I don't know enough yet.

I'll post back after some reading and thought and see what you guys think if that's ok.


Thanks again for the help,
Simon
Click to expand...
I was told this info by a bt engineer, he also said if someone is using the same channel as your router is it can cause your line to drop or slow it down if they live close to you he did not say how close
 
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Simon84uk said:
The only devices in the room are two phone chargers, one kindle charger and a lamp either side of the bed. But possibly one killer could be the baby monitor, which is sat right next to the xbox on the dresser.

On the cabinet the router sits on top of there is just itself, the modem, but a cordless phone which again thinking about it could be an issue as it sits between the router and the hallway wall.

The radiators in the lounge are on the walls perpendicular to the front of house (where router is). The radiator in the bedroom runs parallel to the length of the bed starting about 3 feet from the hallway wall.


Thanks,
Simon
Click to expand...


Worth a check of performance with the baby monitor powered off completely maybe,if you do get a major improvement then move the monitor to the other side of the bed and see what happens.

:)
 
Is the router placed in an open space? Or is it inside or under a cabinet or something?

Raising my router off the top of my desk by just 20cm helped increase signal. Now I keep a box under my router and make sure there's nothing around it.
 
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Simon84uk said:
Snip
Click to expand...

Hi,

No worries, I can see why you had to use the powerline adapters now. I think if it were me, considering your not planning on staying there much longer, I would drill a small hole (with suitable diligence for electrical safety) from the lounge into the hall and place the router there. Before you do that I would test having the router somewhere outside the lounge door just to make sure there is enough of an improvement.

or

Opt for a WAP and connect it to the powerline where the xbox is.

I've still got a couple of months to go to finish the refurb on our house here so I'll upload a few pics into a new thread when I'm done.
 
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Thanks all for the replies.

I have tried the WiFi analyser app, what a fantastic bit of kit!!! Thanks for the suggestion.

Essentially the findings were ...

(Sorry about size of pics, does anyone know how to scale these in BBCode?)

By router:
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-28-07.png
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-28-11.png


By gaming room (seems to pick up two other networks intermittently... all channels have some bleed over):
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-16-38.png
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-18-46.png
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-36-53.png


In bedroom:
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-17-38.png
Screenshot_2015-01-26-09-17-48.png


So it appears to reduce (as expected) per wall, I took the readings again last night around 22:30 and were much the same as during the day. The baby monitor seemed not to affect the signal, maybe creates some noise very close to it but didn't pick up any changes.

I've pretty well decided now to get the second WAP, then whatever new problems the next house presents I'll have a second point somewhere in the house. I'm really tempted by that TP-Link one suggested earlier and for £23 can't really go wrong. But with "future proofing" in mind, should I get an .ac one if I'm going to have Cat6's throughout the house? Not that my phones/laptops do much more than peruse the interwebs.


Cheers,
Si
 
Then I guess you have pretty thick walls then, doesn't seem to be anything obvious that could be significantly interfering with your signal.

If you're going to have Cat6 around the house, then I would be tempted to get an ac one too, but if it's mainly for the bedroom, then perhaps you could get away with just n. I suspect all the devices you currently have that will use the high speed mostly is already within range of the D-Link anyway.
 
I'd swap the powerline adapter next to your xbox for one with a built in wifi access point will work perfectly and not need yet another device pluging in!

We had a similar problem with wifi in our bedroom and in the end I came to the conclusion the human body absorbs wifi better than any wall known to man. Sat in bed with my phone with back to the wall (router the otherside) gave intermittent terrible signal turn round and face the other way it worked perfectly! Have now moved the router further away but at an angle and it works much better which I found very odd!
 
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