Period domestic computer networking

[Penners]

A friend of mine in France is about to move into his newly-constructed house. The electrical/electronic setup in the house is very whizzy and he's asked for my help in getting his computer system set up ("the blind leading the blind" I hear you cry!).

He has built-in Ethernet cabling (would that be Category 5?) from a point where the router is located at one end of the building to four different Ethernet wall sockets around the house. It's quite a big floor area, so we need to extend his wifi network by plugging in a wifi device at the opposite end of the building to the router. So wireless devices will get their wifi signal at one end from the router and at the other end from the Ethernet-plugged device.

I hope that very untechnical explanation makes the situation clear.

My question is this - what kind of device do I buy to plug into the cable network? The French electronics guy has told me that we need a "wifi access point", but I don't really know exactly what this is.

I emphasise that this is not a powerline system - what we need is a wifi range extender powered by the mains, but receiving its data via the house Ethernet network.

Any and all advice and product recommendations most gratefully received, please.

 

[Flyfisher]

As you might expect, there are a million ways of extending wifi coverage but the presence of ethernet cabling makes it easier/better than some of the options.

Your French expert is correct about requiring a 'wifi access point', which plugs into the ethernet cabling and provides a wifi signal. This is also arguably the best option (compared with 'wifi repeaters' and powerline units), though there's probably not much in it unless your friend has some particularly demanding performance requirements.

TBH, I'm getting a bit behind with the latest and greatest standards so would just look for a current product, which should give the latest performance as well as being backward compatible with all previous standards and speeds. I tend to use Netgear networking products, but I'm sure any of the big names will be just as good (Linksys, D-Link, TP-Link etc).

I have a similar requirement to extend the wifi coverage at home and I use Apple Airport devices because of their ability to provide an audio output as well so that I can stream music to various places around the house, but the principle is the same and they connect to the main router over ethernet cabling and it all works well.

Apart from the physical considerations, some thought is needed about how to configure things and other considerations such as guest access. Some wifi devices can generate multiple 'SSID's and allow access to be divided into virtual networks (VLANs). Put simply, a simple wifi system will allow access to the whole network, including any connected computers. This is not usually a problem for the owner but the modern ubiquity of smartphones and tablets means that visitors frequently ask for a wifi connection and you may not wish to hand out your password details, depending on your security paranoia. Some wifi devices provide a 'guest' feature that will allow visitors to connect to the internet but not to other devices on the network. This may or may not be important to your friend, but it's worth thinking about beforehand.

Such things are usually fairly well explained in the device documentation and it might be worth checking some of the online manuals before making a final choice.

One final thought. Does the main router really have to be located at one end of the house? If it is possible to move it to a more central position, it might be able to provide wifi coverage to the entire house (assuming it's a wifi router of course).

 

[Penners]

Very many thanks for that (characteristically) comprehensive and knowledgeable reply, FF.

I'm afraid the location of the main router is already established. The house has a "technology control centre" (my own phrase!) at one end, where all of the electronics kit is located in a neat corner, including the router, Freesat* dish reception and distribution gizmos, phone ditto, heating controls and so on. This is where the router has been provided with its own special "niche". The house has a very large footprint, so wifi signal strength at the other end is considerably degraded.

In addition to his desktop computer (actually a laptop, but it's never moved from his desktop), which is plugged into an Ethernet port, my friend and his wife both have iPads, and their visiting family often need to have wifi access, too. He has no concerns about allowing the family free access to the network. He also has a wifi printer that serves the network via the router. Given that the printer is Apple Airprint enabled, can he use any brand of wifi access point, or does it have to be compatible with some sort of Apple protocol?

* Due to the recent move of British TV to a new, tighter-beam satellite, the "fringe" signal in the south of France is much weaker. So he's had to invest in a 1.2m dia. dish. It's a whopper!

 

[a twig]

In my humble experience avoid Netgear kit, it tends to fall over after a year or so.

Other than that, make sure you get one that supports the latest 802.11ac wireless standard for future proofing

Something like this: http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=16446 should do the job I would have thought!

 

[Flyfisher]

I can only go on my own experience, but I've used various Netgear hubs, switches and routers over at least a decade with no problems. However, I've certainly not used all their products so there might well be some really bad ones out there (though I'm sure word would have got out to the market by know :wink: ). But I'm not a obsessive about them and am currently using a Draytek router, Apple Airport access and a Netgear gigabit switches, hence my point that pretty much any of the 'big names' are suitable for mixing and matching these days. Having said that, it might be worth considering an access point from the same manufacturer as the the main router.

