Complete overhaul of my Wi-Fi setup

[rodmcban]

Hello everyone,

After moving to another apartment, it became difficult (read impossible) to wire the premises (too many twists and turns, larger place), so I am finally ready to spend some money redoing my wi-fi setup.

Short version
I need new wi-fi equipment, for mostly Mac clients but with a gaming desktop that needs speed and reliability.
Ethernet is not an option
Should I go with :
A. Asus RT-N66U + Asus EA-N66
B. Apple Airport Extreme Base Station + Airport Express Gen2

Long version
Existing gear:
• 2008 Time capsule (gen 1) assuming the router role, 2.4Ghz N compatible B/G
• 2011 Airport express (gen 1) extending the wireless
Wireless clients:
• 2008 Macbook Pro (mine)
• 2008 Macbook Air (wife’s)
• 2009 Macbook (son’s)
• Brother MFC2870 for printing and scanning (fixed IP address)
• Ipad 2 (wife’s)
• XBOX 360
• Playstation 3
• Wii
• Homebuilt Gaming Desktop (son’s)
• WD TVLive (not yet connected, adapter to be bought)
Wired clients (all in gigabit)
• Zyxel GS108 switch for the wired side, plugged into the TC.
• QNAP 509 NAS
• Mac Pro Intel
• Home built Ubuntu server box for downloads, media storage, web services, etc.

Exotic details
All the gear was purchased in Canada/US, except the desktop wi-fi adapter and the MacPro. When configuring the TimeCapsule, I always chose Canada. We now live in Europe (CH) since 2010.

History
Before the move, everything serious was wired in 1000Mbs. I say serious, because the wi-fi was used casually, if any decent bandwidth was required there was always an Ethernet cable within reach.
After we moved and reconnected everything I went out and got a DLink DWA 547 adapter for my son’s desktop (this is what was in stock at that time)
This is all taking place in an apartment building, single level, some walls out of concrete (load bearing) some out of less solid stuff but definitely nothing made of drywall and 2x4 studs as we used to have back home. I don’t know if it counts or not, but between the living and my son’s room, the straight path goes through the elevator shaft 9 see this as a right triangle with the living room at one end of the hypotenuse and my son’s room at the other end. The apartment goes along the two catheti and nested between the two is the elevator.

Recent problems
Since we moved, a certain number of issues have appeared:
- Internet connection appears to drop randomly. Restarting the time capsule fixes this (maybe it suffered during transportation?)
Problems appear essentially in my son’s room (the most distant from the router)
- The desktop adapter never really worked properly
Two out of three attempts it does not get an ip address, connection drops regularly, etc.
Surprisingly, the other wireless clients in the same room as the desktop (PS3, XBOX) have been working acceptably well. My son has been reporting some connection drops from his Macbook, but I think by now he is very frustrated that his stuff is not really working as lately, most of his gaming was done on the PC, and he spent a large part of his savings on PC gaming gear (mouse, keyboard, etc.)
Wireless clients in the proximity of the router (printer, my MBP, wife’s MBA, etc. ) appear to be doing OK.

So here is all of it, this thing got longer than my CV.
Should I go the Apple route or the Asus?
Will switching to 5Ghz improve anything in my situation?
If you’re still alive and I did not bore you to death with this story, what other ideas or directions should I be looking at?

 

[stevech]

So there are individual problems, so rather than get help troubleshooting, you want to replace the whole lot? Reminds me of today's automobile repair "technicians"
By laws of physics, Wireless cannot get near wired performance or reliability, and ten-fold more so in unlicensed bands.

So, use wire. Use MoCA. Use PowerLine. Anything to avoid wireless, unless the client is a handheld device.

 

[rodmcban]

OK,
Thanks for the advice, I'll probably look harder into wiring the whole thing.

 

[thetoad30]

First, get a new wireless adapter for your son, and see if that helps with his problem. DLink sucks, in my opinion. Crappy engineering, crappy firmware, crappy support. Crappy company.

If you were headed to the Apple route, you could always buy an Apple Express 2012 and hook it up as a client to serve your son's PC. See if that fixes the problems. If not, then there's nothing you can do there, the above poster is correct - find a wire.

As for the dropping of the internet - perhaps the ISP there is not so great and kicks you offline every now and then? You'd have to see if your IP changes in the Time Capsule - if so, then you know what the problem is.

5GHz more than likely will not help your situation since it actually penetrates less than 2.4GHz. This means that 5GHz is more susceptible to attenuation (signal drop) going through walls than 2.4GHz. You can try it and see, but chances are it won't help so much.

So there are a couple of things you can try with wireless. Hopefully that helps.

 

[sfx2000]

Hmm... doesn't sound like you need to replace any gear - the TC has decent range on a clear channel - play around with the placement of the AP Express in the apartment and get the PS3/XBOX/WII/Macbook stable over in your son's room...

As far as the gaming PC with the DWA 547 - if I recall, the rubber duck antennae (antenna's?) screw onto the PCI backplate directly - while somewhat functional, you're going to get a lot of noise from the PC itself - so getting them away from the PC using something like D-Link's ANT24-0230 is probably a good option to look at - that particular part is for the DWA 547, but I'm reasonably certain others would work as well, depending on what is available in your particular area.

One tool that can help on the Mac side with site surveys -- Install it on one of the Macbooks and walk around the apartment and see what other SSID's are out there - it can also be useful when relocating the AP Express to better light up the entire apartment.

http://istumbler.net/

best of luck!