I have been asked to help resolve a networking problem for my local church. They have recently gotten a cable Internet connection in the church office and connected a Linksys BEFW11S4 broadband/wireless router to it. The setup works fine in the immediate vicinity of the office (which is about midway down one wing of the U-shaped building) but the signal is not strong enough to reach the Education office in the other wing. To get there, the signal has to pass through 4 interior walls and 2 exterior (cinderblock/brick) walls while travelling a total distance of approximately 100ft.
I took my laptop with a wireless NIC over there and wandered around checking the signal strength and was able to get a fairly stable connection at a point about 30ft short of the target office, but the signal disappears quickly beyond that point.
I have been researching possible solutions and have come up with a few potential scenarios with varying costs. The recommended solution from Linksys would be to install a WAP11 access point connected to a WET11 ethernet bridge placed in the other wing to extend coverage to that wing. Total cost ~ $200.
I have also considered moving the existing router/WAP out into the hallway outside the office and pulling some Cat5e wire through the ceiling to connect back to the cable modem in the office which would eliminate 2 of the walls from the signal path and shorten the transmission distance by ~ 20ft. Lower cost, but more labor.
Then I found this wireless patch antenna which looks promising. However, I don’t know enough about antennas and the associated technology to be a fair judge of whether or not it will do the trick. Would an 11dBi boost be enough to penetrate the additional walls without moving the router? What is the formula for translating “dBi” into effective distance? What say you techno-geek Dopers?
I had good results with Radio Shack’s booster antennas - I needed a couple more yards of range at home, and for $30, they did the trick with no configuration or wiring, and a trivial installation process.
Will they give you another 30 feet? Maybe. If you get two sets of the antennas, perhaps you can also swap the antenna on the education computer.
Moving the WAP/router closer to the middle of the property is also a good idea, even if it involves however many longer runs of Cat5. Just be sure your new location has power.
Thanks for the reply gotpasswords. I looked at the Radio Shack booster antennas you mentioned, but they are omni-directional and I am looking for something with a directional focus. As for putting one on the client computer, the connector on the booster antenna is the wrong size, and I didn’t see any other choices.
RF signal strength falls off via the inverse square law so it’s quite possible just a more distance will cause a complete dropout.
Linksys sells a range booster for $ 100 and I used one the other day in a situation similar to yours. I had to return it as the improvement was not noticeable. Your best bet is to simply get 2 50 foot CAT 5 patch cords and move the WIFI unit closer to rhe poor reception area.
There’s this, but that might not give you enough oomph with the walls involved, however. There should be a way to daisy-chain access points together: have one in each area, with one connected to the modem.
(Hopefully this makes sense, I’m not quite awake yet.)
You may also want to look into a cantenna (here) inexpensive, directional, and they work. I haven’t applied them myself, but I’ve seen them boost signal impressively through walls for fairly long distances (a few hundred feet).
Yes, yes, yes! The Cantenna is exactly what I came in here to post about! I’ve built several of these and they are far and away the easiest and cheapest way to extend the range of a wireless network. They’re simpler than the legendary Pringles can antennas and they work better.They have a fairly wide beamwidth (probably 30-40 degrees) and thus are very useful for targeting a general area and would likely work very well in a situation like this. There’s just no way you’re going to get better performance for your dollar than with one of these puppies.
And for the record, these can be found in nearly every grocery store in the US and the cans are the closest to ideal size for a Cantenna of any off-the-shelf product I’ve found yet. The cookies will maybe cost $3 or $4, the antenna connector $5 or $6 (you can get them from Digi-key if you can’t find them locally) and a small length (1.21" if I remember correctly) of 12ga solid wire should be free. Then you just need a “pigtail” to go from your access point to your antenna ($20 or so on eBay) and you’re all set.
Hey, np_complete, that cantenna was what I was looking at when I found the link to the store-bought version. I had thought about building the cantenna, but was having problems finding all the right connectors. I finally found the needed parts, but the cost rapidly approached the ready-made antenna and the end results wouldn’t be as aesthetically pleasing. Also, from that website, it looked more like they were going for long distance point-to-point transmissions with a clear line of sight, and not trying to push the signal through obstructions. That’s what made me wonder how it would be affected by the walls. Sounds like, from what you’ve seen, that it might be effective in this situation.
pestie’s post slipped in while I was composing my other reply. I may have to go ahead and build a cantenna now just for the heck of it. And with a long enough pigtail, I could put the antenna up in the attic and bypass a couple of walls.
One question, though. The Linksys radio has two antennas and one of the sites discussing the cantenna said you needed to disable the second antenna after hooking up to the other one. Any idea how to go about disabling the other built-in antenna? I don’t remember ever seeing that as a standard config option in the router setup interface.
In the router set up it is under advanced if I remember correctly, you should be able to select left, right, default, or diversity. Another thing you might want to look for is power over ethernet if you want to run the router in a more central location where there is no available outlet.