OK, here's the problem.

I recently installed shared Internet access at home so that I didn't have to keep persauding my dad to leave his computer. I did the sensible thing and hit eBay in search of a cheap WiFi router and spent £15 on a D-Link DI-524. I didn't need anything fancy so this seemed a decent choice. When it arrived though I realised that it was only a router and didn't have a built in modem. So, eBay again and I came across an old BT Voyager 190 that had been hacked to work with any ISP which it did perfectly (Thanks Glenn!) I set everything up and all was working well, albeit with not too great signal coverage in my room (where it's needed most. It's just my luck that I live in a 150 year old house built of 1' thick stone walls with a steel girders supporting most of it. And my room is on the other side of the house to the router!)

Well, a few days ago my dad asked me to move the router/modem to a more discreet location where they couldn't be seen (under his desk). I told him that the signal coverage in my room was bad enough but, you know... He's my dad. Before it at least worked well enough to use the Internet. Now though I'm getting regular dropouts to the point where I've strategically placed empty drinks cans on my desk to attempt to reflect and focus some reception to my laptop.

Currently the modem and router are downstairs under my dad's desk. The modem is connected to the phoneline through a microfilter. The router is then connected to the modem and my dad's computer via Ethernet. There's a WiFi link between the router and my laptop upstairs to provide me with digital goodness. Here's a pic that's hopefully a little clearer than my description:

   

Dark blue lines are walls/stairs
Yellow box is the phone jack/microfilter
Light blue line is the phone line
Blue box is the modem
Red box is the router
Green lines are Ethernet/wireless links

I've tried moving the router to a more prominent location without being too visible but it's just not working. I can't move it back to where it was because it's space has been taken with other things. The only real solution I can think of is a hard-wired link between the router and upstairs. This of course requires lots of Ethernet cable and tearing up of carpets. I've had a look at the HomePlug system but its a bit too expensive to be a viable solution. I'd rather spend less on buying 15m of CAT5 (I'll probably be able to knock something up for free) and spend a day tearing up carpets. The idea then is to have downstairs all-Ethernet and to move the router upstairs and have it linked to the modem over the newly-installed link. I've got an Ethernet switch lying around somewhere that could link everything downstairs.

   

Key is as before except the dark green box is the Ethernet switch

With the router upstairs I enjoy a much better connection in my room (and probably outside in the garden too). It also means it's at the end of another Ethernet link (not pictured) between my desktop and my brother's computer meaning he could have Internet access too. I could also link up my laptop via Ethernet instead of WiFi giving me some extra bandwidth...

What does EP think?

Anger Wrote:another possiblity depending on the routers firmware is using the second router (the first you bought) as a hub and link the two routers either with cat5 (allowing you to have the second router in an accessible location) or wireless meaning it can be anywhere.
before i sold my 360 i had:
360 and ps3 linked to router 1 - ps3 was wireless and 360 was wired. pc was conncted to second router (which was also the modem) and that was wired. and finally my psp was connected to router 2 via wireless. im not saying its perfect but it worked. basically what im saying is try and use the second router to extend the range of the wireless if possible.
gl.

That's the kind of thing I'm trying to achieve. The wireless is mos used at my end of the house, so in principle, that's where the router should be.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Well, this might sound a bit bad, but if it's a laptop, can't you just use it downstairs instead?

In my house, wee've got both PCs in the same room, so an ethernet cable is all that's needed to link them together...  Saves a lot of trouble.

Not to sound brash but:

The whole point of getting a shared Internet connection was so that I could get access upstairs. I knew it was likely that coverage would be pretty poor upstairs so I bought a better antenna for the router. Before this there was no reception at all upstairs.

I've talked with my dad and he doesn't mind me running a cable upstairs as long as it's not visible and that I do it while he's not in the house. Methinks I'll go down that route. I've already got a spare 10m patch lead but it won't be long enough. I can get hold of a 5m and a joiner easily enough... Or will it be easier just to get a 15m? Hell, is 15m enough? Bleh, I'm going to bed...

From experience as long as you use decent quality cable you'll get 100Mb over a distance up to 100m. Hell, I knocked up a really bad patch cable a while ago made from old phone wire and gaffer tape. That worked at 100Mb over a distance of just under 10m.

About setting the routers on the same subnet, already done that. The wireless router isn't actually doing any routing, it's only acting as a switch. The modem does all the routing...

And about planning, I did a dry run this morning leaving excess at either end of the run. 15m should be OK. If it's not I've got plenty of spare patch leads lying around that I could use to extend the run if I need to. I just ordered a 5m lead and 2 joiners (the second one as a spare) to go together with the 10m that I already have. Hopefully they'll arrive before Wednesday.

i tried a setup like that but it refused to play. I just kept getting DNS errors. I just use the D-Link as a switch (in other words the modem is just plugged into one of the LAN sockets and not the WAN socket.) This setup works fine for me so I see no need to change it.

Why can't u just use a wireless bridge extender? keep it somewhere near ur stairs and u'll get pretty decent coverage..

It would fix the dropouts but it still leaves me with chocolatety connection speed (54Mb/s vs. 100Mb/s). Yeah it's good enough for Internet browsing but I'm planning on adding a small NAS server at some point... Share some media you know...

Plus that's a more expensive solution. Anyway, tis all ordered now...