WiFi booster for house

[Rick Potter]

I want to get internet in the far reaches of the house, and shop. I have a FIOS network which doesn't reach quite far enough, and they say they don't sell boosters. I just finished looking at ads, Amazon listings, ratings, etc for what I need and am completely confused now. I find things called boosters, some called range extenders, some antennas, and being electronically stupid, I have no idea what I am looking at. The prices rance from $4, to over $150, which makes no sense to me.

Here is my situation. The FIOS network setup is at one end of a long house. We need to use it also at the other end 95' away. I would also like to use it in my shop, which is detached, with a proposed computer location 65' away from the source.

I suspect I need what they call a range extender, but looking at reviews for some of them, the results are wildly different.

Can anybody tell me, in layman terms, what I need? I am sorely dissapointed in FIOS' not having any available equipment, or advice for me.

Thank you,
Rick Potter

[Mike Henderson]

If your main box has an Ethernet connection, you can use HomePlug (which uses your house wiring) to extend your Ethernet network to the other side of the house. Then just put another WiFi router at that location. A regular WiFi router will be pretty cheap. So you'd have two WiFi networks in your house. If set up properly, when you move from one side of the house to the other, the networks will automatically switch which is supplying your access, just like the cell phone network does.

Mike

[Myk Rian]

Search Amazon for "access point"
Here's an example.
http://www.amazon.com/ZyXEL-Wireless-Ethernet-Universal-WAP3205/dp/B002LITI7K/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1353970259&sr=1-1

[Troy Turner]

If your main box has an Ethernet connection, you can use HomePlug (which uses your house wiring) to extend your Ethernet network to the other side of the house. Then just put another WiFi router at that location. A regular WiFi router will be pretty cheap. So you'd have two WiFi networks in your house. If set up properly, when you move from one side of the house to the other, the networks will automatically switch which is supplying your access, just like the cell phone network does.

Mike

I think Mike is talking about something like these. http://www.netgear.com/home/products/powerline-and-coax/simplesharing/default.aspx

Didn't know what they were til the cable company hooked them up to the Tivo. They gave us an extra one and one of my sons uses it to connect his laptop too via an ethernet cable. Definantly a big difference. It should plug up like he said to another router that might help you. If your shop is on the same power grid, you should be able to hook it up in the shop.

[Mike Henderson]

That's correct, Troy. I use a set of those to hook up one of my TV set top boxes(STB) (AT&T uses Ethernet to communicate from the central box in my home to the STBs).

Works fine. The technology is called HomePlug.

Mike

[Steve Meliza]

I'd run a Cat5 cable to the far end of the house then set up a Wireless Access Point (WAP) there. I'd also run Cat5 out to the shop and set up another WAP out there if wireless was desired over a wired connection. A WAP is a very simple device, it simply converts wired signals into wireless and vice versa. Any method other than running Cat5 to the more remote locations is going to have reduced bandwidth and potential to suffer interference.

[Curt Harms]

I'd run a Cat5 cable to the far end of the house then set up a Wireless Access Point (WAP) there. I'd also run Cat5 out to the shop and set up another WAP out there if wireless was desired over a wired connection. A WAP is a very simple device, it simply converts wired signals into wireless and vice versa. Any method other than running Cat5 to the more remote locations is going to have reduced bandwidth and potential to suffer interference.

Rick has FiOS so there may be another option. FiOS uses something called MoCA. As I understand it, it puts an additional data stream on the coax used for video signals. I haven't done it - don't have the need - but if I did I'd look at MoCA-Ethernet bridges. You should be able to get an ethernet connection from any coax TV connection and it looks like most come with a 'splitter' so you could get ethernet & video from the same connection. If you want wireless you can hook up a wireless access point or wireless router with certain functions disabled. As long as there aren't too many splitters in the coax wiring MoCA should be pretty trouble free. Coax has been used for networks for years before losing favor to CAT5/6 but MoCA is fairly recent AFAIK. The biggest downside to this is that new MoCA ethernet bridges ain't cheap. Some buy used Motorola NIM-100s off Ebay.

It seems that some swear by power line networking, others swear at it. In my own case I'd think twice about powerline networking. As I understand it, my network signal would travel though AC wiring to the transformer. We live in a townhouse development and one transformer services a lot of houses so my data stream could be available to anyone else sharing the same transformer. I understand that encryption is available on powerline adapters like it is on WiFi connections but it seems MoCA wouldn't have this concern. This of course is not an issue where everyone has their own transformer.

[Jerome Stanek]

I have set up houses with the router in the attic in the middle of the house.

[Rick Potter]

Thanks guys,

I will check out the various methods.

Rick P

[Curt Harms]

I should have added that where you have FiOS the ONT - Optical Network Terminal - puts out a MoCA signal. It's used for the channel guide and also pay-per-view purchases. You'd only need an adapter where you wanted ethernet. If someone wanted to use MoCA over coax and didn't have FiOS, they'd need two MoCA-ethernet bridges to start which is why they're often sold in pairs.

