Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

On 02/03/2017 20:12, DerbyBorn wrote:

Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What sort of speed does she get with the basic Wifi? The only time I
have ever had problems vertically in a house was in Belgium where the
house had 12" thick concrete floors with embedded 4" reinforced steel
grid and a bunker underneath to withstand a nuclear blast!

Wooden floors and plasterboard don't attenuate Wifi by very much.
(unless they are foil backed when all bets are off)

Even then strategic placement of a junior hacksaw near the Wifi antenna
would make it work. Worth a try using one of the high gain Wifi dongles
that Morgan computers sell if a basic Wifi isn't working for you.

I use one of those with a high gain antenna from 500m away in clear air.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

If you want a higher speed fixed wiring then ethernet over mains is
probably the least hassle but you may be able to get Wifi to work.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

If the floor construction is too opaque to wifi signals then a booster
will need careful placement to have much effect. eg it would work best
half way up the staircase where it is likely to be in range of both up
and downstairs without passing through the floor.

The powerline units are the marmite of networking products. For most
people they just work but anyone interested in medium/long or shortwave
radio listening they are a curse due to the huge amount of interference
they cause.
I have an application where powerline is about the only solution and
I've been using them for years BUT they do not last. The design of the
circuitry tends to be very marginal and don't like being powered up all
the time. I am repairing my every year or so and not all of them are
repairable (by me).
I'm just about to try a different brand (TP link) that I've heard good
things about to replace the netgear ones (XE102)

"DerbyBorn" wrote in message
2.222...
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal
or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

I tend to prefer Homeplug (Ethernet over 13A plug) for static devices like
desktop PCs - as long as there aren't any radio hams in the area who might
curse people that use cheap non-standards-conforming devices. Homeplug is
more likely to work 24/7 without needing any manual intervention.

Wifi is more convenient for portable devices (phones, tablets, laptops) but
in my experience is more likely to suffer from lockups or gradual
degradation of communication speed, requiring the wifi device in the PC to
be disabled/re-enabled or even rebooted. In extreme cases, even the router
may need to be rebooted. Such failures are rare, but I have a laptop which
starts off at 60-70 Mbps and gradually degrades to about 5 Mbps over several
hours.

It depends whether your daughter feels up to resetting the wireless adaptor
if it goes wrong, and whether she will ever need unattended access to the PC
from elsewhere (eg via TeamViewer).


In terms of wireless range, you should be OK with internal walls and floors,
though it depends whether the solid floor is reinforced concrete - the
reinforcing bars might attenuate the signal. One killer for wifi seems to be
copper hot-water cylinders, both because of the earthed metal and because of
the large mass of water - the 2.4 GHz wifi band is only available because it
is a frequency at which water molecules resonate, so broadcast signals will
not travel long distances through rain.


Maybe try a mobile phone with wifi and check signal strength and ability to
browse with the phone roughly where the PC is. If it seems OK, then get a
wifi adaptor (eg USB plugin) for the PC. If it is not, or if you need it
"just to work", then try a pair of Homeplug devices (with the password set
to a non-default value in case of snoopers).

"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
news
I've been using [powerline units] for years BUT they do not last. The
design of the circuitry tends to be very marginal and don't like being
powered up all the time. I am repairing my every year or so and not all
of them are repairable (by me). I'm just about to try a different brand
(TP link) that I've heard good things about to replace the netgear ones
(XE102).

I use a pair of Western Digital "Livewire" devices to get Ethernet from my
router upstairs to our Skybox, Roku box and DVD player downstairs. This
model has the advantage that each end includes a 4-port switch (or maybe
just a plain hub) so one mains socket can serve four devices. These have
proved to be very reliable, and they are left permanently on. I think in the
three or four years I've had them, I've only needed to reboot them once
because they lost contact with each other.

On Thursday, 2 March 2017 20:12:40 UTC, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal

Extenders / boosters / repeaters boost the signal level, but because they share the same frequency band as the 'hub thing' they halve the speed.

Instead of a wire up the stairs, what about external ethernet cable out through a window frame downstairs and back in upstairs? Or up to the roof, into the loft, and an access point on the landing ceiling?

On 02/03/2017 20:12, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?


