Should I get a top notch router? (Wifi)

Bes

Bes

Bes

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Location
Melbourne
Hi

I've posted on this before, but I'm still struggling and read mixed things about the effectiveness of high- end routers for wifi on the 'net...

I am using a BT HH5 at the moment, and the wifi is frankly a bit of a nightmare.

floorplan.png


As you can see from my home's floor plan (ground floor in case it matters), it's not a particularly big flat (London living, y0!), but it is quite long (14m) and narrow (5m), with brick walls in between each room, meaning the wifi signal does not penetrate well throughout the house. Currently I have:

  • HH5 in the lounge
  • BT Homeplug wifi plugs in:
  • Bedroom 1
  • Bedroom 2 (Study)
  • Kitchen

This works 'OK' but I get very poor speeds in some parts of the house and dropouts, etc. quite often. Radio on Sonos is almost unusable, as the homeplugs seem to experience 'micro dropouts'. The wiring in the house is pretty old (There are no proper circuit breakers or anything), so I expect the homeplugs are suffering as a result.

I have tried moving the HH5 to where the bend in the hall is (outside the bedrooms) but I struggle to get a good signal when moving away from the HH where there are walls in the way.

Note: I cannot just run LAN cables around the place, as I have stripped wooden floors throughout, and I don't want to lift/ damage boards. Most of them are well nailed down.
Also I don't want to use repeaters/ boosters, as they halve effective bandwidth.

My plan is to try putting a new high- powered router up on a high shelf in Bedroom 2 (Study) and running cables under the floor to the telephone socket which is in the hall. I can do this as the cable is narrow enough to push between the floor boards, and there are a couple of liftable ones, luckily. I am hoping this might improve things, and will allow me to wire my server to the router directly. Do you think this would improve things significantly? Is there anything else that could be done?

The only other option I see is to drill through the external walls and cable down the side return, (I can bury the cable under the gravel so it would look OK) and popping a LAN point into each room. This is going to be messy and expensive though, and will still require multiple access points.

Thanks!
 
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Depends how big your house is. I have a TP-Link Archer VR900 in my under-stairs cupboard and get a nearly full 5 GHz signal two floors up on my phone and laptop. It also works fine in the garden.

I've never really had good experiences with ISP routers, I doubt I'll ever use one again.
 
It is 14x5m with brick walls (1 standard housebrick thick) between every room
 
I'd run an AP in the hall way near the front and one in the kitchen, which may also prove useful in the garden (if you have one).
 
ov_sjo said:
I'd run an AP in the hall way near the front and one in the kitchen, which may also prove useful in the garden (if you have one).
Click to expand...

I do have a garden, yes, it's about 50ft long, so coverage there will be an issue too, I am sure.

The question is wiring between the 2 APs.

I do happen to have 2x HH5 routers lying around. I would assume I would need to hard-wire between them rather than being able to do anything funky with configuring one to bridge to the other?
 
2.4 ghz will penetrate those walls better than 5 ghz. If you have them though, give it a test. Just get a long cable and test it all before you commit to any structured cabling.

Ideally you want to hard wire access points.
 
ov_sjo said:
2.4 ghz will penetrate those walls better than 5 ghz. If you have them though, give it a test. Just get a long cable and test it all before you commit to any structured cabling.

Ideally you want to hard wire access points.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Being in a very built up part of London, 2.4 Ghz is a busy place to be though! I am hoping a new router might put out enough power over 5GHz to get through those walls. I am currently on my 2.4 GHz band and sat in bedroom 2 on the floorplan. Router is in the lounge. Signal is poor, lot of drop outs, so the HH5 just seems to be quite underpowered from a wifi perspective.

In any case, in terms of hard wiring between them, that's going to be the tricky bit... I am going to have to either look at floor board removal, or pinning a flat cable somewhere, which is not what I want.

well, I will have a play around before I commit to nearly £200 on a new router!
 
On your floorplan, which one is bedroom 1 and 2 :p?

Is it not possible to perhaps maybe run the cable across the edge of the ceiling instead? Although that may require you to drill holes through the internal walls to keep it tidy.
 
Orcvader said:
On your floorplan, which one is bedroom 1 and 2 :p?

