Newbie looking for poor signal solutions

[Colin Woodward]

I live in a 1000sqft apartment in which the walls appear to be made of kryptonite (1930's building that blocks phone signals). My router's (Asus RT-N66U) wifi doesn't reach one end of the apartment, the bedroom and the bathroom.

I was looking at the Luma or the eero as a way of blanketing the area but I'm told by those companies that if the internet is down (it's Time Warner so that should be "when" not if) then there's no LAN connection.

So if I wanted to stream from my PLEX server that's hardwired to one of the Luma's then it wouldn't stream to any mobile devices during an internet outage.

So I'm looking for way to get a decent wifi connection throughout the apartment that still allows streaming from device to device even if the internet is down.

Some caveats are:
I can't move the outer
With the age of the building I don't think powerlines would be any good.
I tried a wifi extender and it was a waste of money.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

 

[pete y testing]

My router's (Asus RT-N66U) wifi doesn't reach one end of the apartment, the bedroom and the bathroom.

I tried a wifi extender and it was a waste of money.

I was looking at the Luma or the eero as a way of blanketing the area

i assume you mean by running ethernet to them all as i dont think mesh would work any good ether as you have proved by the other 2 tests above

if it where me i would just get a 3 pack of unifi ac ap's and have the mounted on the ceiling and run back to to main router via ethernet and powered by POE ( not eop )

 

[thiggins]

With your restrictions, you need to try powerline. If that doesn't work, you'll need to use Ethernet to connect to another AP or two.

There are no miracles in WiFi, despite what the marketing folks would have you believe.

 

[sfx2000]

There are no miracles in WiFi, despite what the marketing folks would have you believe.

Yep, agreed...

 

[System Error Message]

Ethernet is usually one of the best solutions, but there are a few,

If signal can penetrate the walls even though not so well there are some wifi options such as a directional wifi bridge using non consumer APs. Some APs have a much higher power rating and are designed to handle various different antennas so that can help but i still think wiring another AP would be a lot better and simpler. A simple wifi extender tends to be a poor choice, to do wifi extansion properly requires getting 3 APs just to expand (2 for the only bridging, 1 to distribute on the other end).

You can use flat ethernet cables to put under doors if you dont want to drill holes.

Fibre optics are one option as they are thinner than ethernet but they are more expensive but allow longer cables. Some APs have an SFP port and POE in so it gives you more options.

 

[Colin Woodward]

Thank you for your replies. I'm going to run through some of the suggestions before I consider running cables through. I realize that's the best but the layout of the apartment would make it a heck of a job.

Thanks again for the ideas and suggestions.