On Apr 5, 12:20*pm, ls02 wrote:
On Apr 5, 12:57*pm, "RBM" wrote:





"ls02" wrote in message

...

I am setting up home network with four PCs. One is in the office and
is connected to an 802.11n wireless router via a network cable. Two
others have 802.11n wireless cards. Unfortunately one PC is in
opposite side of the house floor above from the router and the signal
is very weak. I am not sure it is due to the card or it is just
because there so many walls between the card and the router the signal
is very weak and transfer rate is very low.

What's the possible solution to this problem? I am thinking about
running a network cable from the router to the room where the PC is.

There are always numerous ways to address things like this. A simple
solution if you can run a Cat5 network cable to the weak area, is to just
purchase a wireless access point (WAP), plug it into the router and give it
the same SSID. It'll transmit just like the antenna in the router, but from
the weak location. If you want to hard wire any network stuff from the
second location, connect the router to a switch, then to a WAP. Now you'll
have both wired and wireless from the second location. You can also do this
with a second wireless router, which tend to be cheaper than access points.
You'd set it up as an access point and disable DHCP so it doesn't try to
assign ip addresses

Why is this complicated? My wireless router is connected to cable
modem and has four network cable ports. One is used to connect the PC
in the same room to the router as the router and cable modem are in
that room. Why can't I just run network cable from the room with cable
modem/router to the room with weak wireles connection and have the PC
there be connected to the router via that network cable?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Or just screw a little 4 port switch to the wall in the nearest wired
room and connect the cat5 coming from your main house switch (or
router) to the little local 4 port. Then run a cat5 from one of those
4 ports to the nearest weak room. And you will have 3 extra ports
available locally to hook up a peer-to-peer networked printer, NAS or
whatever else to boot!

My house is all hardwired but I only have one cat5 jack in each room,
if need more than one wired port in a room I just get a 4 port switch
and screw it to the wall next to the one jack. All the rooms are fed
from a 16 port gigabit switch in the basement. That switch gets its
IP addresses from my wireless router (connected to Comcast). I only
use the wireless for laptops, everything else is on the wired LAN.

Bottom line is you dont need to home run another dedicated wire from
the main router, just from the nearest wire available by splitting it
with a local 4 port switch.

A 4 port switch costs about $20 more than a 4 port hub but will
perform better and I think its worth it.