Optimal wireless network setup for large house
 

Hi all. I'm moving into a large 3 storey stone house with a train caboose about 30 metres away that I'm going to turn into my office. The internet access currently comes into the basement and without re-running the ethernet cable (hard to do in a 130 year old stone house) it would be much easier to keep it there.

I need wireless access throughout the house and in the caboose. I currently only have one airport express, so I obviously need more wireless hardware. A wireless base station in the basement "sort of" gives internet access throughout the house but I need great access everywhere, including outside. I'm trying to figure out if buying an airport extreme and antenna is a better option, or an extreme and another express.

Does anyone have any experience with different antennas, or ideas about whether an antenna would be better or worse than bridging more expresses to extend the range?

Thanks a lot,
- Andrew.

Moving the base-station to the center of the area you want to get covered would be a good start.
Radio wave propagation is tricky stuff, if you find the right place, one station might be all it takes.

If it was my problem, I'd run an Ethernet cable to the top floor (drilling hammers are fun ;) ), then hook up a bi-quad antenna pointing downwards with a twist in the direction of the train caboose.

If wireless isn't optimal through all floors yet you don't want to try drilling through stone to run Ethernet, think about powerline networking (HomePlug) to bridge your network through your power outlets. I only use it to connect two wireless access points on opposite ends of the house, but powerline sure is faster and more reliable than all the hassle I went through trying to get a wireless repeater system working. Powerline probably won't get your network out to the caboose unless it's all within the same circuit; you'll need wireless to do that.

Check out macwireless.com. They have powerline network adapters, outdoor wireless equipment, directional antennas, boosters, etc.

Wireless routers and bridges. That will be your best bet. Stay as far away as possible from powerline installations because they are inherently interference prone (even more so that the 2.4GHz spectral range). A former chief engineer for the FCC, Dale Hadfield, is cited as saying that powerline installations are the absolute worst way to provide/implement broadband networks (I was fortunate enough to have him has a professor during my graduate days).

Do not go for any of that 802.11n garbage because the standard hasn't even been accepted yet. Wireless routers and bridges are your best bet. Going between floors, Cat5 would be best, but it can be done through directional patch antennas and others.

If it were me I'd run (outdoor rated) Cat5e out from the basement (either drill hole in stone wall or window casing) and back at each floor and then setup a Access Point at each entry. Any Access Point would work, but you could get more Airport Extreme Base Station at $199 a pop.
I setup a wireless network in a large mansion that was pre-wired but I installed the router in the basement where the highspeed came in and a same branded Access Point on each floor above and had great signal any where in the house. However, because the house was stone and had mable floor the signal from one floor was not useable on another. It was detectable but very week, about 10-20 on iStumbler.
FYI, I used all netgear equipment, a WPN824 Wireless Router and 2x WPN802 Wireless Access Points, each have MIMO (Multi-In Multi-Out Technology)

Thanks everyone for your input. I might reroute the cat5 from the fixed wireless dish into the main floor instead of the basement, but other than that if I'm running cables I want to do it right (being a nice house and all), and since time is money and so is cat5, I'll probably buy an airport extreme, and then keep buying expresses until I have the coverage I want. I like the airport express I have since it works nicely with iTunes and all that.

I've read some reviews on several of the antennae for the airport extreme, and I'm not convinced they're worth the money. Maybe I'll try building my own, or picking up a cheap one on eBay or something.

Was Mr. Hadfield speaking against broadband over powerlines to the home? I am not talking about that, so I am not arguing against him at all, and having read some of the issues with long-distance broadband over powerlines I can see his point.

But here I am talking about powerline networking within the home, which is a completely different story. Once again, I have encountered better speed and reliability using a hybrid powerline/wireless network within my home than I did with pure wireless. The success of powerline vs. wireless surely depends on the site and the original poster should be aware of all options to adapt the proper solution to his location.

Any implementation of broadband of powerlines either within or not within the home is essentially broadband over powerline. The inherent problems exist when pushing larger data rates over the existing powerlines. Picture your house as a skeleton of nothing more than the powerline wiring. What does that skeletal outline look like? A giant antenna, which is exactly what it acts like.

The reason we have not seen BPL become as popular as everyone had anticipated is become of this very problem. RF waves constantly bombard these lines because of their sheer size. However, I do see your point. I was just inferring that BPL is not the way to go for any large bandiwdth implementation. I'm sure that small, point to point local backhauls are acceptable given the scope of such a implementation, however; as a practicing consultant, I would never advise anyone to do so given the nature and characteristics of a powerline and its supporting grid.

If you use powerline stuff, try not to run into your neighbour ham operator in a dark and lonely place, things could get real ugly ;) .

It pollutes a really wide spectrum and is pretty nasty technology.

The head of the patent office also once said that it should be shut down, since everything that could be invented had already been. I'm sure somewhere there was a dinosaur telling his buddies, "Don't worry about that black goo, just go swimming!"

802.11n routers work great, and really do help in a lot of situations, both in range and in overall speed. Certainly worth a try. I've seen 80-100Mb throughput short range, and 2-8Mb in large office areas. Home powerline systems work reliably as long as you don't have split/isolated circuits, but are slow.

