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yesthattomSummary: I had to set up a second WiFi basestation but instead of running a wire to it, I bought 2 "ethernet over powerline" boxes and, while it was very expensive, it works really well. I think the price of those things is going to come down dramatically in the next few months, so this advice will become a lot more economical by, say, this summer.
My gf's house seems to have metal in the walls. For some reason the WiFi doesn't make it from her office to her bedroom and they are only 20 feet apart. We get 0, 1 or 2 WiFi bars in her bedroom.
It's been an on-going project to improve WiFi reception in her bedroom, especially since we both like to sit in bed with our Mac Powerbook G4s typing away.
I've spent many nights aiming and re-aiming the antenna. I bought a booster, etc. I called Apple tech support for suggestions. None of that seems to help. So this weekend my project was to run a wire to her bedroom and put a second basestation there. I happen to have a second Apple Airport Extreme I could use.
I measured everything out and I was going to need at least 60ft of cable to go up her wall into her attic, across the house, and I'd put the basestation in the attic above her bedroom. Sadly, it's an old house and the attic has no power outlets. No problem, it has a lightbulb outlet and I could get an adaptor. Problem: the lightbulb outlet is on the same switch as (duh) the lights, which aren't always on. That wasn't going to work.
Solution: I could drop the wire down out of the attic and into her bedroom. There I could place the Airport basestation near an outlet.
Rather than punch holes in the wall, I was going to try to go in the hole for her overhead lights that are in the middle of each ceiling. It would be ugly, but I was going to buy hooks that would make it only slightly ugly. Later she would hire an electrician to run the wires the right way.
Either way, this was becoming more work than I expected. New plan: I decided to just run a wire along her floor until we could hire an electrician. Worst case, she could coil up the wire when she didn't need the basestation, or didn't want the ugliness of a cord running down the length of her hallway.
I went to CompUSA to buy the stuff I'd need when I saw "Belkin Powerline Ethernet Adapter", 14Mbps through your home power lines. Wow, that would solve everything! You have to purchase at least 2. You plug each PEA into a power outlet; you plug a hub into each PEA. The two hubs are bridged (technically, repeatered). It's magic. It's "HomePlug 14M Certified", whatever that means. The box said that it requires a Windows PC to configure, but only for advanced configuration. Since we only have Macs here, I took the risk. They cost $60 each, so the smallest installation runs you $120. Ouch. I had to bet that this was cheaper than hiring an electrician to run wires. (Also, since I only had 1 device on each end, I wasn't going to use hubs.)
I've complained about Belkin's technical support before, so a major objective here was to do all this without needing to get them on the phone. The outside of the box claimed they were plug-and-play, so let's hope.
Soon I was back at her place. I plugged one PEA into a free power outlet near her existing Airport basestation. You can't plug these into power strips because they contain filters that, um, filter out the data that's being injected by the PEA. This means that each one of these takes up an entire outlet. The first feature they need to add to the next generation model is a power pass-through. If Glade Plugins can have 'em, so can these things.
I plugged the LAN port of the AirPort basestation into the first Belkin adaptor and the lights flashed indicating that things were ok.
I checked the manual to see what "advanced features" I'm missing because I don't have a PC to configure the little boxes. It turns out, I could enable 56-bit encryption. 56-bit encryption is so laughable that companies only add it when marketing demands "add encryption! we don't care if it's crappy encryption! we just need to be able to say that it's encrypted!" 3DES and other systems are now what's considered "real encryption". Anyway, if a friend visits with a Windows laptop, I'm sure we'll borrow it for a minute to enable these "advanced features".
Principle: Incremental testing. Before I set up the other Belkin, I wanted to make sure this was going to work. So rather than hooking up the other Airport basestation, I would test it with my Mac Powerbook. I plugged the other PEA in a nearby room, and watched the lights flash to indicate they had found each other. I plugged my Powerbook into the second PEA and in a few seconds it was working. I was able to surf web pages, etc. The IP address I got indicated that I was going through the Airport as if I was plugged directly into the LAN port.
So the next step was to hook up the other Airport basestation. I moved the PEA into the bedroom and spent a goodly amount of time re-arranging power plugs to gain up a socket. The PEA, in addition to requiring its own socket and not providing pass-through, is a wide box that prohibits much else from being plugged in near it. If you buy one of these, consider picking up a few power strips and short extension cords while you are at it... you'll thank me later.
So I plugged in the second Airport and configured it. My Mac instantly recognized it and offered to upgrade the software. Clicking "ok" was all I had to do. I love Apple's sense of design.
I was now NATed behind the second Airport, which was NATed behind the first airport. I found the menu to turn this basestation into a dumb repeater to eliminate the double-translation. I checked the IP addresses that was being allocated to all the devices on the network and it seemed to be working as advertised. (Note: Using an Apple Airport basestation as a WiFi repeater is really expensive, but I happen to have a spare. The alternative to enabling this software feature is to purchase a much less expensive "Wireless Range Extender/Access Point" which is just a regular basestation with a lot less software.)