Future proofing is an interesting concept. Things change so fast in IT that future products are obliged to be backward compatible with older products to ensure everything still works together. So a bang up to date wifi router supporting the latest wireless standard is all very well, but it's likely that all the current wireless devices in the household won't support that latest and greatest standard, so things will backtrack to the fastest possible speed. Of course when a new laptop/smartphone/tablet is purchased, it will also support the latest and greatest wireless standard, though by then the standards itself may have moved on and the once latest and greatest router is now out of date! Not that it will really matter because things are backward compatible so they'll still all work together.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying I don't worry about such things any more and have pretty much hung up my IT anorak. The fact is that home IT products are so mature and so capable these days that almost any standard products - be it a desktop PC, a laptop, a tablet, a wireless router, a printer, etc etc - will all work together perfectly well enough for the vast majority of people. They may not give the highest possible performance of a carefully matched system and rigorously researched system, but unless you are trying to routinely edit 4K video or like to dabble in modelling the weather, they'll be perfectly adequate for most requirements.

But apologies for the ramble and back to the point. The house in question sounds well thought-out in terms of technology so I can quite understand why moving the router is not an option (I've done something similar myself), which brings us back to wifi extension.

atwig's suggestion will certainly do the job but as it's actually a router then configuration will probably not be as straightforward as a purpose designed access point. It's certainly possible to use a wifi router as an access point, but I doubt it would be a plug-and-play installation and would require delving deeper into the configuration menus than would be required. Not a problem for anyone familiar with such things though and it would be a way of updating the existing router to the latests and greatest wifi spec and then using the old router to extend the wireless coverage.

For simplicity, I'd be looking at things like these:

D-Link: http://www.comms-express.com/products/d-link-dap-1360-b/

TP-Link: http://www.comms-express.com/products/tp-link-tl-wa801nd/

These are not the emerging 'wireless ac' spec but the current 'wireless-n' spec and are good for 300mbps, which is perfectly adequate for things like streaming video to ipads and is much faster than the incoming internet speed (I'm guessing).

One final point about location of the access point. I suspect it's the case that the ethernet outlets around the house are positioned near to a power outlet so power shouldn't be a problem (even though it tends to come from an ugly "wall wart" plug-in PSU), but some modern networking devices support 'PoE' (power over ethernet) that allows the device to be powered over the ethernet cable for a neater installation. I've not yet used PoE devices but it might be worth considering - I will be when buying future networked devices.

 

[Keithj]

I've done a fair bit of this, and FF is spot on.

I've had several Netgear modem/routers die over the years (my own plus two relatives and several local friends to whom I am the techie-fixit). This was invariably during a thunderstorm when enough of a pulse came down the phone line to fry them. I doubt any other brand would survive much better. I wouldn't expect a WAP to have that problem.

If you have two wireless access points in the house, which seems inevitable, you may find that moving round the house with a portable computer/tablet/phone will cause problems. The portable will usually try to hang on to the WAP it is connected to, rather than swapping to the other one. Until recently I had three WAPs in my (long, thin) house and got angry enough with it that I invested in an expensive but clever device which seems to have cured it.

 

[eezageeza]

We have exactly the arrangement you describe in our house - a router at one end, linked by cat 5e cable to other rooms in the house, and the most distant bedroom has a wireless access point plugged into the end of the cable so we have wireless access to the network from non-wired rooms at the far end (and in the garden!).

Just google wireless access point (WAP) and buy whichever one you come across that looks nice! (For what it's worth, we have a linksys model, which has done sterling service for quite a few years now).

 

[Flyfisher]

If you have two wireless access points in the house, which seems inevitable, you may find that moving round the house with a portable computer/tablet/phone will cause problems. The portable will usually try to hang on to the WAP it is connected to, rather than swapping to the other one. Until recently I had three WAPs in my (long, thin) house and got angry enough with it that I invested in an expensive but clever device which seems to have cured it.

That's interesting Keith. I've noticed this problem as well but I've always thought it's more to do with the portable device behaviour rather than the WAP itself. What is the device you've used to fix it?

I used to have our WAPs configured to have different SSIDs/passwords but I recently changed them all to the same SSID/password, which is more convenient for setting up the portable devices though I'm not really sure if it makes a real difference to the 'hanging on' issue.