A new system that I have not tried but seems promising lets you connect to your home's cable TV system and use that to send the signal to another area. It's cheap. Fry's Electronics stocks it. I don't recall the name, but could look next time I go there.

No, you shouldn't try 802.11n because if you knew the inner workings of 802.11n, you would know that 802.11n is specifically designed to "hog" all of the network resources, especially when trying to use a 802.11b/g hybrid network. This is why the first draft of it was shot down by the IEEE.

As per this statement, I am unclear as to what point you are trying to establish. It makes no sense. Are you trying to insinuate that the former head engineer of the FCC does not know what he is talking about? I just have no idea what that statement means. Please be more clear in your following post.

I am saying that his position affords him no credibility, and cited a stupid statement from the head of another useless, bloated bureacracy as an example.

802.11n as it stands right now is a spectrum hog and can cause problems for nearby neighbors. It does solve the problem however, and if used where large coverage is needed, presumably nearby neighbors wouldn't be much of an issue.

I am unsure as to how you can say that the former FCC head engineer has no credibility. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Thats like saying General Douglas MacArthur has no military experience. I can see that your bias towards certain beliefs clouds your judgement. As a scientist, I hold true to no beliefs. I base my knowledge and judgement on facts and statistical evidence. I suggest you should so the same in this matter.

As per the 802.11n standard, you basically reiterated my concerns so, yes; I am in agreement.

When I questioned the statement, I was not questioning his credibility. I thought he was talking about long-haul WAN broadband over major trunk lines, and I've read some of those concerning articles too. I was questioning whether the faults of that powerline networking also applied to the type which is implemented at the LAN level within a home and is stated to have a maximum range of 300 meters. I can tell you that I get more interference from the radios on the city buses that pass by...it's very obvious. Yet powerline LAN doesn't seem to be impairing any of my other devices. Is there some kind of easy home test, short of a ham radio, that could identify whether the harmful interference is present or meaningful?

Exactly, his previous employment status doesn't mean he can't be wrong on this subject. I don't disbelieve him, but neither do I lend any credibility because of that former job.

Those are well proven to work reliably, so that can't even be argued. However they are slow, even slower than most internet speeds, so there is some penalty. But they do work.

I would ditch the apple wireless router. They have very limited range and expandability. I have a linksys router and a wireless bridge. This covers all 4 floors of my house with 90% signal or better. You can also use linksys routers to create secure bridges between buildings. i have a 2 buildings about 150 yards apart bridged this way at full strength.

I would have to disagree with your comments. I have had both Linksys Routers and now use an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station and would not say it has a very limited range at all. In my two storey house I get a better signal in all locations then I did with my Linksys WRT54G router.
As far as expandability, the only think I find limiting is the 1 only ethernet out port on the AEBS, but I use a switch anyway. I have more then 4 devices connected at time via ethernet so the Linksys needed to have a switch connected anyway.
Granted the new wireless router with MIMO and such have such a huge range and Apple has yet to update the Base Station line with that technology.

Thanks everyone for your comments, both on- and off-topic :) I'm now setting up the network at the house, and wonder about this potential setup: what if I have two airports, each attached via ethernet to my router? If the two airports' wireless ranges intersect slightly, can I bridge them together wirelessly?

I know this sounds rather strange ... let me try explaining it like this.

Router A attached via ethernet to Airport A
Router A attached via ethernet to Airport B

Can I bridge the two airports' wireless networks so that I can move seamlessly between the two wireless networks?

The caboose where I need wireless internet is basically a faraday cage due to its aluminium siding. I could put an airport express there attached via ethernet (not laid yet). If I put the airport express in the caboose's window it will extend half way into the yard. My airport extreme's range gets 90% of the way to the caboose, so for most of the yard I'd be in range of both signals.

This would be fine except that if I'm on wireless network A and move to B, I don't want to lose all my mapped drives, etc. Right now I have the two devices working well with the express extending the range of the extreme, but doing so over the wireless network.

Or maybe I should just get one of these: http://www.macwireless.com/html/prod...oor_option.php

On a semi-related note, does anyone know of a way to extend the range of a 5.8 GHz phone? I have one of those expandable handset dealies but it won't work in the caboose either due to the faraday effect. A 900MHz phone MIGHT work except I don't want to interfere with the 900MHz fixed wireless internet system. If I didn't need to lay cat 3 to the caboose for phone, I wouldn't need to dig and lay cables at all and that would be nice.

Thanks again,
- Andrew.

No problem, just run AirPort B and Express in bridge mode (DHCP off), give them identical SSIDs and put all APs you use on distinct channels:

For example A on 1, B on 5 and C on 11. That way they won't interfere.

On a small network like yours, there's also nothing wrong with using WDS.

I wouldn't get into the Big Antenna business unless you really have to. It's expensive and tricky.

And should you ever need to lay cable anywhere in the house, don't even think about using anything graded below 5+.

Thanks for your tips. I'll give that a dry run and see how it does. I'm surprised that I'd be able to switch between wireless APs like that but I hope you're right!

About the cable, I already bought a 500' of the best indoor/outdoor cat5 available at Home Depot so I hope it's good enough...

Thanks again,
- Andrew.

I admin many multi-AP networks, and they really do work that simply. Just don't overlap channels, and name them all the same with the same encryption key, and everything roams seamlessly. Even the VoIP phones roam without a glitch.