Her Tivo has a USB Wireless adaptor so that it can download the program guide over the internet rather than using a phone line. We had to carefully position the Wireless Adaptor so that it got signal (it didn't need too much signal to just do a daily download). Now I wanted to see if her Tivo was getting the benefit of the new basestation.
And then the big surprise.
I checked her Tivo menus and it not only saw her network name, but it also saw 3 other Wireless networks (called "linksys", "elenor", and "Laverne" [names changed to protect the innocent.]). I checked on my Mac and I didn't see these three networks. My theory was that the Tivo's position (high up above the TV) made real connectivity possible, while the location of our laptops (on the bed, 10 feet away, low to the floor) was positioned such that those other networks were simply noisy interference. Was it these other networks that were preventing us from getting more than 2 bars of WiFi connectivity?
I started up KisMAC, a program for "war driving" wireless networks. You run it and it tells you what WiFi networks is sees. I find this tool (and the many tools like it) very useful for debugging wireless problems. Sure enough, it was able to find all the networks, but slightly better when I put the laptop near the Tivo.
KisMAC also tells you which WiFi channel each network is on. Two WiFi networks can co-exist if they are on different channels. Actually the channels (1 thru 11) overlap, so you are supposed to skip a channel or two. The other networks were using linksys and elenor were both on channel 6 (no doubt, causing each other problems), and Laverne was on channel 11, and so were we.
Could all this talk about metal walls be for naught? Could the entire problem just be due to Laverne being on the same channel as us? I changed the primary basestation to channel 1 and powered off the new basestaiton. Oh, wouldn't it be cool if suddenly there was so little interference that our laptops worked in her bedroom? I could return the $120 worth of PEAs and sell my spare Apple Airport basestation on eBay.
After making the appropriate changes I re-enabled WiFi on my laptop. And.....
And nothing. Still 0 or 1 bars of connectivity. Dang.
Well HomePlug it is. I powered up the second Airport basestation, tested everything, and cleaned up all the boxes and shrinkwrap and other stuff that messed up the place.
And now, for only $120 plus the cost of a second basestation ($250), we have great connectivity all over her place.
My gf's house seems to have metal in the walls. For some reason the WiFi doesn't make it from her office to her bedroom and they are only 20 feet apart. We get 0, 1 or 2 WiFi bars in her bedroom.
It's been an on-going project to improve WiFi reception in her bedroom, especially since we both like to sit in bed with our Mac Powerbook G4s typing away.
I've spent many nights aiming and re-aiming the antenna. I bought a booster, etc. I called Apple tech support for suggestions. None of that seems to help. So this weekend my project was to run a wire to her bedroom and put a second basestation there. I happen to have a second Apple Airport Extreme I could use.
I measured everything out and I was going to need at least 60ft of cable to go up her wall into her attic, across the house, and I'd put the basestation in the attic above her bedroom. Sadly, it's an old house and the attic has no power outlets. No problem, it has a lightbulb outlet and I could get an adaptor. Problem: the lightbulb outlet is on the same switch as (duh) the lights, which aren't always on. That wasn't going to work.
Solution: I could drop the wire down out of the attic and into her bedroom. There I could place the Airport basestation near an outlet.
Rather than punch holes in the wall, I was going to try to go in the hole for her overhead lights that are in the middle of each ceiling. It would be ugly, but I was going to buy hooks that would make it only slightly ugly. Later she would hire an electrician to run the wires the right way.
Either way, this was becoming more work than I expected. New plan: I decided to just run a wire along her floor until we could hire an electrician. Worst case, she could coil up the wire when she didn't need the basestation, or didn't want the ugliness of a cord running down the length of her hallway.
I went to CompUSA to buy the stuff I'd need when I saw "Belkin Powerline Ethernet Adapter", 14Mbps through your home power lines. Wow, that would solve everything! You have to purchase at least 2. You plug each PEA into a power outlet; you plug a hub into each PEA. The two hubs are bridged (technically, repeatered). It's magic. It's "HomePlug 14M Certified", whatever that means. The box said that it requires a Windows PC to configure, but only for advanced configuration. Since we only have Macs here, I took the risk. They cost $60 each, so the smallest installation runs you $120. Ouch. I had to bet that this was cheaper than hiring an electrician to run wires. (Also, since I only had 1 device on each end, I wasn't going to use hubs.)
I've complained about Belkin's technical support before, so a major objective here was to do all this without needing to get them on the phone. The outside of the box claimed they were plug-and-play, so let's hope.
Soon I was back at her place. I plugged one PEA into a free power outlet near her existing Airport basestation. You can't plug these into power strips because they contain filters that, um, filter out the data that's being injected by the PEA. This means that each one of these takes up an entire outlet. The first feature they need to add to the next generation model is a power pass-through. If Glade Plugins can have 'em, so can these things.I plugged the LAN port of the AirPort basestation into the first Belkin adaptor and the lights flashed indicating that things were ok.
