5GHz WiFi through two wooden floors?

Just bought a new Buffalo 802.11n access point but I am getting no better a signal than I had with my old 802.11g one.

Using wireless networking analysis software I can see that virtually everybody in the neighbourhood is running an 802.11n router or access point (about 12 are visible from my laptop!) but everybody is being knocked down to 802.11g 54mb/s -presumably by interference from all the others.

To get over this I am thinking of getting two Buffalo WLAE-AG300N Bridge / Access Points to create a 5GHz network around the house, one in the loft (next to my router) in access point mode the other on the ground floor in "bridge and repeat" mode that will take the signal from the AP and rebroadcast it.

That is about 18 feet apart and through two wooden floors with plaster ceilings underneath.

I have heard that 5GHz does not cope well with obstructions so I am nervous that I would spend £80 and end up with no improvement again.

Does anybody have experience of using 5GHz WiFi? Is it as sensitive to obstructions as is sometimes stated?

Wifi should / will not be 'knocked down' to 54 mbps on wireless N

The most that will happen is that instead of broadcasting at 40 mhz it will broadcast at 20 mhz meaning it will perform around 150 mbps maximum instead. Not 54

Are you sure that your not using a wireless g wifi card?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Tue 15-May-12 13:18:27)

Have you considered returning the router and going back to your old router and using homeplugs instead?

It is an "N" card (Intel Advanced-N 6200) which is dual band N and has a theoretical maximum link speed of 300 Mbps.

I think it may be the wireless detection software I am using (Wireless NetView) which having run it again at work is showing 54 Mbps on everything!

I will try again with more conventional software and see what that turns up. If I can get a link speed of greater than 54Mbps then I will probably just go with a single bridge as I have only one legacy "g" device (a Logitech Squeezebox Duet Receiver) that is having any significant issues. It has an ethernet port so I can fix it using a WiFi to ethernet bridge.

I like the Buffalo one because it is cheap, small and dual band (just in case I need it in the future), but a bit nervous that it does not have an external antenna.

I was tempted to send the new AP back, but it has 4 Gigabit ethernet ports so is doubling up as a switch. Anyway I want to try to get it to work at "n" link speeds somehow, in a way that still gives me legacy "g" support.

We need wireless because we are a 6 person household with three smartphones, an iPod touch, three laptops and a Squeezebox Wireless Controller! The best way I could use powerline networking is to create a bridge to a second Access Point. I have tried that before but the cable distance and age of the wiring from router in loft to AP on ground floor actually led to a less reliable link than WiFi.

Edited by deleted (Tue 15-May-12 14:19:23)

Don't know about how well the router will perform but experience in other fields suggest that it may give better results as the attenuation through the floor boards could be less.

I have had a dig around and found this: www.solwise.co.uk%2Fdownloads%2Ffiles%2Fintheuk5ghz.pdf&ei=32CyT56dEoKg0QXwv9GQCw&usg=AFQjCNFNewg_4T4ZkcWpUH7s_T63W8FQiA and even if you ignore the maths, it is interesting reading.

Thanks for the info. The correct links is as follows though:
http://www.solwise.co.uk/downloads/files/intheuk5ghz...

Reading through it points up a major contradiction. Everything I have read elsewhere states that 5Ghz penetrates building materials less well than 2.4Ghz, and this is confirmed by the real world tests on wireless kit carried out at http://SmallNetBuilder.com. He uses "zones" in a building he has labelled A to F in ascending order of distance and difficult obstacles. Good 2.4Ghz wireless can reach usably all the way from A to F, but 5Ghz cannot usually get beyond Zone D.

I wish I knew more about those zones so I could get a handle on what is stopping the signal in zones E and F.

The contradiction in the paper is that Solwise state that 5Ghz is more readily reflecrted AND more readily transmitted. Both cannot be true!

Anyway, I am will have another bash at home this evening at getting a link rate higher than 54 Mbps and report back.

