Extended Range of Your Wireless Network

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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The good news is many houses in the DR are well-built with concrete walls, floors and ceilings.

The bad news is such construction makes for lousy home wifi networks. I know in our house even one concrete wall/floor kills over 50-60% of the wifi signal...even if you're fairly close. Upstairs on the opposite side of the house? Forget it.

I found a simply brilliant solution: a Powerline connection where the house electrical wiring acts like an ethernet cable. You can plug an adapter into any plug close to your router and plug another wireless router into another electrical outlet for a new hotspot.

And the BEST solution I found, by far, is the Linksys PLWK400 kit.

It consists of two parts:

  • a PLE400 adapter you plug into a wall socket and run an ethernet cable from your main router to it:
kb24965-001_en_v1.png


  • a PLW400 remote wifi hotspot that all you do, literally, is plug into a wall socket where you want the new signal:
kb25554-009_en_v1.png


The schematic looks like this:
H-lin_nu_182408_plwk400-eu_particolari_big.jpg


Set up is a snap, CD included. This worked first time right out of the box for us and now we have a "5-bar" signal upstairs on the opposite of the house.

The best part: you can plug it-and other PLW400's-into any electrical outlet in your house to take solid wifi coverage with you.

Cost: about $95.

If you've wondered how to easily increase the range of your wifi network, this is an excellent, cost-effective solution.
 

beeza

Silver
Nov 2, 2006
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I use one of these. A wireless solution. Put it at the edge of your wifi range and it re-transmits on two bands.

wn2500rp-prod-img73-42533.jpg
 

Omar_NYC

New member
Mar 22, 2013
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I personally prefer running Ethernet to every room in the household. It shouldn't be too painful to buy a 100-foot spool, some metal piping to contain it outdoors, and drill holes into the property where the cabling would enter. Weatherproof the entries with DapTex or some other silicon-based sealant.

Not only does that ensure full duplex 100MB bandwidth to every workstation, but it takes away likely sources of interference that typically happen with RF transmission.
 

caribmike

Gold
Jul 9, 2009
6,808
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Wow. True. :)

My solution I had to buy a wireless extender separately. However, for me was the main point to get Desktops connected (with wire) to the Internet without the need of more wall plug ins installed by ISP.
 
Oct 13, 2003
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I personally prefer running Ethernet to every room in the household. It shouldn't be too painful to buy a 100-foot spool, some metal piping to contain it outdoors, and drill holes into the property where the cabling would enter. Weatherproof the entries with DapTex or some other silicon-based sealant.

Not only does that ensure full duplex 100MB bandwidth to every workstation, but it takes away likely sources of interference that typically happen with RF transmission.

This is what I did for my place I run a 1Gb/s network... for those reasons and because Blu-Ray streaming over WiFi is not stable due to bandwith issues

However there remains the need to have WiFi for the various WiFi controlled appliances and the mobile devices both for guests (network 1) and myself (network 2)

So I use two wireless access points in the house to have full coverage even in the garden
 

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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However there remains the need to have WiFi for the various WiFi controlled appliances and the mobile devices both for guests (network 1) and myself (network 2)

So I use two wireless access points in the house to have full coverage even in the garden
Same here: two wireless networks, one piggybacking onto the other.

One brilliant feature is mobility: I can unplug the PLW, go anywhere we have an electrical outlet-even the garage-plug it into an outlet and have a strong signal.
 
Oct 13, 2003
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I am glad it worked out well for you... how much capacity do the PLW have in terms of MB/s? Is it stable?

I have a place with a lot of electrical interference on the line so that's why I didn't took PLW at that moment - early 2012 when we moved to the new home
 

InsanelyOne

Bronze
Oct 21, 2008
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I have an Apple solution as well. I use an Airport Extreme base station that is connected to my TriCom WiMax modem. I also have a hard drive connected to the base station that acts as the backup drive (Time Machine) for all systems in my house. I then extend the wifi via the Airport Express router. It's great because it has no wires, just plugs into the outlet:

1363787094_492739193_3-apple-airport-express-for-sale-Hyderabad.jpg
 

Koreano

Bronze
Jan 18, 2012
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If you have spare router that is compatible with dd-wrt, you don't need to purchase anything. Flashing the router to DD-WRT would work to extend the signals. I'd been using this since we had linksys routers from way back and I must say it was working properly until it got wet.

Turn Your Old Router into a Range-Boosting Wi-Fi Repeater

If anyone have good dd-wrt compatible router at home let me know. Mine sometimes require reboot to stay connected and I don't want to turn on 3G while in bathroom reading.
 

cobraboy

Pro-Bono Demolition Hobbyist
Jul 24, 2004
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I am glad it worked out well for you... how much capacity do the PLW have in terms of MB/s? Is it stable?

I have a place with a lot of electrical interference on the line so that's why I didn't took PLW at that moment - early 2012 when we moved to the new home
300mbs wireless.

I have to assume there is a lot of interfereance in the electral lines here with the poor quality. No problems at all.
 

El Tigre

El Tigre de DR1 - Moderator
Jan 23, 2003
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I see you are mentioning Linksys devices. Can I connect them to a Netgear router or does it have to be a Linksys router?
 

Koreano

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Jan 18, 2012
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I see you are mentioning Linksys devices. Can I connect them to a Netgear router or does it have to be a Linksys router?

As long as it's dd-wrt flashable, any router would work.
Supported Devices - DD-WRT Wiki

Flashing can really brick your device. So I would use backup devices or throw away router, just in case flashing fails. I haven't bricked any yet but for the first timer it would be daunting task if you don't know what you are doing. They have great supporting forum with lot of information but then again I would confirm the model number 2-3 times as they have very small lettering and many times with different versions of same models and read the instructions 2-4 times so you won't turn perfectly useful devices to paper weight.