I wonder if the distance between the WAPs makes a difference in this respect?

 

[Keithj]

Indeed, FF. It's the devices that hang on to the connection, not the WAP that holds on to the devices.

In my case, the solution was to replace the modem/router and 3 x wifi setup with a single device in the middle of the house. I bought a Draytek: it was expensive, but it covers the area the previous three did (well, nearly: I don't get a useable signal at the back of the cart lodge but don't need one there anyway.)

 

[Flyfisher]

I've had good experience with Draytek routers but as you say they are expensive because of their up-market features and performance. Mine is about 10 years old and is still going strong, though is obviously now lagging behind the latest specification and features.

It's good to hear that the new technologies are effective at increasing operating range - is your unit using 'beamforming' to archive this?

 

[Penners]

Thanks everyone for your input - all a steep learning curve for me!

I have in fact just got back from the techie shop, here in France, where I have ordered a D-Link wifi access point gizmo. I did actually talk to the guy about the behaviour of mobile devices when you wander from one wifi field into another, and he said that some devices will automatically seek the stronger field, while others will try to hang on to the one that they're logged into, and need changing over manually. He declined to be specific about which devices will do what!

However, since my friends will always tend to use their iPads in the sitting room end of the house (farthest from the wifi router) I don't see this as a major problem for them.

Thanks again for all the advice.

 

[Flyfisher]

Our iPad tends to hang on to the connected WAP. It's not a particular problem when just web browsing but the slower speed on a weak connection can sometimes make its presence known when streaming video. I find that quickly switching 'airplane mode' on (which turns off wifi) and then off again forces it to connect to the strongest WAP, so it's not exactly a big problem.

Good luck with the installation!

 

[a twig]

I used to have our WAPs configured to have different SSIDs/passwords but I recently changed them all to the same SSID/password, which is more convenient for setting up the portable devices though I'm not really sure if it makes a real difference to the 'hanging on' issue.

Some WAPs and routers can be configured it to be an "extender" - set to the same channel and SSID any device should happily wander between the two. Set this up in my parents house as WiFi didn't reach the far end and made sure that the coverage zones overlapped. Now any device (tested with iPhones, Android tablets and a laptop) will pick-up a strong wifi signal throughout the house as it "sees" it all as one network.

One of my dislikes of Netgear stems from the fact that they interchange "repeater" and "extender" functionality in their products, and don't make it particularly clear which will do what - hence the inevitable call to "technical support" when they tell you that you "bought the wrong one".

Anyway, this is all going beyond the original question, which has been very well answered by the chaps above.

Avez-vous un bon temps en France!

 

[Penners]

I find that quickly switching 'airplane mode' on (which turns off wifi) and then off again forces it to connect to the strongest WAP

That's a useful tip - many thanks FF.

 

[Keithj]

FF: I don't know how the new Draytek achieves the greater range. I don't think it's beamforming. I picked up one of those flashing-lights Netgear ones, which was great with one wireless device connected, but very unhappy when I had several users in different parts of the house. Daughter now has it, and likes it.

I suspect in the Draytek it's the addition of Wireless-N which the previous boxes didn't have, and possibly better-matched antennas (it has diversity, needless to say).


Yes, agree the "Airplane Mode" tip. I have the toggle for that on the "swipe-up" menu on both iThings. It does indeed trigger finding the best WiFi signal - and also helps reconnect when the device has had a fit.

 

[Penners]

I have the toggle for that on the "swipe-up" menu on both iThings.

Keith - as I'm not an iDisciple, would you be able to give me brief instructions on how to create that toggle, please? And explain what the swipe-up menu is? The guy I'm helping is a very un-techie iPad user, so the easier I can make it for him the better.

 

[Keithj]

It goes something like this...
(Experts please correct where I get it wrong)

If you swipe the screen of your iThing from the bottom of the screen to the top, a little menu should appear. That started a while ago, so old devices won't do it.

You can change what's in those menus from the "Settings" menu. Aeroplane mode, WIFI, 3G, GPS and so on.
On my devices, I have those on the SwipeUp menu, and weather and diary on the SwipeDown.

 

[Penners]

Many thanks for that, Keith. I'll give it a go.

 

[Penners]

Well, I've just set up the D-Link access point, and it was dead easy. It came with a CD wizard that walks you through the process very clearly.

Many thanks again to everyone for your advice and help.

 

[Flyfisher]

Hurrah - another PPUK success story.