Need help with wireless solution for a big house with thick walls

[Alpha0mega]

I need help with setting up a wireless home network. I have never done much networking, beyond linking two PCs directly together. This is my first time setting up a network that has multiple PC/devices accessing it.

It’s a big house and has two floors. More importantly, it has impossibly thick walls. The walls are between 18 to 24 inches of solid stone (perhaps to repel a tank invasion?). I want to be able to get at least 15-20 Mbps to the furthest reaches of the top floor, in order to stream high quality HD video without a hitch.

I have settled on the ASUS RT-N16 router, unless a better option presents itself. It’s one of the more decently priced high-end router available to me. It has decent signal strength (3rd on the MaximumPC router round-up), supports Tomato USB etc. I also intend to use the router to as NAS, plugging in an external HDD to one of the USB ports provided.

Despite its decent wireless strength, I doubt I will get close to the required Wifi throughput. Here is my plan to get around that. Let me know if there are any problems with it or if it can be done better. I intend to run an Ethernet cable from one of the router ports to the top floor, and attach a cheap .n router at the other end, to act as a wireless access point.

I am unsure if this will meet all my requirements.

1) Will there be any problems with having one router connect to the other?

2) Will external HDD connected to the RT-N16’s USB port, configured as a network share, be accessible as such to any device connecting to the secondary network?

3) What kind of cable will be needed to connect the two routers (provided this configuration is viable)? I remember that cable type used to depend on what’s connecting to what, e.g. cross-crimped cable for attaching two computers directly without a hub or switch etc.). I don’t know if these concerns are still valid.

4) Will I be able to access the configuration page of the primary router from devices connecting to the secondary router’s network? I intent to run some apps on the primary router and would like to be able to check on them from the upper floor as well.

5) Will there be an impact of the speeds? The N16 as Gigabit Ethernet ports, which I doubt the cheap router will have. I don’t think that should effect the speeds, but like I said, I have next to no experience in this area.

I would appreciate any help or suggestions.

 

[JackMDS]

The general approach that I take for Coverage issues is the following.

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 - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html ), and connect them to the Main Router.

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

Start with One affordable Wireless Router that can do WDS (the reason to start with WDS capable Router is that in case you need to add more Wireless WDS hardware the original Router has to support it).

If you are lucky and your environment is conducive to get covered with one Good Wireless Router and you are done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireles...ibution_System.

Due to the added flexibility, it is better solution to choose Routers that can work with DD-WRT

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WDS_Linked_router_network

Using a Laptop loaded with Wirelessnetview, do a Wireless survey,

http://majorgeeks.com/WirelessNetView_d6102.html

According to the 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).

More about the topic (the pages bellow were written a while ago, ignore the specific hardware recommendation just stick to the principle and get current hardware)

 

[paperwastage]

i recently tried Wireless Bridging (2 RT-N16, one connected to cable modem, the other wireless-bridged to the first RT-N16)... didn't work out well, but I expected it and only wanted to experiment (2 apartments roughly 100feet apart, about 6-8 walls separating them.. i get maybe 40mbps connected "poor" signal b/w the 2 routers, but actual throughput was somewhere closer to 5mbps using speedtest.net)

the stone walls that you have will definitely block a lot of the signal. the 6-8 walls are mostly drywall/brick exteriors

1) if both routers have good firmwares (i'd suggest ddwrt/tomato on both), you can do this without any problems

2) my RT-N16 reads from a USB HDD between 3-10mb/s... not sure if you like this low throughput...

3) regular ethernet cable. your first router(WAN port) will be connected to the cable modem. connect your second router(WAN port) to any of the first router's LAN ports

4) in your case, i'd suggest turning off DHCP on the second router. let all IPs come via the first router. set a static IP for both routers that aren't part of the DHCP range (eg 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2). there are optwares available for tomato (and ddwrt?), apps you can run on the router itself

5) maybe spend money on 2 RT-N16s?

