Best Wireless/Booster Combo?
September 22, 2011 6:42 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for the best wireless router and extender combination to spread internet access throughout a large area.
I am setting up a wireless network in the lower level of a local church. The internet drop is a cable modem. We have an older "B" band wireless on it now, but I want to replace it with something newer.
The room the internet drop is in is surrounded on all sided by cinder block, as are the other rooms adjacent. There is a large common room about 40 meters away that currently doesn't get any signal. I'd like to add an extender to boost the signal into the common room.
In addition, the place we'd put the extender also has a couple computers and a printer. If the extender also served as a secondary hub that would be great. I'd also accept a way to attach a hub to the extender to allow the computers to connect via ethernet (both computers do have wireless cards so that's an option regardless; the printer has ethernet and it would be great to put it on the network though we can live with printing directly).
Budget is about $200. I know there is a wide variety of wireless and extenders, but getting a pair that works together really well is my goal.
I am setting up a wireless network in the lower level of a local church. The internet drop is a cable modem. We have an older "B" band wireless on it now, but I want to replace it with something newer.
The room the internet drop is in is surrounded on all sided by cinder block, as are the other rooms adjacent. There is a large common room about 40 meters away that currently doesn't get any signal. I'd like to add an extender to boost the signal into the common room.
In addition, the place we'd put the extender also has a couple computers and a printer. If the extender also served as a secondary hub that would be great. I'd also accept a way to attach a hub to the extender to allow the computers to connect via ethernet (both computers do have wireless cards so that's an option regardless; the printer has ethernet and it would be great to put it on the network though we can live with printing directly).
Budget is about $200. I know there is a wide variety of wireless and extenders, but getting a pair that works together really well is my goal.
Best answer: At home I use a pair of WRT54GLs running Tomato. Here are instructions (after you've installed Tomato on them). Seamless coverage, not too expensive, four wired ports in the back of each one, and I like that they're still useful if I decide to split them up later on. You do technically take a bandwidth hit when connected to the second router, but realistically the wireless is so much faster than your internet connection that you won't notice.
posted by anaelith at 9:14 AM on September 22, 2011
posted by anaelith at 9:14 AM on September 22, 2011
It's a little bit above your budget, but for $279 the combination of an Apple Airport Extreme and an Airport Express would meet all of your stated needs. You would have the Extreme as a base station near your Internet drop, and then the Express as an extender/hookup for your printer and other computers. The express has both an ethernet jack which can be used as a bridge and an USB jack that can be used for a hard drive or printer. The only question is whether the Extreme is powerful enough to get through the cinder block walls, which is hard to say in advance. However, the newest 5th generation version of the extreme uses (as I understand it) the final version of the 802.11n specification, and it's radio is nearly twice as powerful as the previous model, and is probably about as strong as you're going to be able to get in a consumer wireless product.
posted by dyslexictraveler at 6:48 AM on September 23, 2011
posted by dyslexictraveler at 6:48 AM on September 23, 2011
Response by poster: We're going with anaelith's suggestion on the pair of 54GLs and Tomato. thanks!
posted by jazon at 8:08 PM on October 23, 2011
posted by jazon at 8:08 PM on October 23, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by russm at 6:46 AM on September 22, 2011