[Jim Becker]

I use multiple access points to solve signal issues in our hard-to-be-wireless home. The Actiontec from VZ is only used on "that end" of the house for a dedicated 802.11n at 5ghz arrangement for devices that support that. Another AP (an Apple Airport Express) provides 802.11g services for older devices at that end of the world. At "this end" of the house, I have an older D-Link router from the DSL days setup as a wireless AP to support 802.11g for older devices and a second Apple Airport Express to support 802.11n 5ghz at "this end" of the house. While this might seem like a little bit of overkill, the only "purchased" devices are the Airport Express APs (bought on sale) and they both ultimately will be set to 802.11n. In the mean time, all our iPads and my MacBook Pro as well as the Netflix/Amazon streaming through the BlueRay player gets 802.11n service for the best performance--my FiOS delivers 83mb down and 38mb up and while wireless doesn't quite get that, even with "n", the "n" still performs better. The only reason things are flipped around at "that end" of the house with the AP assignments is because of a signal strength issue for my younger daughters netbook which she need to use for school work...it doesn't support "n" and seems to work better the way it is setup right now.

Getting back to the OP's need, I do recommend using an additional AP at the other end of the house, by either running a Cat 5/6 cable to support it off the back of the existing Actiontec or by picking up another Actiontec router (because of the MOCA support already mentioned) and connecting it to existing COAX (preferably RG6) to use as a second AP and turning off any routing/DHCP services in it accordingly. These are readily available in the market, including on EBay. A later version is preferred...no earlier than Rev F. Current is Rev I.

[Curt Harms]

<snip>
Getting back to the OP's need, I do recommend using an additional AP at the other end of the house, by either running a Cat 5/6 cable to support it off the back of the existing Actiontec or by picking up another Actiontec router (because of the MOCA support already mentioned) and connecting it to existing COAX (preferably RG6) to use as a second AP and turning off any routing/DHCP services in it accordingly. These are readily available in the market, including on EBay. A later version is preferred...no earlier than Rev F. Current is Rev I.

Now that is downright clever :D. Verizon is selling Actiontec routers at their 'television' stores for about the same price as a single new MoCA-Ethernet bridge. I wonder if they'll support dd-wrt or tomato? dd-wrt and tomato are replacement software that enable consumer grade routers to do things the manufacturer never intended from a low cost device.

[Jim O'Dell]

Rick, the multiple access points sounds like the "best" way to go. When I hooked up my wireless a year ago, I was having problem from one end of the house to the other also. Could barely get a signal in my detached shop. It wouldn't play a video without buffering every 3-5 seconds. I tried one of the antenna set ups for my laptop as a cheap fix. It works great. In the shop I now get a full 5 bars on signal strength where before it was 1 bar max, and sometimes no bars. The antenna was 15 bucks from NewEgg. Here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833180079 22.99 currently. USB plug in. Jim.

[Jim Becker]

Now that is downright clever :D. Verizon is selling Actiontec routers at their 'television' stores for about the same price as a single new MoCA-Ethernet bridge. I wonder if they'll support dd-wrt or tomato? dd-wrt and tomato are replacement software that enable consumer grade routers to do things the manufacturer never intended from a low cost device.
Curt, a lot of folks will buy used/excessed Actiontec routers for the MOCA bridging capability for exactly that reason. The old NIM products are harder to find these days and "only bridge". With the repurposed router, you get the bridging, a few hard Ethernet ports and another wireless AP for a reasonable fee. Where you have to be careful going forward is that the "newer" version of MOCA supports more devices and there are a few people out there that for some reason need to get up to larger numbers of devices..."really big houses" with many TVs, etc. :o

[Curt Harms]

Curt, a lot of folks will buy used/excessed Actiontec routers for the MOCA bridging capability for exactly that reason. The old NIM products are harder to find these days and "only bridge". With the repurposed router, you get the bridging, a few hard Ethernet ports and another wireless AP for a reasonable fee. Where you have to be careful going forward is that the "newer" version of MOCA supports more devices and there are a few people out there that for some reason need to get up to larger numbers of devices..."really big houses" with many TVs, etc. :o

Also wireless speed, if that matters. Our Verizon Actiontec is a MI424Wr gen2/ver. F. The max wireless speed is 65 Mb./sec though, not 150+ so not much different than G speed.

[Jim Becker]

Also wireless speed, if that matters. Our Verizon Actiontec is a MI424Wr gen2/ver. F. The max wireless speed is 65 Mb./sec though, not 150+ so not much different than G speed.
And it's unlikely you'll get to those limits, both because performance can drop quickly with distance from the AP and because it's half-duplex communication. That said, even though I have effectively 83mb down and 39mb up with my 75/35 FiOS tier, the largest part of anything I can access "out there" is hitting the net at lower speeds. So even if an optimal wireless speed can be achieved, there will be little difference in actual performance.