Poor wifi reception in basement

[1pyro]

Hello,

Here is my dilemma:

My daughter's bedroom is in our basement at the opposite end of our house where our router is located on main floor. The wifi signal is so poor that when she is using her smartphone it will randomly switch from wifi to cellular data and she does not pay attention to when this happens and ends up using her allotment of our shared data plan. The signal seems to be on the fringe of its max broadcast range (I have already tweaked the transmit power of my router to its max) so sometimes she will be connected to our wifi network but her phone will switch to cellular data automatically when signal strength drops out.

I bought a wireless range extender yesterday (2/17/14) and configured it and it is functioning correctly and solved the problem of poor range.

However, I am not certain this is the best solution. I understand that the way the extender works cuts the throughput/network speed to about half of what my current network speed is for devices not going through the extender.

I do have 2 cat 5e cables connected from the router on main floor routed to my basement. 1 is wired to my office PC and 1 is wired to our PS3.

Should I be utilizing one of those cables to an access point? Would this be better than using an extender that slows wifi speed to about half?

What are your thoughts about using power line adapters?

Please offer your thoughts/advice and recommendations on hardware.

Thanks

 

[evilspoons]

Set up a second access point - if you do it right (possibly with custom firmware like DD-WRT) you can have both access points establish the same network and devices will transparently switch back and forth between them. I don't know exactly how to do this.

The janky method would be to just have two separate wireless networks, say, "basement" and "upstairs".

I'd simply have one access point upstairs, if this is also your router continue to use it as your router. Run an ethernet cable (or replace the ethernet cable with a powerline networking system if pulling cables is too hard - powerline networking can work quite well nowadays) to get a "good" connection in to the basement, then run a second router in access-point-only mode in the basement (disable the router features).

 

[JackMDS]

Best solution is cable and Wireless Router as an Access Point.

Using Access Points or Wireless Cable/DSL Routers as a Switch with an Access Point - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Otherwise, you have to resort to either Extender (Repeater) or Powerline.

Both experience moderate to sever difficulties due to different environmental issues, so the only determination can be made by trying.

 

[fralexandr]

Yep, cat5e to 2nd router (set up as bridge) would be the way to go.

The PS3 has wifi, so I'd hook up the router to that cable if you don't have an extra wireless adapter for the office PC.

My home is currently set up with a wireless repeater bridge (using DD-WRT; same ssid) due to home size and location of the modem, and the bandwidth cut makes downloading games from steam (15mbit/s down) faster than transferring from 1 computer to another (doesn't help that I'm using a us robotics 802.11g router, since my other routers don't like dd-wrt and can't do wireless to wireless).

Basically, it mostly only matters if you have REALLY fast internet , or do a lot of network based computer to computer transfers.
i.e. up/down > 1/2 usable bandwidth, or you have a NAS/network storage or back up

Life is becoming more and more network/internet driven, yet homes still aren't typically constructed with cat 5/6 runs WHY...

 

[atty26]

No dilemma there dude. Since you already have a cat5e going to the basement, it's best to use that. If it's already connected to the PS3 (im assuming the PS3 is in the basement), you just need to get a cheap 5port switch, remove the cable from the ps3 and connect to the switch. From the switch you can use one cable to go to your PS3, another to an AP.

Maybe the wifi extender you bought can be used as an AP, but you din't post the model so I can't tell.

I can post a step-by-step guide on how to configure the AP if you decide to do so.