Is it not possible to perhaps maybe run the cable across the edge of the ceiling instead? Although that may require you to drill holes through the internal walls to keep it tidy.
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Ha sorry! Bedroom 2 is the one at the back of the house (Smaller one)

I've done a quick scan, and tweaked the channels I am on for some devices according to the reccs the apple diagnostics tool gives. I have alternated it so rooms go 11,2,11,2 to prevent too much interference.

There is a picture rail that runs along the top of the wall, so I may try gluing a flat Ethernet cable to that if I have to, if not, I may look at removing skirting boards rather than lifting floor boards.

Seems like just buying a high- power router would be a hell of a lot easier if it will work well!
 
There's only so much a high powered router can do however, as they have to stay within a certain limit.

I would try the HH5 in the study first to see how well it does.

If it doesn't do any better, then keep the HH5 in the reception (preferably by the wall next to bedroom 1), and somehow get a dedicated cable running to the kitchen to an access point. You can try your spare HH5 first, but could also try the Unifi AC Lite/LR, I found them to have very good range.

I would also keep the channels apart from each access point in multiples of 5, so for example if the HH5 is on channel 1, the second one will be on channel 6, third will be on channel 11, etc. This would be more effective and will ensure they won't interfere with each other.
 
Bes said:
Ha sorry! Bedroom 2 is the one at the back of the house (Smaller one)

I've done a quick scan, and tweaked the channels I am on for some devices according to the reccs the apple diagnostics tool gives. I have alternated it so rooms go 11,2,11,2 to prevent too much interference.

There is a picture rail that runs along the top of the wall, so I may try gluing a flat Ethernet cable to that if I have to, if not, I may look at removing skirting boards rather than lifting floor boards.

Seems like just buying a high- power router would be a hell of a lot easier if it will work well!
Click to expand...

You shouldn't be using channel 2. On 2.4ghz, use 1, 6 and 11 only.
 
Orcvader said:
There's only so much a high powered router can do however, as they have to stay within a certain limit.

I would try the HH5 in the study first to see how well it does.

If it doesn't do any better, then keep the HH5 in the reception (preferably by the wall next to bedroom 1), and somehow get a dedicated cable running to the kitchen to an access point. You can try your spare HH5 first, but could also try the Unifi AC Lite/LR, I found them to have very good range.

I would also keep the channels apart from each access point in multiples of 5, so for example if the HH5 is on channel 1, the second one will be on channel 6, third will be on channel 11, etc. This would be more effective and will ensure they won't interfere with each other.
Click to expand...
I've tried the HH5 just outside the study door, as I didn't have a longer piece of telephone cable, and the result wasn't great... The living room was poorly served, as was the bedroom I sleep in. This was on the 5GHz channel though.
I will try again with everything on 2.4GHz.
 
Bes said:
Thanks. Being in a very built up part of London, 2.4 Ghz is a busy place to be though! I am hoping a new router might put out enough power over 5GHz to get through those walls.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't bet on it, attenuation of brick wall is about 4-12 dB stronger for 5 GHz than 2.4 Ghz signals. See table in link:

http://physics.stackexchange.com/qu...uencies-offer-greater-range-than-5ghz-routers

In other words, every brick wall reduces the strength of a 2.4 GHz signal by 75-98%, but for 5 GHz it's 90-99.9%.

Beamforming etc. mean in reality it's not as bad as this, but the laws of physics are not with you.

Edit: on top of that, the power limits of 5 GHz radios are a lot lower than 2.4 GHz, typically in the region of 12 dBm vs. 20 dBm (to use my Linksys E3000 as an example).
 
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Considering how thick your walls are I would concentrate more on the 2.4GHz coverage first before worrying about 5GHz... Unless you're willing to lay some cables across somehow. Seeing as you have 2 spare HH5s then I suppose you can have the main one in the living room (as close to the master telephone socket as possible) and then have cables running to the bedroom and study to the other two HH5s. Just make sure to disable DHCP and change the IPs on the other HH5s so it doesn't conflict with the main HH5.
 
I only have one spare HH5 (2 in total). I will try one at each end of the house to start with.

Thanks
 
Well the dual HH5 idea didn't work out so great.
I got a Ubiquiti and put that in the middle of the house. Problem pretty much solved. Fast wifi everywhere!

Thanks for the advice nonetheless :)
 
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