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Resolved Question

wireless setup for a one-floor motel

Aug 15, 2011 1:48PM PDT

I am currently using a Belkin Play N600 Router at my motel. All the rooms are on the first floor but rooms that are farther away can only get 1-2 bars. The farthest room is around 40-50 yards away from the router. Play N600 is a router for a home so the range is really not that great. I have been researching some options and found out that there are basically three options1. Get a second router2. Get an antenna3. Get a new router with better rangeI believe the router I am using cost around 50-60 dollars and I know that a good router would cost around twice as much. I am not familiar with how wireless network range can be boosted, so any help would be appreciated!

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dyce003 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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high gain antennas + waull passthrough Antennas
Aug 16, 2011 1:40AM PDT

There is several way to increase your wireless range (the one you already noticed) i guess all is pending your budget.

If you plan to change your router antenna for high gain one, then you could also have a look for how to create passive antennas as wall passthrough(ie: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.178838405493117.36309.100001008769407 ), just because your customers will not change the wireless antenna of their laptop.

If you plan to get a second router, then it will be nice if it support repeater kind of settings (this will save you from drilling walls to place a long ethernet wire). If you want to save money then you could go to some opensource project like DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato which turn some home use routers into professional one for free.

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Answer
signal range
Aug 15, 2011 10:40PM PDT

Option 3 to get a better range router is more than likely not really valid. Radio transmissions are highly regulated so most router manufactures buy this part of the router from a someone else who has the spent the money to ensure their radios meet the standards. All the companies that will go though the trouble to certify their radios will also ensure they transmit at the maximum legal power. There are slight differences related to enclosure design but they tend to not be a lot. Unfortunately you still have people who buy a router based on pretty lights rather than technical specifications.

Option 1 is the best but you then have the issue of how you connect router 1 to router 2.

Option 2 on antenna is one of the simpler but you can get mixed results. First you have to have a router that allows you to replace the antenna. Because you can violate the radio regulations with some antenna many manufactures choose to not even give you the option. The math gets very complicated, you need to consider things like cable loss and antenna gain. If you are not careful you can actually get less signal. If your router had the option to replace the antenna it would be a cheap thing to try but since it does not ?

Since you are going to have to buy another router it appears anyway I would try option 1. I would buy a router that allows you to replace the antenna so that you could try a combination of option 1 and option 2. Many of the routers that have replaceable antenna are targeted at the business market, hawking technology is one the few that sells their products in retail stores. Although somewhat limited in selection the items they do sell are designed to work together without needing a degree in RF engineering

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Answer
I prefer Option 1
Aug 18, 2011 12:38AM PDT

I prefer Option 1.
I think it will be much better if you have two wireless routers.