Best Wireless Router Location in a House?

[stuman74]

What is the best place for a wireless router in a house? I have a 2-story house plus a basement and the footprint of the house is about 50' x 25' rectangular. About a 20 year old home, just basic hollow sheet rock walls.

Laptops are about equally used on the 1st and 2nd floors. Basement is rarely used for web browsing.

- Which floor is better to locate the wireless router?
- Is it best to try to locate it as close to the center of the house as possible or against one of the outer perimeter walls?

Thanks!

 

[vorgusa]

Usually the higher the better, but if you want access in your basement you might want to put it higher up on the first floor and away from anything that could cause interference

 

[OverWorkedTech]

Each house is different, going to take some trial and error. If needed just put in a repeater and you will be good to go.

 

[JackMDS]

First Floor mid high in the hallway or any other space that have as much possible direct view with most spaces.

However there is No magic or any spells in many cases more Wireless devices are needed.

The best way is to lay few CAT6 cables to central locations in the house, install Access Points, or Cable/DSL Routers configured as an Access Points ( Using a Wireless Cable/DSL Router as a Switch with an Access Point ), and connect them to the Main Router.

You do not want/can not/hate/your client hate to lay Cables.

Buy a Pair of Wireless Routers that can do WDS (Zyxell, Asus, SMC, Belkin, have models that do WDS as is out of the Box.

Linksys WRT54GL can do WDS when flashed with DD-WRT firmware.

Using a Laptop loaded with Netstumbler, do a Wireless survey in the house, http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

According to the Netstumbler's signal strength reading, identify spots that have strong signal. and spot with weak, or No signal.

Evaluate how you can cover the space and start placing WDS units.

Additional Wireless Routers in WDS Mode (Wireless Network - Configuration Modes. ) has to be placed in spots were the signal is good about Half way to the dead spots.

How many WDS units are needed? It depends on your specific environment (that is a good the reason to buying WDS units one at the time, try it, and decide on the Next step).

Otherwise.

Extending Distance - http://www.ezlan.net/Distance.html

Wireless Router as an AP - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Wireless Modes - http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Modes.html

Wireless Bridging - http://www.ezlan.net/bridging.html

Hi Gain Antenna - http://www.ezlan.net/antennae.html

 

[stuman74]

I can't get that netstumbler to work as it says I don't have any supported adapters (my PC has a D-Link DWL-G510. Are there any other similar programs that I can try to see the signal strength? Thanks!

 

[stuman74]

Anyone have any other recommended signal strength apps out there? Also, any recommended tests to see the file transfer speeds between computers (aside from just sending a big file or bunch of files).

Thanks!