Try standing the router on its side/end first.

NY wrote:
"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
news
I've been using [powerline units] for years BUT they do not last. The
design of the circuitry tends to be very marginal and don't like being
powered up all the time. I am repairing my every year or so and not
all of them are repairable (by me). I'm just about to try a different
brand (TP link) that I've heard good things about to replace the
netgear ones (XE102).

I use a pair of Western Digital "Livewire" devices to get Ethernet from
my router upstairs to our Skybox, Roku box and DVD player downstairs.
This model has the advantage that each end includes a 4-port switch (or
maybe just a plain hub) so one mains socket can serve four devices.
These have proved to be very reliable, and they are left permanently on.
I think in the three or four years I've had them, I've only needed to
reboot them once because they lost contact with each other.
Interesting but it seems that WD have dropped these from their product
range and just concentrating on storage related products.

DerbyBorn was thinking very hard :
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

The 13amp units are likely to be more reliable, especially if both are
on the same ring circuit.

I struggle to get wifi to work, through two wooden floors here, in part
due to the sheer number of other wifi signals around me. I did once
work well, in the early wifi days, now I have to have two wifi access
points - the main broadband router on the top floor, where the phone
cable comes in - then a second one on the ground floor, linked to the
other via a wired LAN. Middle floor can access either of the two wifi
AP's.

On 3/2/2017 11:02 PM, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
DerbyBorn was thinking very hard :
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the
stairs. Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is
upstairs - a wall and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the
signal or a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house
wiring?

The 13amp units are likely to be more reliable, especially if both are
on the same ring circuit.

I struggle to get wifi to work, through two wooden floors here, in part
due to the sheer number of other wifi signals around me. I did once work
well, in the early wifi days, now I have to have two wifi access points
- the main broadband router on the top floor, where the phone cable
comes in - then a second one on the ground floor, linked to the other
via a wired LAN. Middle floor can access either of the two wifi AP's.

FWIW I have found the ring main units slow and unreliable. I can get
pretty much full speed (40 MB/S) with a wifi extender. I have two
cottages with a 2 to 3 foot wall in between (including the chimney
breast). There is a doorway knocked through, not line of site, but
signal diffuses / diffracts through it well enough. The master and slave
are both on the first floor, this provides coverage downstairs and to
the second floor above the extender. I had a fancy netgear extender but
this died after a few years, now I have a budget TP-link one.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017YPKZ...767431_TE_dp_1

newshound was thinking very hard :
FWIW I have found the ring main units slow and unreliable. I can get pretty
much full speed (40 MB/S) with a wifi extender. I have two cottages with a 2
to 3 foot wall in between (including the chimney breast). There is a doorway
knocked through, not line of site, but signal diffuses / diffracts through it
well enough. The master and slave are both on the first floor, this provides
coverage downstairs and to the second floor above the extender. I had a fancy
netgear extender but this died after a few years, now I have a budget TP-link
one.

A 'cottage' suggests somewhere which maybe doesn't have many other wifi
signals to contend with. It is very different when there are lots of
other signals around, swamping the wanted one.

To be honest, I have never tried the mains units.

On Thu, 02 Mar 2017 23:02:36 GMT, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

The 13amp units are likely to be more reliable, especially if both are
on the same ring circuit.

Up stairs and down stairs, chances are different rings and if a
recent "every thing through an RCD" installation possibly different
RCDs.

I struggle to get wifi to work, through two wooden floors here, in part
due to the sheer number of other wifi signals around me.

Shift to 5 GHz, or move. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Thu, 2 Mar 2017 21:05:52 -0000, NY wrote:

in my experience is more likely to suffer from lockups or gradual
degradation of communication speed, requiring the wifi device in the PC
to be disabled/re-enabled or even rebooted.

Yep, phone sometimes doesn't want to play WiFi, have to restart the
phone. Even then it will drop and reconnect, signal strength is fine.
Only phone has problems.

In terms of wireless range, you should be OK with internal walls and
floors, though it depends whether the solid floor is reinforced concrete
- the reinforcing bars might attenuate the signal.

