Creative solutions for poor Wireless coverage

[John Gray]

I am looking for practical solutions to the following problem.

In a Grade II listed building there is an internal corridor with thick stone walls.
There is a room each side of the corridor, one with a BT Home Hub 5 at the top end, and another with a large 'boardroom' table near the centre, at the lower end of which we place an ordinary 2.4 GHz Wireless laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro).

We wish to get a decent wireless signal from the Home Hub 5 to the laptop, but this is severely attenuated by the stone walls - see Awful Diagram:

Code: Select all

+---------------------+      +---------------------+
|        pwr         ||      ||                    |
|                    ||      ||                    |
|       HH5          ||      ||                    |
|                    ||      ||                    |
|                    ||      ||       ------       |
|                    ||      ||       |    |       |
|                    ||      ||       |    |       |
|                    ||      ||       |    |       |
|                    ||      ||       |  L |       |
|                    ||      ||       |  a |    pwr|
|                    ||      ||       |  p |       |
|                    ||      ||       ------       |
|pwr                 ||      ||                    |
|                                                  |
|                    ||      ||                    |
|                    ||      ||                    | 
+---------------------+--  --+---------------------+

The door into each room is near the bottom.

Homeplugs used to work when the router was a Home Hub 3, but the new Home Hub 5 does NOT play nicely with them, causing router broadband line drops and re-establishing (we think).
Ethernet cable wiring is NOT an option (listed building).
The 5 GHz signal from the Home Hub 5 is attenuated even more than its 2.4 GHz signal.

As far as I see it, I have two options to improve the wireless coverage:
1) a Wireless Range Extender located in the pwr socket at the bottom left-hand side of the diagram. Whether this would penetrate the walls any better, I don't know.
2) a highly-directional, supposedly external, Wireless Access Point pointing through the two doors near the bottom of the diagram into the main room with the laptop. We could, at a pinch, even move the table and laptop down to give 'line of sight' for the laptop. But no PoE, please, for the WAP!

I have tried a TP-Link "Archer T2UH AC600 High Gain Dual Band USB Adapter" instead of the internal Realtek wireless facility, and that does give a better signal strength (seen on Acrylic WiFi program) in the 2.4 GHz band, about -56 dB instead of -67 dB, but the connection with the router still drops occasionally.

Bright but cheap ideas welcomed!

[Rudi]

Hi John,

This is really just a as I have no experience with this tech...and I don't know the costs involved.
Have you investigated Powerline networking?

- Powerline networking: what you need to know
- Helpdesk Challenge – how do I increase my home wi-fi signal through thick walls?

[John Gray]

Powerline is a synonym for homeplugs, used preferentially in the US, I'm afraid...

[Rudi]

Argh...shows my experience with this!

[Leif]

I have a BT Hub 5 used in conjunction with a BT Extender Flex 500 which appear to work very nicely together. I picked up the Extender for about twenty quid - try and borrow one to try if you want to test drive it first.

[BobH]

What are the ceilings made of? Do the stone walls penetrate the space above the ceilings? Would it be possible to locate the primary router in the ceiling of the room on the left and another in the ceiling of the room on the right?

[Claude]

We have a Linksys (Belkin) RE4000W Wireless Range Extender, plugged in 3 rooms away from the router. It gives us full coverage in all the rooms downstairs as well as the BBQ fireplace and beyond down the back. Didn't cost me a thing since my daughter bought it.

[StuartR]

I bought a Netgear EX7000 wireless range extender to try to improve the wireless coverage in my house. It provides such a good wireless signal that I was able to completely disable WiFi from my BT home hub and just use the single wireless access point.

[John Gray]

What are the ceilings made of? Do the stone walls penetrate the space above the ceilings? Would it be possible to locate the primary router in the ceiling of the room on the left and another in the ceiling of the room on the right?

Unfortunately the rooms we used are simply borrowed - the router and its position are a 'given'.
Since it is (at least!) a two-storey building, the walls will extend up to the top of the first floor (your 'second' floor!) at least.

I presume the reported success of range extenders by several chaps is because they produce a stronger signal than the original router (using a different SSID/network name, and different channel?), so it is really a question of which one might best be able to punch through the stone walls.

[StuartR]

Certainly the range extender that I bought has a MUCH better range (and ability to go through walls) than the BT Home Hub 5

[John Gray]

As an interim measure, I will be trying this wireless adapter next Thursday.

The customer reviews on Amazon UK of the various range extenders seem very polarised - some say a particular one is brilliant, and others say that it is rubbish. Doesn't seem to matter which one you pick!

[StuartR]

I wouldn't recommend buying any WiFi device that doesn't support 802.11ac - this is the latest version of the standard and it's much faster than 802.11n

Looking at reviews on amazon.co.uk I'd suggest going for one of these...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-SuperSpeed ... 015Z8EWGY/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-Archer ... 00TEYAN2S/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[StuartR]

If you're thinking of a range extender then there are a number of different ways to use it.

1. You could simply run an Ethernet cable to a second Wireless Access Point. This can then offer the same SSID and password as the existing WiFi, on a different channel. You don't need to buy a device advertised as a Wireless Extender to do this, just a cheaper Wireless Access Point.
2. A device sold as a range extender can connect to your existing WiFi and then rebroadcast it on a different channel. This avoids the need to run an Ethernet cable if you have a location suitable for this.
3. You can offer a different SSID from the extender, so that your laptop can see what device it has connected to.

Alternatively you can buy a more powerful Wireless adapter for your PC, as you mentioned in your latest post.

[John Gray]

After trying a high-gain wireless adapter (little better than the laptop's internal one) I am now using a wireless extender via line-of-sight (see original diagram), by moving both table and laptop down. This produces a better signal strength than the original BT Business Hub 5, but at the expense of a maximum of half the throughput. I haven't yet found a way to get it to transmit on a different channel. There are huge numbers of transmitters on channels 1, 6 and 11 (but with low signal strengths) so I shall try to go for 13.

[StuartR]

If it's a fairly fast broadband link then you'll probably not notice the reduced throughput much.

[John Gray]

I am more concerned about the interference on the same channel (which appears to be chosen identically).
I may turn it into a WAP...