Extending Internet Range

[madman12]

Current situation, have one router (Billion 7800N) downstairs which means I struggle to get the full whack upstairs.

I do have an ethernet cable running from it up to my room upstairs however it is only one and it does not improve the wifi range issue for the likes of my laptop, busted ethernet port, my games consoles and smart phone.

I have tried playing around with the settings on the Billion namely the channel setting however anything other than channel 1 gives a lesser performance wifi wise even if it is the most congested channel. I assume that's due to the fact the higher the channel the higher the mhz so the less range the wifi will have.

So, my plan is to pick up a TP-Link TD-W8970 and connect that to the router downstairs via the ethernet cable in a cascading router set up detailed axxeon sticky'd post to boost wifi range and give me additional ethernet ports.

My query is whether that set up would be appropriate for my above situation? Would there be any downsides to such set up in regards to performance in both wireless and wired connections in comparison to another solution?

Thanks for reading and, hopefully, replying.

 

[bill001g]

The solution you propose is pretty much what every enterprise installation uses to increase wireless coverage. There is almost no downside to doing it this way.

First you do not want to run cascaded routers you want to run the second device as a AP. You will find tons of links on how to do it. You can run both devices are routers but it tends to make things like port forwarding and file sharing a pain.

You also want to use different radio channels on the 2 devices. Even though you do not get good signal from your main router it still will be enough signal to degrade the performance of the second device if they are on the same channels.

 

[madman12]

Thanks, I will look into the whole AP in a bit.

As far as changing the channels, would there be any specific channels you'd recommend. I believe that 1,6,9 and 11 are the only channels which do not overlap. Also would I be correct in assuming that the higher the channel the lower the range of the wifi signal but the stronger bandwidth as such? On that basis, seeing as I have 2 routers having one on channel 9 and 11 would be best to give the most wifi performance to the device closest to them.

 

[bill001g]

The difference in the frequencies of the channels is so small it is likely any range difference is undetectable. Between say 2.4g and 5g there is quite a difference but the difference between the lowest and highest channel in the 2.4g band is only about 60mhz. The amount of data transferred in a channel is in no way related to the radio frequency. It is based on how the data is encoded so a 802.11n signal will be the same no matter what radio channel you assign.

Channels 1,,6,11 are the only non overlapping but this also assumes you use 20mhz channels if you use 40mhz channels it is impossible to get 2 non overlapping since there is only 60mhz total and you can't fit 2 40mhz signals into 60mhz no matter what combination of channels you try.

Channels 9 and 11 overlap a lot so you are best off not using that combination.

 

[madman12]

9 and 11 were based off 9 being a non overlapping channel, in the case of 9 not being one then 6 and 11 would of been what I'd choose since channel 1 is often the most used. Even though the Billion is running on 20/40mhz mode as default, with so many other networks around me it most likely never goes into 40mhz mode anyway.

On another note, when would be an appropriate situation for a cascading router solution? (Curious)

 

[bill001g]

Only thing I have seen people say you would want cascade routers would be if you wanted to restrict access between the 2 networks. Because of the nat the users behind the first router can not get to the second user because of the nat. The reverse though is not prevented.

Maybe there are other reasons some people think it keeping different subnets is some advantage but since most consumer "routers" can't actually route between subnets it hard to say. In a large enterprise situation there are reasons but when you only have a small number of devices it tends to buy you nothing except make your life harder to get stuff to work.

 

[madman12]

Alright, thanks for your help. Once I get the TP Link router in I'll see about getting that sorted. Don't see any issues if it's as simple as it seems to set it up as an AP.