Agreed, if the OP hasn't tried WiFi in the proposed position it would
be worth a quick test with a phone or WHY. If the PC hasn't got WiFi
but does have a PCI slot I have an unused PCI WiFi card doing nothing
(bought for a PC that only has PCIe slots, doh!). It's a 2 aerial
MIMO and can accept extension aerials to get them out of hiding round
the back.

... the 2.4 GHz wifi band is only available because it is a frequency at
which water molecules resonate, ...

It is a resonant frequency of something but I don't think it's the
water molecule, perhaps the OH bond. Microwave ovens take advantage
of this resonance/absorption.

... so broadcast signals will not travel long distances through rain.

Try telling the 2.4 GHz point to point links that are here that. One
is 6 km the other only 4 km. Another site has around 20 km and 15 km.
Rain, hill fog, snow or all three didn't stop 'em working.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 02/03/17 20:12, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

I've found the "two 13amp plug in things" to be slightly more reliable.

But nothing beats Cat 5. (Except cat 6 apparently)


--
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

On 02/03/17 21:54, wrote:
On Thursday, 2 March 2017 20:12:40 UTC, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the
stairs. What should she consider - and Extender that appears to
boost the signal

Extenders / boosters / repeaters boost the signal level, but because
they share the same frequency band as the 'hub thing' they halve the
speed.

Instead of a wire up the stairs, what about external ethernet cable
out through a window frame downstairs and back in upstairs? Or up to
the roof, into the loft, and an access point on the landing ceiling?

+1


--
Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people.
But Marxism is the crack cocaine.

In message 2,
DerbyBorn writes

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

You have had plenty of replies, and yes, running a proper cable is the
way to go, but not always practical. We have been using Homeplugs for
years, with great success. We use Solwise, and they just work. They
are plugged in and powered up permanently. We began with the non wifi
ones, then switched to wifi when they were introduced. One has died and
had to be replaced.
--
Graeme

On 03/03/2017 06:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 02/03/17 20:12, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the
stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a
wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the
signal or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

Try a better Wifi device on the PC first. Often the card based ones put
the antenna on the back so it is screened from the house Wifi signal!

I've found the "two 13amp plug in things" to be slightly more reliable.

+1

Although I have a cat 5 physical line from upstairs to downstairs that
runs down the back of a fitted wardrobe and emerges behind the TV.

The 13A ethernet makes my printer accessible and feeds internet radio. I
haven't had any bother from it and it even works in an unfiltered
extension socket.

But nothing beats Cat 5. (Except cat 6 apparently)

I don't find Wifi all that unreliable apart from in regions of the house
shielded by 3' solid stone walls. They really do stop Wifi.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

Well I'm biased, but plug adaptor distributed networks cause horrible RF
interference over a wide are due to the inefficiency of mains wiring used as
network cables. Not good if you have radio hams or short wave listeners
nearby or older people who still use AM radios.
Some say they can even make portable DAB and FM almost unusable. I guess
this depends on the signal strength of the wanted signals.
Extenders work but to me there still is no substitute for a bit of ordinary
net cable. Its faster and more reliable and not prone to interference from
other wifis nearby which is almost always the issue when you say it won't
even get upstairs.
Brian

--
----- -
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please!
"DerbyBorn" wrote in message
2.222...
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
Sky WiFi hub thing is downstairs - a PC used for work is upstairs - a wall
and solid floor get in the way.

What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal
or
a system that uses two 13amp plug in things to use the house wiring?

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Thu, 2 Mar 2017 21:05:52 -0000, NY wrote:

in my experience is more likely to suffer from lockups or gradual
degradation of communication speed, requiring the wifi device in the PC
to be disabled/re-enabled or even rebooted.

Yep, phone sometimes doesn't want to play WiFi, have to restart the
phone. Even then it will drop and reconnect, signal strength is fine.
Only phone has problems.

In terms of wireless range, you should be OK with internal walls and
floors, though it depends whether the solid floor is reinforced concrete
- the reinforcing bars might attenuate the signal.

Agreed, if the OP hasn't tried WiFi in the proposed position it would
be worth a quick test with a phone or WHY. If the PC hasn't got WiFi
but does have a PCI slot I have an unused PCI WiFi card doing nothing
(bought for a PC that only has PCIe slots, doh!). It's a 2 aerial
MIMO and can accept extension aerials to get them out of hiding round
the back.

