Large house - Wifi Setup

Hi,

I'm about to move to a large detached house - around 4000 sqft and with a big garden. This is too large most likely even for my precious linksys e4200 router, so i'm planning on installing several access points to cover the full house.

Can I have the same network SSID/channel for the full house, or do i need to set up different wireless networks?

Any experience with using homeplugs instead of Cat5 to connect the Access points to the router? Is the difference noticeable between using homeplug 200s vs 500s, when using wifi (wifi is most likely slower than 200mbit anyway...)

Any other suggestions/proposals for how to wire this house correctly?!

Best
Magnus

I've had a bad experience with home plugs myself (others say otherwise), so I personally won't touch them. I've found them slow, and unreliable.

I while back, I bought 3 of these units:

http://www.dabs.com/products/edimax-wireless-n--802-...

They've come down in price from when I bought them - now just over £30 a pop. They are pretty awesome, and once configured correctly, I've experienced nearly no issues with them.

I run 1 as an access point in my small flat at only 10% power - this covers the entire flat. The other 2 I run in a dedicated bridge mode, also running at 10% power. All configured to wireless N, and I see about 5Mb/second when transfering files around.

I would imagine in your case, if you have thick walls, or need a further range out to the garden, just configure them at 100% power and you'll be on your way to solving your problems. But don't take my word for it, read the reviews on the DABs site - one chap there I think had the task of wifi-ing a large theatre, and these units did it cheaply, and with maximum coverage.

I would avoid homeplugs at all costs! I don't like them and they are *possibly* going to be outlawed at some point in the future. Plus they are damned expensive in comparison to cable.

RE: the wifi ap. I would recommend getting all the same manufacturers kit and using wds. The Draytek AP are good for this but you must follow the instructions exactly...

So... it seems that my current linksys e4200 router does not support WDS or bridging... so i will either need to replace, or use cat5 and access points.

Any recommendations for good quality access points? Can i keep my router on a separate network, and set up another WDS mesh network with say 3 APs of which only one is physically connected to the network through cat5?

That could be a solution that works for me - i would ensure that my gaming computer and TV had high speed access directly through the main router (e4200), and it'd be fine for the rest of the WDS wifii network to be a bit slower (due to bandwidth loss when repeating).

draytek products are awesome if you can configure them properly.
i personally use a vigor2820n on my virginmedia connection in placement of the pos that was the dlink dir615 d4 with vm firmware. The internet is now rock solid, i have no dchp issues and the wireless range alone is almost double the dlinks lol.

as for powerline adapters. i have no horror stories to tell, the linksys (cisco) ones i used to send the internet into my loft worked flawlessly from day one and still are

Avoid the plugs ... there will not be the bandwidth to support several WAPs working at full speed.

You can use your router but get a small switch to work with it.

For the WAPs look for ones that support WDS and also Power Over Ethernet - that will mean no power adapters to worry about or unsightly cables on walls. The switch may support POE or there are Power injectors available.



edit to add:

Have a look at the Draytek AP800

Edited by MHC (Tue 04-Oct-11 11:36:42)

Avoid using repeaters if you can ... Wire cat5e out to each WAP

Use the same SSID throughout but allocate each WAP it's own wireless channel (unless any pair on the same channel are far enough apart not to interfere with each other.)

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

draytek products are awesome if you can configure them properly

Agreed

The homeplugs are OK if you just use two matching units.

But with three or more, the performance goes right off.

You can use the same ssid however you normally need to change to smarted access points and dump the normal cheap ap approach.

Its the sort of thing that cisco / junipter and some others support. It gets into an enterprise area and expect ap's to hit you for £300 a shot

If you are likely to need 3 or more access points, you could take a look at this:
http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

You could start with a 3 pack and the access points can be supplied by PoE.

Unlike most other "enterprise" wireless systems, the controller is just software / service (included, Java-based with a browser-based config) which can be run under Windows, Mac or Linux on an existing or spare machine, and the controller software does not need to remain running once the APs have powered up and received their configuration (and any firmware updates).

For a large house, you can add a map or plan to illustrate where the APs are and it will show you which AP stuff is connecting to which may help you plan or revise your coverage.

These are indoor APs, for the garden you could use a separate NanoStation Loco M2 (also PoE and outdoor rated) which you could mount on an outside wall, or just stick one of the indoor APs on a window sill.

The main bugbear is that the power leads come with 2-pin (euro) plugs so you would need to get some 3-to-2-pin adapters, or cut off the plugs to fit standard UK plugs!

The newest version of the software controller will update the APs firmware to support "wireless uplink" meaning APs that can't be wired to the LAN can chain from another AP in range.

In a typical setup all devices will receive DHCP from your existing LAN router and the controller software will discover them after they power up for the first time.

THat sounds like a great system - I'll definitely have a look! Does anyone have any experience from using it!?

We're using it in a few buildings for work and so far so good (I previously mentioned the only downsides I can think of).

We found that there was more time involved in finding places where we were allowed to place units and which areas we could discreetly run cable to (buildings are old or have aesthetic requirements which trump technology needs).

The main feature we didn't need was the guest portal (web-based splash page and logon), mostly because we were already using pfSense v2.x (a very flexible FreeBSD firewall / router OS) and partly because that requires the Unifi controller software always running for guest portal traffic.

We do use the multi-SSID stuff, mapped to VLANs (newer Draytek including their AP seem to offer that too).

But yes it would be good to hear if anyone else on TBB had used it whether in trial or in anger, as well as any similar kit for large house / building coverage.

Edited by prlzx (Sat 08-Oct-11 01:51:36)