Big House Bad Signals

[biggeeflex]

My brother in law has been plagued by bad signals ever since he moved into his house. He, like 99% of the people in the world, has no clue on how to fix it, so he just deals with it. The problem is he recognizes he will eventually have to figure it out. They recently got rid of there desktop and just use their laptops, ipads, and iphones.

He has a new D-link N router in the far corner of the 1st floor of the house which is also the laundry room. It's there because it once the location of his desktop and has a telephone outlet (for DSL). It's also nice and hidden so it's not out in the open.

There is a decent signal in the kitchen but the main living room on the other side of the 1st floor gets about 20-30% of the signal. Last year, I bought him Samsung wi-fi adapter for his Samsung TV and it wont even detect a signal because it's too weak. Upstairs is about the same with about 20-50% of the signal.

I'm planning on analyzing the network with inSSIDer to check for crowded channel and signal strength. Also need to check if he has the wide spectrum on. If so, I'll turn it off. We thought about moving the modem and router to the living room inside the TV cabinet, but it doesnt have a telephone outlet. Switching to cable internet is not an option right now.

So besides checking the settings, is there something else that we should be considering to obtain streaming speeds to the TV AND decent wi-fi throughout the house?

Range Extender like a RE1000?

Powerline?

Repeater upstairs?

[Scott DeLeeuw]

How big is the house? Wireless goes by line of sight, any walls or obstructions will decrease the signal. A more central location for the router with less walls would help.

Only do a repeater if you can wire the repeater and then serve wireless with it, otherwise it halves the signal receiving and transmitting. An example of how I did it is here:

http://www.homenetworkenabled.com/co...ine-networking

Powerline is a good option to get down to the TV if there is no wire to run cat5 cable. For streaming on the TV wireless is going to be frustrating at best.

A lot of houses have crawlspaces that you could run cat5 cable through, is that a possibility?

[biggeeflex]

It's about 5000 sf. I'll have to check on the crawl space. Would it make sense to use the NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit (XAVNB2001) and connect it to the Linksys RE1000 range extender. This would boost the wireless signal on the other side of the house.

Can I connect more than one powerline adapters to the router? 1 going upstairs to the RE1000 and the 2nd to hardwire the TV, and 3rd to another extender to boost the signal in the center of the house.

[Scott DeLeeuw]

Check the specs on the powerline adapters, but you should be able to add a bunch. Bear in mind they'll share bandwidth to a certain extent as well.

I've been wanting to try the NETGEAR Powerline AV 200 Wireless-N Extender Kit (XAVNB2001), so let me know how it goes if you go that route. It should work well. I would put it's other side on your router and not the Linksys RE1000. I would definitely use powerline to the Linksys RE1000 as well. They also sell powerline switches for areas like your entertainment center where many devices can get connected.