Network advice

Alright,


So currently my network consists of gaming pc wired to a router centralized in the house, a roaming laptop in the house, and another pc wireless on one end of the house. We're building a man cave/spare bedroom in the garage and I'm having trouble getting wireless out there. (3 walls in the house.. over 40ft then a 75ft gap.. then 2 more walls over 25ft) So.. 150ft and 5 walls. I'm ok through the 4th wall. It's that last 20 feet and wall that makes everything not work. lol


Because of the distance from the house and being built well after the house.. my power company made us use a totally separate meter for it, so a powerline setup is out.


The second pc in the house is a partial gaming pc so I don't want to kill the network with repeaters if I don't have to.


Any suggestions? The main router is an N router. However everything is running on G because of the laptop. Two routers ago I had a WRT54GL that had the power boosted on some high gain antennas and it worked most of the time. I'd really like to not cook this router.

What other options are there? Maybe buy diretional antennas for the router? Mount 3 of them bad boys? lol

 

Maybe a repeater?

They had a cheap ($20) tenda router at microcenter & here are some instructions
http://microcentertechsupport.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-set-up-tenda-router-as-repeater.html

If you like the WRT routers check out
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

 

you may want to try running a cable as close to the garage as possible, then setup a second router as an access point then setup a range extender in the garage to communicate with the access point router.

 

Hi,

If it were me? I'd trench between the house and the garage, install conduit, and then run fiber. *grin*

I prefer hard wired solutions to these kinds of problems, because they've proven to be much more reliable and flexible in the long run.

Seriously, I'd look into it. You haven't really provided much in the way of logistics, layout, etc., so you'll have to determine whether or not it's feasible... but trenching is just physical labor, and you'd be able to trench to wherever you wanted, on the house side, pretty much, so long as you could run the cable to its final destination inside. If you have a basement, consider running the fiber to there, and then run an Ethernet cable to wherever your internal switch/router/NAT device is.

2" PVC is cheap. Buy it in 20' lengths, some fittings (probably 2 boxes and some wood screws, too, to mount to the outside of each building), a hacksaw, get some pull tape and install it as you join the sections together.

You'll want to trench below the frost line, if that applies: That ensures that the fiber will remain at a fairly constant temperature year-round.

Then I'd use fiber to Ethernet transceivers on both ends... and install a NAT/Router/WAP in the garage to service that area, and bridge it to the rest of the network.

That way, I'd be sure to have as good a network connection as possible (You could start with 100 Mbps transceivers, then swap them out if you wanted to go to Gigabit Ethernet) between the room in the garage and the house... and the bandwidth would make all kinds of other things possible in the future.

You can buy pre-terminated fiber of varying lengths, and pulling it isn't that tough, especially in a nice, new conduit (make sure to pull an additional pull string with it, for the future!).

Alternately, call local network companies in your area and ask them to quote it. You do all of the grunt work, they take care of the fiber install/testing.

Make sure that the transceivers match the fiber type/connectors. I'd spec the transceivers first, then get the fiber cabling/ends to match.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833156005

You'd need 2. 100 Mbs/Full between the garage and the house.

Yeah, I know, crazy, right? But, IMHO, it's at least worth investigating. Worst case scenario, it's not cost-effective. But, if it is? Well, it'd be the best, most reliable solution possible, and one that would last for a long time.

Regards,

dj