... the 2.4 GHz wifi band is only available because it is a frequency at
which water molecules resonate, ...

It is a resonant frequency of something but I don't think it's the
water molecule, perhaps the OH bond. Microwave ovens take advantage
of this resonance/absorption.

OK. I was simplifying slightly. Yes, to be strictly accurate it's one of the
resonant modes of the OH bond, though I forget which. Other fluids such as
alcohol which also have an OH bond may cause similar attenuation :-)

... so broadcast signals will not travel long distances through rain.

Try telling the 2.4 GHz point to point links that are here that. One
is 6 km the other only 4 km. Another site has around 20 km and 15 km.
Rain, hill fog, snow or all three didn't stop 'em working.

Do they use 2.4 GHz? I'd assumed/read somewhere that they didn't use a
resonant frequency of water for that very reason, and that 2.4 was only
available because no-one (eg military, broadcast) could use it for anything
else long-distance. On the other hand, with a dish aerial to concentrate the
available power into a narrower beam, maybe water attenuation can be
overcome sufficiently to transfer a usable signal at 20 km range.

On 02/03/2017 21:00, Bob Minchin wrote:

I have an application where powerline is about the only solution and
I've been using them for years BUT they do not last. The design of the
circuitry tends to be very marginal and don't like being powered up all
the time. I am repairing my every year or so and not all of them are
repairable (by me).
I'm just about to try a different brand (TP link) that I've heard good
things about to replace the netgear ones (XE102)

I have half a dozen Ebuyer own-brand passthrough adapters that are in
use 24/7 and have worked without any issues since I bought them seven
years ago.

--
F

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
news
I don't find Wifi all that unreliable apart from in regions of the house
shielded by 3' solid stone walls. They really do stop Wifi.

The sort of houses that have 3' stone walls often have another wifi killer:
a huge metal cooking range surrounding the open fire. A large amount of cast
iron has interesting effects on wifi. Old stone cottages tend to have
another problem: they may be in remote parts of the country which have poor
phone lines (eg 8 km from the exchange) which means that you get slow or
intermittent ADSL. Try downloading a bloated HP printer driver (with all its
unwanted extras!) or an anti-virus package over a link that is about 250
kbps at best but which keeps dropping out (ping times vary between a very
respectable 40 msec and upwards of 2500 msec over the course of a few
minutes). (*)

The worst house for getting internet in various rooms was a cottage that had
previously been several different cottages. It had the lot: thick stone
walls, two hot water cylinders in different parts of the house, multiple
mains circuits fed from different meters, walls that definitely shouldn't be
drilled through or be defaced by cable trunking,

I struggled for a long time with the router in various different places to
get best wifi coverage from it and then using several wifi repeaters to
transport the signal to the periphery of the building. I tried Powerline
until I realised that the signal wouldn't reach some parts of the house
because they were on a different meter (and maybe even a different mains
phase).


(*) At least in the case that I was working on the other day, the customer
said "it gets worse whenever it rains" which sounds like good grounds for
getting BT Openreach (via the ISP) to check for water in underground cabling
over the 8 km journey to the exchange. Thank goodness the house had been
wired so all the internal phone wiring was the customer's own wiring which
could easily be disconnected to prove that the problem still occurred. It's
a different situation when (like in our house) there are two extensions
permanently wired to an old GPO lozenge box (which you Must Not Touch) so
you can't prove whether or not ADSL problems are caused by extension wiring.
But that's all a side issue to the matter of wifi and Powerline.

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
Well I'm biased, but plug adaptor distributed networks cause horrible RF
interference over a wide are due to the inefficiency of mains wiring used
as network cables. Not good if you have radio hams or short wave listeners
nearby or older people who still use AM radios.
Some say they can even make portable DAB and FM almost unusable. I guess
this depends on the signal strength of the wanted signals.
Extenders work but to me there still is no substitute for a bit of
ordinary net cable. Its faster and more reliable and not prone to
interference from other wifis nearby which is almost always the issue when
you say it won't even get upstairs.

