Wireless in a Large House, multiple antennas via RG6?

[nathan909]

Ok so I have a large 3500sf house on .5 acres. I tried 2 wireless routers at different ends of the house with same SSID on different channels for my wireless devices(roaming), but they want to stick to a week signal, if I walk to a different part of the house...

I have RG6 ran throughout the house...
1. Can I connect a router (i.e. wrt54g) to my rg6 and connect 2 antennas at different locations in the house?
2. Is 50' of cable to far of a run before placing an antenna at end of run?
3. Do I need some sort of line amplifier?
4. wrt54g has 2 antennas, can thoes atennas be in different locations of the house?
5. Can one antenna plug in the back of router be split to 2 antenna locations (via a high frequency power passing splitter)? To give a total of 4 antenna locations in house?
Any other ideas on how to get great wireless coverage in my house?

Thanks for any help!!
-Nathan

 

[claykin]

Which 2 routers have you tried? Is one of them the WRT54G with physical antennas? If its a Linksys report back with the model # from the bottom including the version #.

Can you locate the router in the center of your house? Having the radio source in the center will help to make sure you get coverage throughout. Is your home single or multiple story? Tip: Mount the router as high as reasonably possible. On top of a tall bookcase is often good.

I have used 2 x WNDR3700 to cover 95% of a 10K sq ft house. Both operating in N mode. Same SSID. Wifi clients are all newer laptops and iPad. iPad gets worst signal of all but its still OK for owner. Plus this is a relatively cheap solution without throwing $$ at it (which he didn't want to do).

Also, what wireless NIC is in your laptop? Many times upgrading the NIC driver will help it be more intelligent and lock on to the stronger signal.

Also, its usually not practical to try to remote mount antennas. 50' of RG6 will likely have too much loss for the weak powered radio in a wifi router. Some RG6 is capable of pushing a 2.4Ghz signal OK, but higher frequencies always have higher loss over distance. You'll need to make up the loss with a higher gain antenna and/or amp. The problem with amps for wifi is that unless you're willing to spend $$ you won't find an amp capable of two way clean signal. Plus your available options of modern routers with external antennas is shrinking rapidly.

 

[jdabbs]

RG6 isn't compatible (impedance mismatch). Even if it was, the antennas and/or amps necessary to overcome attenuation at the specified distance would likely cost just as much, if not more than an AP.

 

[claykin]

RG6 isn't compatible (impedance mismatch). Even if it was, the antennas and/or amps necessary to overcome attenuation at the specified distance would likely cost just as much, if not more than an AP.

Yes wifi wants 50 ohm. As I understand it RG6 has a characteristic impedance of 75ohm. It can push a 50ohm load but loss will be much greater. Loss can be less if 75 ohm antennas are used and a 75 to 50 ohm matching transformer is used before connecting to the router. Still I've never seen anyone have great luck remote mounting using RG6. Its certainly not a good option with modern routers with multiple antennas in MIMO.

 

[jdabbs]

Loss is only half the problem. The reflected signal is bound to be several orders of magnitude greater than what would be ordinarily received from a client. How much power does it take to damage a radio? I can't say I'm terribly eager to find out.

 

[stevech]

2.4GHz on TV coax - no go.

But look at MoCA if you have a lot of coax.
There's a section in this forum on MoCA.
Look too at HomePlug AV (power line)

 

[morphers82]

RG6 Ethernet

There's a new way of running ethernet via RG6 called MOCA, try these adapters: http://amzn.to/vrlXC4 This way you can run ethernet (MOCA) between the two access points

 

[stevech]

I use MoCA (D-Link boxes). Works great. If your coax has the routing you need.
Netgear, D-Link and many other consumer brands sell these.
http://www.mocalliance.org/industry/certified_products.php

MoCA is very similar technology to HomePlug - tough the coax media of MoCA is mostly interference free and, the key thing, doesn't suffer the attenuations of HomePlug caused by various devices with filters plugged into outlets, esp. outlets shared with HomePlug transceiver modules.

(PS: MoCA has been around for many years... http://www.mocalliance.org).