Hey All,
So the situation is an Att 2wire dsl modem/router combination. Unsurprisingly, it fails provide decent signal strength through the whole house. It's time to fix the problem and I wasnt sure if it would be better to disable the wireless from the att router and install a new wireless router or pick up a range extender.
The best solution would be ethernet cable, but that's not really feasible.
Suggestions, opinions, funny anecdotes? Thanks in advance.
Cheers
The only thing you have to know is that a range extender effectively divides your bandwidth in half. That's logical, since it has to first communicate with the client, then relay that to the AP. If that's fast enough for you, a range extender is a cheap fix, if you want more, you're looking at getting an antenna diversity router with a modern protocoll. A thing to know is that AC routers are power hogs (and get really hot!) and cause quite a ripple, although focused. With a pre-AC router, there is a planar 360° ripple of 50mW microwaves around it, which means that it dissipates rather fast and only causes discomfort if you sit next to it, but with AC routers, the entire energy is concentrated into a beam basically, and if you're sitting in that beam, it's the same thing as sticking your head in a 50mW microwave oven (if a normal microwave oven would be 500 W microwave output, sitting in the beam of your router for one week equals sitting in the microwave oven for one minute, so after a year, you'll have absorbed the same microwave radiation as sitting in a microwave oven for an hour, whereas the radiation you absorb from a b/g/n router would be about 10 times lower) , so placement of an AC router suddenly becomes very important to avoid health risk.
Thanks for the reply Zoltan.
I wasn't even aware there was a new protocal out there, good to know. However, I may like microwaves as much as the next guy but it looks like that is a bit overkill. This is also the first time I've heard of antenna diversity, which is something my current router does not have. So I am thinking (because losing half bandwidth may not be worth it) that it is in my interest to pick up a dual band wireless N router with two antennas and use it instead of the built in wireless feature. Then I can get N type adapters for the computers that are farther away from the router.
I was also looking at powerline adapters. Has anyone ever had success with some of the new ones? To my knowledge, I've never met/known anyone who has used them.
Thanks again
I would suggest getting a longer range router. My cousin lives in a giant house and bought a $150 extender, his speeds were 65Mbps download and with the extender, he got 45Mbps. His gaming ping was also increased so that might be a problem.
Thanks for the replies guys, your input is much appreciated. I ended up buying a netgear dual band wireless N router as well as a netgear usb wireless N adapter for the furthest computer. This extended the signal to where I was trying to get it.
Again, thanks for the replies.