I checked the manual to see what "advanced features" I'm missing because I don't have a PC to configure the little boxes. It turns out, I could enable 56-bit encryption. 56-bit encryption is so laughable that companies only add it when marketing demands "add encryption! we don't care if it's crappy encryption! we just need to be able to say that it's encrypted!" 3DES and other systems are now what's considered "real encryption". Anyway, if a friend visits with a Windows laptop, I'm sure we'll borrow it for a minute to enable these "advanced features".
Principle: Incremental testing. Before I set up the other Belkin, I wanted to make sure this was going to work. So rather than hooking up the other Airport basestation, I would test it with my Mac Powerbook. I plugged the other PEA in a nearby room, and watched the lights flash to indicate they had found each other. I plugged my Powerbook into the second PEA and in a few seconds it was working. I was able to surf web pages, etc. The IP address I got indicated that I was going through the Airport as if I was plugged directly into the LAN port.
So the next step was to hook up the other Airport basestation. I moved the PEA into the bedroom and spent a goodly amount of time re-arranging power plugs to gain up a socket. The PEA, in addition to requiring its own socket and not providing pass-through, is a wide box that prohibits much else from being plugged in near it. If you buy one of these, consider picking up a few power strips and short extension cords while you are at it... you'll thank me later.
So I plugged in the second Airport and configured it. My Mac instantly recognized it and offered to upgrade the software. Clicking "ok" was all I had to do. I love Apple's sense of design.
I was now NATed behind the second Airport, which was NATed behind the first airport. I found the menu to turn this basestation into a dumb repeater to eliminate the double-translation. I checked the IP addresses that was being allocated to all the devices on the network and it seemed to be working as advertised. (Note: Using an Apple Airport basestation as a WiFi repeater is really expensive, but I happen to have a spare. The alternative to enabling this software feature is to purchase a much less expensive "Wireless Range Extender/Access Point" which is just a regular basestation with a lot less software.)
Her Tivo has a USB Wireless adaptor so that it can download the program guide over the internet rather than using a phone line. We had to carefully position the Wireless Adaptor so that it got signal (it didn't need too much signal to just do a daily download). Now I wanted to see if her Tivo was getting the benefit of the new basestation.
And then the big surprise.
I checked her Tivo menus and it not only saw her network name, but it also saw 3 other Wireless networks (called "linksys", "elenor", and "Laverne" [names changed to protect the innocent.]). I checked on my Mac and I didn't see these three networks. My theory was that the Tivo's position (high up above the TV) made real connectivity possible, while the location of our laptops (on the bed, 10 feet away, low to the floor) was positioned such that those other networks were simply noisy interference. Was it these other networks that were preventing us from getting more than 2 bars of WiFi connectivity?
I started up KisMAC, a program for "war driving" wireless networks. You run it and it tells you what WiFi networks is sees. I find this tool (and the many tools like it) very useful for debugging wireless problems. Sure enough, it was able to find all the networks, but slightly better when I put the laptop near the Tivo.
KisMAC also tells you which WiFi channel each network is on. Two WiFi networks can co-exist if they are on different channels. Actually the channels (1 thru 11) overlap, so you are supposed to skip a channel or two. The other networks were using linksys and elenor were both on channel 6 (no doubt, causing each other problems), and Laverne was on channel 11, and so were we.
Could all this talk about metal walls be for naught? Could the entire problem just be due to Laverne being on the same channel as us? I changed the primary basestation to channel 1 and powered off the new basestaiton. Oh, wouldn't it be cool if suddenly there was so little interference that our laptops worked in her bedroom? I could return the $120 worth of PEAs and sell my spare Apple Airport basestation on eBay.
After making the appropriate changes I re-enabled WiFi on my laptop. And.....
And nothing. Still 0 or 1 bars of connectivity. Dang.
Well HomePlug it is. I powered up the second Airport basestation, tested everything, and cleaned up all the boxes and shrinkwrap and other stuff that messed up the place.
And now, for only $120 plus the cost of a second basestation ($250), we have great connectivity all over her place.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-15 09:07 am (UTC)Certainly a lot cheaper than an electrician or the ether over power boxes and has worked basicly everywhere I've wanted ethernet in this house.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-15 11:18 am (UTC)Another option is the power over ethernet devices for Airport Base Stations. They use the other two pair to transit electricity, so if you were interested in running to the attic, you plug the power adaptor and ethernet cable into an adaptor, run cat-5 to the attic, attach that to the second adaptor and run power and ethernet to your second base station.
One thing that interests me is how filtered the powerline things are at, say, the apartment level. Are the folks in the next apartment over able to see signal?
However, what all this really means is that gosh, do I love technology.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-15 12:09 pm (UTC):-)
No, seriously, my bet is that apartments can see each other's traffic, but not other houses. However, if it was a concern, I'd enable the encryption.