New Apartment Need Networking Advice

First of all thank you for reading this. Don't read paragraph unless you need more detail. Instead go straight to the main points.

Me and my friends have just recently moved into an apartment and we have WiFi setup as our main access to the internet, so no one is on an Ethernet cable. We just have a cable modem plugged into a coaxial cable in the living room and then to our wifi router which is by no means a bad or outdated router. The stability of our wifi however is not so great and the only option we have of using an Ethernet cable is to route long 50ft cables to the three rooms in th apartment. The thing is each room also has a coaxial line and a phone line in the wall. I'm not sure if this could helps us at all. Wifi is ok but we could also use longer range and stability. Should I just buy wifi repeaters and call it good enough.

 

Main points: 

- Wifi is sometimes unstable and range is barely enough want option of ethernet.

- Accessed by 6 people who like to game lightly cs:go, LOL,Dota.

- Three rooms each with a coaxial line and phone line.

- Router and Modem in living room more about 50ft away from rooms.

- What are my options? Should I just buy a wifi repeater and call it a day?

Get an Ethernet over power line bridge 

 


http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-PIECES-POWERLINE-HOMEPLUG-1-0-TURBO-POWER-LINE-TO-ETHERNET-BRIDGE-/121446824754?pt=US_Powerline_Networking&hash=item1c46cb7b32 

Do you not want to run ethernet cables to each room? Because that would be your best option. Ethernet is good for about 100m (300ft) so the distance isn't an issue.

In an apartment he is probably not permitted to run it. Most land lords wont let you. so it would have to be run trough the hall and across floors and what not. you could get creative with command hooks but it would be ugly.

Instead of hooks if you have carpeted floors just run the ethernet cables and tuck the cables between the floor and the floorboards. I would imagine that its not 3 rooms in 3 different areas of the apartment unless you have a wonky floor plan so maybe try to centralize your router closer to the rooms? You could use a similar thing to command hooks and mount an adhesive shelf on the wall or something and now that I think about it, get a ladder and run the cables in the corners of the ceiling. 

The coax in each room means nothing ... And most the time it is stappled to a beam somewhere so you usually can't even use it to pull Ethernet ...

You usually can move your modem into one of the others coax cables then run your cable from there just tuck it in the corners cover it with duck tape or something so its less likely to be kicked around 

Yes, I have seen several of my friends do that and it has never caused any issues for them. The only thing is you should be careful and make sure you dont make anything too tight, but thats not hard. Also maybe he should look into a wifi AP to help out the range of what we can assume is a crappy little consumer router?

Thanks for your replies I really appreciate it. I think I might just try the powerline adapters. I'm not sure how long I will be living here. I know ethernet routing would be the best option in terms of speeds and reliability but I think the powerline things will be good enough for my use anyway. 

Thanks again, this forum is awesome.

I am by no means an electrical engineer so i could be talking out my ass, but aren't power lines shared between apartments? As in if he used power line adapters, could his neighbors tap into that with a receiver from their outlet in their apartment?

Just run Ethernet to each room behind furniture and up against walls. Next best thing would be powerline adapters, but with that many clients it wont be much better than wifi.

I agree with the hard wire Ethernet if you can swing it. Not only will it be a lot faster but it will be more secure.

Next best option might be power line adapters. But you better make sure all your outlets (that will have an adapter plugged in) are all serviced from the same sub-panel since it may not work if the home/apt's electrical service was modified and now has different (isolated) AC circuits.

Of course, WiFi is also an option and it's great for portable devices especially if you can go with "dual band" gear (available only to 802.11N/AC compliant devices, that is). However, wifi is a connection technology that really relies on radio signals which are subject to all kinds of interference problems (usually from things like cordless phones, baby monitors, microwave ovens, etc.). Wifi also has one other huge disadvantage (assuming the decreased speed thing isn't a problem) -- it's typically insecure from crackers /"hackers"! So if you use a poor wifi access password then you might as well be running it with no protection (no WEP, WPA, WPA2).

... And sure, getting hacked (pwned) over WiFi is not very likely. You're probably also not going to get hit by lightning any time either. But it's still pretty stupid to be always be standing on a manhole cover -- or use wifi when there are other options.

 

Yeah trust me you don't want to use power line in an apartment. That is just begging for packet sniffing or something. Just get a decent WiFi access point, they're only like $35 on Amazon for a simple one. And a PCIe wireless card is cheap. Or you could do the best solution which is to run Ethernet under the baseboards or tacked to the walls or something. Personally I'd do both and connect the AP to a switch in your game room.