WNDR3700 5GHz range issue

[tigersan]

Hi All,

Hoping you guys could help me out. I am the proud new owner of a WNDR3700 (actually 2 of them, accident with ordering!) and two WNHD111 bridges.

I live in an old house, the router is based on the top floor and one each of the WNHD111 on middle and gound floor.

On the ground floor I have a slingbox and a squeeze box wired to the two ports on the WNHD111.

Unfortunately I am experiencing fairly poor connection quality i.e. slingbox will disconnect and take ages to become available again and the squeezebox lags for extended periods of time when using the remote (really annoying).

I am presuming this is an issue with the more limited range of 5GHz connections?

So, I am tempted to keep the additional WNDR3700 and use it as a repeater on the middle floor. But from reading these forums I have seen that this in itself can create bandwith issues.

Please could you advise on the best course of action?

Cheers.

 

[thiggins]

Yes, what you are seeing are the effects of lower range in 5 GHz.

Each repeater "hop" reduces available bandwidth by at least 50% because the single radio in the repeater has to receive, then retransmit the signal.

But given the relatively low bandwidth requirements of the Squeezebox and Slingbox, you might have enough bandwidth left over, even with a single repeater hop.

All I can say is try it. Let us know how you make out. Remember that using WEP or WPA-TKIP security will support only a maximum 54 Mbps link rate, which would mean maximum throughput in the low 20 Mbps range.

 

[tigersan]

Thanks Tim.

The max bandwidth I have seen pumping through the slingbox is 5000 Kbps ~ 4.8 Mbps and can't imagine that the squeezebox uses more than this so 20Mbps should be adequate with a nice stable connection.

One noob question - you mentioned that the max connection bandwidth that WEP supports is 56Mbps. Can I set-up my repeating router up to utilise the full 300Mbps of N?

 

[thiggins]

One noob question - you mentioned that the max connection bandwidth that WEP supports is 56Mbps. Can I set-up my repeating router up to utilise the full 300Mbps of N?

Not really a noob question.
WDS support for WPA and WPA2 tends to vary (details here). This information could be outdated. So only way to know is to try using WPA2/AES on the WNDR3700-to-WNDR3700 link. If it doesn't work, the only way to get a full 300 Mbps link rate would be to run the repeating link with no security, which I would not really recommend.

Let us know how you make out.

 

[tigersan]

Didn't manage to get WPA working last night but didn't have too much time to really give it 100%, will try again tonight.

Here's a question though. If I am using my laptop and am in range of both the repeated 20Mbps and the original 300Mbps signal, will the connection be down graded to 20Mbps? Or does the 20Mbps only kick-in when 300Mbps fails, or will the stronger signal prevail? Presumably the packets sent by the faster signal should prevail as they get there first and the slower ones are dropped?

 

[thiggins]

Most wireless clients are very "sticky", i.e. they tend to stay attached to the first AP they find and stay attached until the connection is broken. Some adapters, like the Intel WiFiLink 5100 and 5300 let you adjust this behavior (they call it "Roaming Aggressiveness").

Since both ends of a WDS connection must have the same SSID, you can't use the trick of naming each AP differently, so that you can manually select which to connect to.