I agree with you. I'd never use Powerline if there was an easy way of
installing Ethernet. My parents actually drilled a hole through the internal
wall of their house (which was brick, not plasterboard) to get a cable from
the router in one room to the computer in the next room (they have "his and
hers" offices in adjacent bedrooms of the house).

Where we live, there are very few wifi networks, and certainly none on one
of the three "magic channels" 1, 6 or 11 which are guaranteed not to overlap
with each other, so I can use one of these (I forget which) and know that I
have no interference from neighbours' networks. But wifi reception can still
be very variable, even in the same location. I suspect some other device
that uses 2.4 GHz (or produces harmonics in that range) which is not visible
as a wifi network and therefore doesn't show up on InSSIDer. Whatever it is
causes a lot of mush at the low end of the VHF waveband as well in one
bedroom. (And yes, I've unplugged all the wall wart power supplies round
about, as well as the Powerline devices, in case it's one of those which is
radiating crap).

Do wireless intercoms and baby alarms use 2.4 GHz?

NY has brought this to us :
Do they use 2.4 GHz? I'd assumed/read somewhere that they didn't use a
resonant frequency of water for that very reason, and that 2.4 was only
available because no-one (eg military, broadcast) could use it for anything
else long-distance. On the other hand, with a dish aerial to concentrate the
available power into a narrower beam, maybe water attenuation can be overcome
sufficiently to transfer a usable signal at 20 km range.

Much longer distances have been managed than that.

I really don't follow how a copper tank full of water, can attenuate a
signal more than the same tank, but empty.

On 3/2/2017 11:27 PM, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
newshound was thinking very hard :
FWIW I have found the ring main units slow and unreliable. I can get
pretty much full speed (40 MB/S) with a wifi extender. I have two
cottages with a 2 to 3 foot wall in between (including the chimney
breast). There is a doorway knocked through, not line of site, but
signal diffuses / diffracts through it well enough. The master and
slave are both on the first floor, this provides coverage downstairs
and to the second floor above the extender. I had a fancy netgear
extender but this died after a few years, now I have a budget TP-link
one.

A 'cottage' suggests somewhere which maybe doesn't have many other wifi
signals to contend with. It is very different when there are lots of
other signals around, swamping the wanted one.

To be honest, I have never tried the mains units.

I can see the one from next door, and usually at least three from across
the road. They are well down on signal of course. I have no reason to
suppose they cause significant interference, I get much the same speed
cabled to the main router as on WiFi through the extender.

It happens that newshound formulated :
I can see the one from next door, and usually at least three from across the
road. They are well down on signal of course. I have no reason to suppose
they cause significant interference, I get much the same speed cabled to the
main router as on WiFi through the extender.

Using a Wifi scanner application, I see around 14 AP's using my laptop
on the ground floor. Two of them I believe from next door, which are
logged as stronger signals than my own, even one just 8 feet away in
the same room.

Doing the same scan on the top floor, I can get a few dozen AP's
logged.

What puzzles me, is that the signal strength graph show the usual
slight variations, but occasionally shows a massive spike in the signal
strength of some of the signals. It is perhaps an anomaly of the
scanning software.

Harry Bloomfield wrote:

NY has brought this to us :
Do they use 2.4 GHz? I'd assumed/read somewhere that they didn't use a
resonant frequency of water for that very reason, and that 2.4 was only
available because no-one (eg military, broadcast) could use it for
anything else long-distance. On the other hand, with a dish aerial to
concentrate the available power into a narrower beam, maybe water
attenuation can be overcome sufficiently to transfer a usable signal at
20 km range.

Much longer distances have been managed than that.

I really don't follow how a copper tank full of water, can attenuate a
signal more than the same tank, but empty.

If something acts as an absorber of electromagnetic waves and is
lossless it also acts as a radiator. If the energy is taken out of the
system by a matched electrical connection (as in an aerial) then that
energy will not be re-radiated. I guess maybe the water could act as a
lossy absorber of electrical energy and have the same effect. Like
you, I am not very convinced that a water tank is going to act as a
highly effective 2.4GHz aerial in the first place, though.


