Update House WiFi

antant

Commendable
May 25, 2016
3
0
1,510
Hi,

we bought 2 years ago a town house with 3 floors/2.5 flats. We live in the flat upstairs, some other parts of my girlfriend's family, the co-owners, live in the flat on the ground-floor. This flat is connected to the half of the basement. The rest of the basement is another (small) flat, rented out to another family member (happy big family, haha!). Since all are family, we share since a while our wifi, the problem is the infrastructure is kind of heritage of when all lived in small individual flats.

With 5 adults, 2 still small kids (growing, and possible more in the future), 3 TVs with Netflix, a few laptops & mobile phones, a play station and my squeezebox music streaming system, our wifi reaches its limits. The main router is in the flat in the middle (ground floor), not optimal in the middle but on one side of the house, facing the garden. Still, in the garden, just behind one wall and only approx. 3m from this router away, music streaming (to a Raspberry Pi with a large external antenna-USB-dongle) stucks from time to time (increased already the buffer size), same to our kitchen, just upstairs from the "main router". The music server with the harddrive is upstairs in our flat, in a room in the opposite side of the house (I guess approx. 10m away, but through some walls), I know, not optimal. Wifi has with the laptops in the same room, our living room, also sometimes some hiccups, while it is usually fast and reliable (my laptop says right now in this room 63% reception). This is more or less the most far away from the main router. And I guess these hiccups mess up my music streaming... Not often, but they do occur.

The area to cover isn't that huge in the end, and I hope with a few smaller updates we can improve the whole wifi quite a bit. Here is what we have running at the moment:

- "Main router", connected to the world: An older Apple Airport Express. I guess this isn't optimal, since it has no external antennas. Here I see the best chance to improve. Maybe we can still use it as a repeater (already don't like its windows/mac only setup software...)

- As our TV is smart, but no wifi build in, I use an old TP-Link WR941ND as a receiver (not a standard function, I installed gargoyle on it). Since this is in the same room and more central then the music server, it is connected to this as well. 3 antennas is anyways better then the one antenna on the tiny pc which runs the server. This one could work as a repeater, but not really at the place it is now.

- An old Encore ENHWI-N router: Since I could not find an alternative firmware like DD-WRT for it to run it as a repeater, it is unplugged and probably of no use anymore.

- Recently got a Linksys E1200 "to throw away". Want to check if it is really defect, maybe get it running with DD-WRT as a repeater. Still to try out, otherwise garbage.

-> What's your thoughts?

I guess updating the main router with a modern router, with more antennas? Any ideas of a nice modern router for quite some traffic and larger area?
Some of the devices in the house could use the ac-standard, others only n. In the neighborhood are a couple of other networks (count 12 right now), but most of them weak, ours still the strongest. So I am not really afraid of too much interferences, saw busier spots.
Beside the main router update, I guess using as much as possible the existing devices as repeaters, if there are problems. Of course somewhere midway...
 
Any advice on a new main router, for our house with quite many devices (some ac, some n)?
Was reading a bit about routers, not 100% what would be the best. I guess beamforming, even though working only with ac, might be nice to have? Something like the Archer C8? Or is it worth to go a category higher, into AC1900 like Linksys EA6900 or D-Link DIR 880L?

PS: Managed to install DD-WRT on the old Linksys E1200, seems to run fine. Still having trouble configuring it as a repeater, but I guess I will figure this out...
 
You need to get network cable installed. The best implementation is to have multiple WIFI sources near where the people are. It MAY be possible to use the infrastructure that goes to the service area to tie these together. You need to research what kind of wiring is available.
 
Thanks for your answer, unfortunately wiring isn't that easy, no wiring of ethernet cables is in place (only some random phone plugs in some rooms, no idea where they go to).

Since the house isn't huge, per floor approx. 85 m², and 3 floors, and it is at the moment with an older router (only one! small Apple Express without external antennas!) not too bad covered, I would think a decent modern router and some repeater in the 2 other floors would do the job?