In reply to a post by TheLastMan:

I think it may be the wireless detection software I am using (Wireless NetView) which having run it again at work is showing 54 Mbps on everything!

Oops... just realised that the software was telling me that the best connection that my laptop could make with these access points was 54g! Clearly there is something up with my Wireless client setup. Will do some digging.

http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/ is quite good

It shows the APs and their overlapping channels.

Choose channel 1 6 or 11 and choose one which has the lowest bars

I have over 10 wifi networks available and I still get 144 mbps wireless upstairs from the router. My router only supports 144 mbps though so I can't expect better

Also update your drivers at http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?la...

Are you using wpa2 encryption?

Taken from the Intel website:
"The 802.11n specification indicates that a compliant adapter can achieve transfer rates greater than 54 Mbps on 802.11n connections only when using AES security or no security. You should only use no security when setting up or troubleshooting the network.

To enable AES for Personal Security, select WPA-Personal (AES-CCMP) or WPA2-Personal (AES-CCMP) in the Security Settings pulldown menu. To enable AES for Enterprise Security, select AES-CCMP in the Data Encryption pulldown menu".

Edited by petsy (Wed 16-May-12 00:19:09)

does your current access point have adjustable aerials?
if so try laying them flat an see if there's a difference.

Have you checked your adapter properties, my Intel card had 'Throughput Enhancement' disabled by default in the (Windows 7) driver (Advanced tab).

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/ is quite good

It shows the APs and their overlapping channels.

Choose channel 1 6 or 11 and choose one which has the lowest bars

I have over 10 wifi networks available and I still get 144 mbps wireless upstairs from the router. My router only supports 144 mbps though so I can't expect better

Thanks for that. Excellent software, I like the graphics showing how channels overlap.
Thanks also to Petsy who put me onto using AES (I was using TKIP).

- I changed the setup on my router to use WPA2-PSK-AES.

- I then needed to change the properties of each laptop adapter "advanced" settings so they had QoS WMM enabled and anything relating to 802.11n enabled.

- Once that was done I then needed to change the SSID profile settings on each laptop so that they used WPA2-personal and AES.

Rebooted both laptops and bingo! Link speeds now between 130 and 200 on ground floor with a consistent 300 on the first floor. Average consistent network throughput on the ground floor up from around 8,000 Kbps (1 MB/s) to 24,000 Kbps (3 MB/s). Thanks guys!

But, boy, what a palava... I consider myself pretty experienced in computer tech stuff but if this lot can fox me without two days of posting in forums and Googling, how does Joe Ordinary cope??

Because I now know how to set them up now I am going to get a single WLAE-AG300N to act as a bridge for my Squeezebox Duet Receiver as it is bound to get a better signal than with its notoriously poor internal WiFi.

In reply to a post by TheLastMan:

Because I know how to set them up now I am going to get a single WLAE-AG300N to act as a bridge for my Squeezebox Duet Receiver as it is bound to get a better signal than with its notoriously poor internal WiFi.

This is what I did and I am happy to report great success!

The internal wi-fi in the Receiver was struggling to raise 800 kilobits per second using 802.11g. After about an hour of wrangling and hair tearing I set up the Buffalo bridge to pick up the 802.11n connection (at 40 Mhz) from the access point. This is not the easiest device to set up and the manual is pretty rubbish.

However... having finally got the hang of it I connected it to the Receiver (using one of the Ethernet sockets) and it now streams FLAC and WAV files flawlessly.

Just to see how much better it was doing I turned off the wi-fi in my laptop and connected it to the bridge using an Ethernet cable and tested the real-world throughput using "LAN Speed Test" to and from my NAS. This showed 56,000 kb/s (7 MB/s) down and 32,000 kb/s (4 MB/s) up.

Wow. That is seventy times faster than the Receiver's internal wi-fi!!!

In fact the WLAE-AG300N picks up the wireless much better than either of the two new laptops, giving roughly double the real-world network throughput, without an antenna in sight.