--

Roger Hayter

Harry Bloomfield wrote in
news
NY has brought this to us :
Do they use 2.4 GHz? I'd assumed/read somewhere that they didn't use
a resonant frequency of water for that very reason, and that 2.4 was
only available because no-one (eg military, broadcast) could use it
for anything else long-distance. On the other hand, with a dish
aerial to concentrate the available power into a narrower beam, maybe
water attenuation can be overcome sufficiently to transfer a usable
signal at 20 km range.

Much longer distances have been managed than that.

I really don't follow how a copper tank full of water, can attenuate a
signal more than the same tank, but empty.

If it was my house, I would.

On 03/03/2017 11:16, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

What puzzles me, is that the signal strength graph show the usual slight
variations, but occasionally shows a massive spike in the signal
strength of some of the signals. It is perhaps an anomaly of the
scanning software.

Maybe there are some MIMO APs there and you get one of the beams formed
in your direction.

Roger Hayter submitted this idea :
Like
you, I am not very convinced that a water tank is going to act as a
highly effective 2.4GHz aerial in the first place, though.

Quite, it will though act as a screen, much reducing the signal
strength behind it.

Try microwaving water in a metal pot - the water will remain cool,
because it doesn't absorb any of the radiation, it is screened by the
metal.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus
On 02/03/17 21:54, wrote:
On Thursday, 2 March 2017 20:12:40 UTC, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the
stairs. What should she consider - and Extender that appears to
boost the signal

Extenders / boosters / repeaters boost the signal level, but because
they share the same frequency band as the 'hub thing' they halve the
speed.

Instead of a wire up the stairs, what about external ethernet cable
out through a window frame downstairs and back in upstairs? Or up to
the roof, into the loft, and an access point on the landing ceiling?

+1



Indeed !

What a lot of people miss is that there isn't much room in the 2.4 ISM
band and congestion is a big problem which does make for poor
performance more often than not..
--
Tony Sayer

After serious thinking dennis@home wrote :
On 03/03/2017 11:16, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

What puzzles me, is that the signal strength graph show the usual slight
variations, but occasionally shows a massive spike in the signal
strength of some of the signals. It is perhaps an anomaly of the
scanning software.

Maybe there are some MIMO APs there and you get one of the beams formed in
your direction.

I had to look the MIMO part up - three streams of data, occupying three
channels. No, I am only seeing the spikes on the single channel they
are occupying.

On Thursday, 2 March 2017 21:54:06 UTC, wrote:
On Thursday, 2 March 2017 20:12:40 UTC, DerbyBorn wrote:
Daughter is trying to use WiFi instead of a wire travelling up the stairs.
What should she consider - and Extender that appears to boost the signal

Most respondent seem to be assuming that if you use a mains-borne ethernet signal, you're stuck with hard-wired internet rather than wifi. It's definitely not an either/or: eg I cured a wifi blackspot in my house (which has lots of thick stone walls) using one of these: http://tinyurl.com/jlagfrb) (or http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/TL-WPA4220.html)

Extenders / boosters / repeaters boost the signal level, but because they share the same frequency band as the 'hub thing' they halve the speed.

I currently use my auxillary extender thingy on a completely different network to the main one, so my devices swap over to the best signal when necessary. I must admit I had a lot of grief getting it set up, and once it worked I just left well alone... I've never quite understood the whole speed-halving malarkey; am I avoiding it by what I'm doing? Or can I simply change the names of the two routers to match; or do they clash then? Ideally I'd much rather have just the one wifi network, for sure.

David

On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 09:28:24 -0800 (PST), Lobster wrote:

I currently use my auxillary extender thingy on a completely different
network to the main one, so my devices swap over to the best signal when
necessary. I must admit I had a lot of grief getting it set up, and once
it worked I just left well alone...

Is that another wired AP? If not how does it get it's connection to
the LAN?

I've never quite understood the whole speed-halving malarkey;

On a given channel only one thing can transmit at a time. With a
repeater (aka extender) retransmitting on the same channel as the AP
each packet is transmitted twice, once from the AP then again from
the repeater. Thus halving the number of time slots available.

... am I avoiding it by what I'm doing?

