Setting up a wireless home-network with WiFi.

[Pratyay67]

I want to install a wireless home-network for my newly built house. The total square footage of my house is 1500 sq ft, (140 sq mt app), comprising of 3 floors, i.e a total living area of about 4500 sq ft. It has 5 bedrooms, 1 on the ground floor, and 2 on the 1st and 2nd floor each, at the extremities of each floor. There is a home office on the ground floor.
There will be 2 computers in the office, one in the ground floor bedroom, one in a 1st floor bedroom, and a laptop in a 2nd floor bedroom. Moreover there will be printers connected to the computers and laptops.
Also there will be mobiles, tablets, and other WiFi devices.
How to connect them all via WiFi? Also I want to have a guest network.
We hadn't planned about all these before, and it's very difficult to run wires all over the house, if not impossible; as the house is on the verge of completion.
I want suggestions on all these, i.e. types of routers (also number of routers ??), WAPs, print servers etc etc. I want to have WiFi coverage all over the house, at maximum speed, also with the minimum wiring possible.

 

[bobsilver]

To get adequate coverage you are more likely then going to need a router/wireless type and an access point. Although placing a single router in the middle floor will probably give you adequate coverage throughout the house you will want to split up the wireless load among multiple wireless bands to give you adequate throughput..

My recommendation for you would be this. If you can only use a single router (placed in the middle floor) look at the Netgear R8000 which is a 3 band router. It has 2 5ghz bands and 1 2.4 ghz band. This will allow for increased bandwidth throughput to handle all your devices. Now that said be sure that the majority of your devices have 5ghz capability.

Your other option would be to use a router in say the 1st floor and an AP in say the 3rd floor. This requires that you can get a cable or some other wired mean to the AP. If you cant run a cable Powerline may work for you to handle this. A good combination is using 2 Netgear R7000 routers. One in router mode and one in AP mode.

If you cant get a cable or powerline to connect the AP then your last option is to use a repeater. A repeater rebroadcasts the wireless signal although it does this with a different SSID. Top repeaters dont have a performance penalty if you have backhaul capability meaning that the repeater will use say the 2.4 band to connect to the router and the 5ghz band to connect to the devices. Look at the Netgear EX6200 and the Nighthawk EX7000.

Your simplest option (and maybe the best) is the 1st by using a triband Netgear R8000 router in the middle floor. This also assumes that's where your modem connection resides. If not then option 2 or 3 are what you should look at..

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Advisor

 

[Pratyay67]

Lets say I'll place the router in the middle floor, and run a powerline for the AP to the top floor. Then what about the ground floor? I mean, the ground floor is the one which will need most of my internet signal as it has 3 computers. Also, should I place the router roughly in the middle of the middle floor, or can it be placed anywhere in the middle floor?
There will be computers and laptops in the middle and top floors. The middle floor computer(desktop) will be used for HD streaming and online gaming. The top floor laptop will be used for browsing and printing jobs.
The ground floor computers will be used for work, for printing jobs mainly. One has suggested me to have a print server in the ground floor.
In this scenario, will the above setup be able to handle all these? For HD streaming and online gaming, I feel it's best to have a wired connection from the router to the computer, but that too, is a problem. So, it may need a very good wireless signal to handle the immense bandwidth HD streaming requires. Can that be done?
And what about the guest network?

 

[bobsilver]

Well if you are going to place the router in the middle floor Id start there and see what coverage you get. Again Id suggest a Triband like the R8000. Guest networks are functions within the routers. You just turn them on. Easy.


As for HD streaming you ideally want to have AC based clients. AC can stream HD fine. And yes having wired connections where you can would help.

Putting an AP on the top floor would be OK unless there is strong signal overlap with the middle floor. You are going to need to try it and see. Use a wifi tool like inSSIDer to check signal strengths and channel interference.

You are going to have to do this a step at a time and see how things go. Many factors impact wireless performance.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Advisor

 

[Pratyay67]

I took an overall tour of my new house, and I've got it figured. Correct me if I'm wrong at any place.
I'll ask the ISP to install a private gateway for my home. I think internet gateway is a modem with one port for incoming connection, and has more than one output ethernet ports (maybe I'm way too far from the right thing, let me know that). I'll install the gateway in the middle floor, and will connect three routers to it for each floor. For the middle floor, I'll run a wire from the router to the computer (in south bedroom), and will run another wire to the north bedroom for a WAP. For the top floor, I'll run wires from the router to the two bedrooms for a WAP in each.
On the ground floor, I'll run wires to the computers in the office from the router, and will run another wire to the bedroom for a WAP.
This will give me full network coverage, I think.
Is it okay?