 

[Alpha0mega]

@JackMDS. Thanks for the links, there were helpful. I will try implementing this soon, as I start getting the equipment within the next week or so.

@paperwastage: From what I have read, a USB connected HDD gives a read speed of around 10 MBps on the N16. That is more than enough to stream even high profile 1080p movies. I shouldn't have too much of a problem with getting even a cheap router give a good signal on the upper floor. It's walls are thinner, and have large windows opening to each room. The radio waves will not be obstructed as much. Plus, I will run the Ethernet wire to the room which will see the most use.

Could you clarify what you meant with the optwares for the router (I would prefer the Tomato USB firmware, mainly for its native NTFS support)?

On a side note, how did you like the N16 personally? Would you recommend it?

 

[paperwastage]

USB:
It highly depends on the formatting of the hdd(I heard ext3 gives best results)
I get a read speed of 4mb/s over wireless (N, connection speed ~ 150mbps), and 8mb/s over wired. Don't remember what I formatted it to, i think its ntfs.
Might want to buy a "real" ethernet-connected hdd

Tomato optware:
http://www.xtremecoders.org/forums/f72/tomato-optware-package-valerakvb-ver-12-4-out-274/
http://www.xtremecoders.org/forums/f78/tomato-optware-mega-package-197/
stuff like bittorrent download, website hosting, loaded right onto the router itself (since it has enough RAM and CPU to do routing AND other stuff)
I haven't tried any, dont do any torrenting or asterisk or other stuff. the built-in USB sharing/ftp/usb printer in Tomato is enough for me

N16- my opinions:
It is definitely the best router I've had (vs others like the crappy Verizon-branded one, Netgear WNR834B, other netgear routers. Of course, this is $60+ vs the rest <$30). One of them that I've set up in September hasn't been down at all.

Only problem is that the PSU is kinda crappy. The first one I got, PSU killed router, RMA'd through retailer(other people complained about crappy PSUs)... Fine after wards.

 

[Modelworks]

18-24" of solid stone ? nothing over 900mhz will penetrate that easily, it can't because the actual wavelengths are too short. For coverage your only options are a bridge in each area you need wireless. 2.4ghz is about 5 inches in length and 5 ghz is about half that, meaning anything thicker than that will cut the signal in half for something like wood or drywall, and double that will block it entirely. 900Mhz gets you near 12 inches in length.

 

[paperwastage]

from ^, might be easier just running powerline network adapters around the house, and put routers in rooms/areas where you most likely want wireless signal (eg living room/common areas, not creepy basement/bathrooms )

unless your house has old or split wiring

 

[Alpha0mega]

I think I will just do what I said in my original post, run an ethernet cable connected to the N16, to the upper floor room that will see the most usage, then attached a cheaper router in bridge mode. That seems like the simplest, cheapest and most effective method. I wasn't sure that it would work, since I hadn't tried anything like that, so thanks everyone for helping out.

Couple of questions about the cable use to connect the two routers.

1) One of the links JackMDS gave stated this "Plug the Wireless Router to the main Router. Regular Port to Regular Port, using crossover cable (or straight patch if one port is an Uplink)". The "or straight patch if one port is an Uplink" thing is confusing the issue for me. I don't know what that means. So I am supposed to use a cross-crimped cable to connect my two routers, right?

2) What's the max length of the ethernet cable, run between the two routers, before the attenuation becomes an issue? I expect needing around 60-70 feet to get the cable to where I want.

 

[Arcanedeath]

the N16 has auto mdix ports so it doesn't matter if you use a crossover or straight through cable the router will adapt.

 

[paperwastage]

2) What's the max length of the ethernet cable, run between the two routers, before the attenuation becomes an issue? I expect needing around 60-70 feet to get the cable to where I want.
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max length per specs is 100 feet (before you need to start using repeaters). I've used 100 feet fine... there are longer cables out there, but dunno how much problems you'd get from it

just make sure you get quality shielded ethernet cables. www.monoprice.com is a good place to start looking for inexpensive quality ones. For that length + gigabit, I think you'd need CAT6