Certainly if the two APs are on different channels. If on the same
channel and they can't hear each other there is potential for a
"mush" zone between them where a device can hear both and if the APs
transmit at the same time stomp on each other. Also the device may
start switching between them.

Or can I simply change the names of the two routers to match; or do they
clash then?

The SSIDs can be the same and even on the same channel provided the
traffic levels aren't high on both at the same time.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 10:53:38 -0000, NY wrote:

Do wireless intercoms and baby alarms use 2.4 GHz?

Some do, and video senders and blue tooth and ...

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 10:24:48 -0000, NY wrote:

Try telling the 2.4 GHz point to point links that are here that.
One
is 6 km the other only 4 km. Another site has around 20 km and 15
km.
Rain, hill fog, snow or all three didn't stop 'em working.

Do they use 2.4 GHz?

They certainly did, I'm not sure if they are still on 2.4 Ghz as the
kit has changed a couple of times since the orginal installion 15 odd
years ago. That used Cisco Aeronet 350 series bridges, 15" dish one
way and "long" yagi the other.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Fri, 03 Mar 2017 15:43:14 GMT, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

Try microwaving water in a metal pot - the water will remain cool,
because it doesn't absorb any of the radiation, it is screened by the
metal.

Or the metal is a better absorber than the water and soaks up all the
energy... You need to repeat the experiment with the water in a
plastic container outside of the metal pot.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice scribeth thus
On Fri, 03 Mar 2017 15:43:14 GMT, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

Try microwaving water in a metal pot - the water will remain cool,
because it doesn't absorb any of the radiation, it is screened by the
metal.

Or the metal is a better absorber than the water and soaks up all the
energy... You need to repeat the experiment with the water in a
plastic container outside of the metal pot.


Reflector rather than absorber Dave...
--
Tony Sayer

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice scribeth thus
On Fri, 3 Mar 2017 10:24:48 -0000, NY wrote:

Try telling the 2.4 GHz point to point links that are here that.
One
is 6 km the other only 4 km. Another site has around 20 km and 15
km.
Rain, hill fog, snow or all three didn't stop 'em working.

Do they use 2.4 GHz?

They certainly did, I'm not sure if they are still on 2.4 Ghz as the
kit has changed a couple of times since the orginal installion 15 odd
years ago. That used Cisco Aeronet 350 series bridges, 15" dish one
way and "long" yagi the other.


5.8 Band C is the preferred way nowadays works much better for longer
range links. We have got one in daily reliable use over some 18.7
miles...
--
Tony Sayer

On 03/03/17 10:24, NY wrote:
Try telling the 2.4 GHz point to point links that are here that. One
is 6 km the other only 4 km. Another site has around 20 km and 15 km.
Rain, hill fog, snow or all three didn't stop 'em working.

Do they use 2.4 GHz? I'd assumed/read somewhere that they didn't use a
resonant frequency of water for that very reason, and that 2.4 was only
available because no-one (eg military, broadcast) could use it for
anything else long-distance. On the other hand, with a dish aerial to
concentrate the available power into a narrower beam, maybe water
attenuation can be overcome sufficiently to transfer a usable signal at
20 km range.
2.4 is not used much for point to point. It is used for 'village wifi'
and can get a km or two with the right antennae, BUT it does tend to
stop working in rain

2.4Ghz is probably good for rain radar tho.

Point to point is at a lot of other frequencies.

Rain and microwaves is a very interesting subject. generally te higher
the frequency the worse the effect BUT there are as has been pointed
out, deep and narrow notches in longer wavelengths like 2.4Ghz.

Which is why 2.4Ghz is left for 'amateurs' use. In practice that means
microwaves, wifi, model radio control, some local telemetry and a few
other short distance uses.

Tony Sayer will be along with chapter and verse on what is used
professionally.

--
€œit should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism
(or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans,
about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and
the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a
'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,'
a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for
rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet
things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that
you live neither in Joseph Stalins Communist era, nor in the Orwellian
utopia of 1984.€�

Vaclav Klaus

On 03/03/17 10:53, NY wrote:
Do wireless intercoms and baby alarms use 2.4 GHz?
Probably not. 27MHz (CB, ancient model radio control) is available for
low bandwith localised ****

--
Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

"Saki"