Router help EDIT: Got Asus RT-N13U

hey guys i know this has been done and over it. but i need to upgrade my router / i have a decent size house roughly 2000 sqft (single floor), have 3 walls between my sister's room and my room .. the router connection is in my room, she has a old dell studio laptop which she uses, what i was using earlier asus g router .. which didnt reach till her room, .. now i want to setup wifi access across the house, ive sold the asus .. have a basic airtel router .. which also im planning to throw or just use it as a adsl option only .. no wifi. need something to sort this out.. i cannot use a wired repeater. or a router which needs a wired connect as there is a big hall in between and cablework is a pain.. is there any option which spreads across one side of the house to another.. any help is much appreciated. thanks :)



UPDATE - thanks everyone , picked up two n13u :D
 
hey guys i know this has been done and over it. but i need to upgrade my router / i have a decent size house roughly 2000 sqft (single floor), have 3 walls between my sister's room and my room .. the router connection is in my room, she has a old dell studio laptop which she uses, what i was using earlier asus g router .. which didnt reach till her room, .. now i want to setup wifi access across the house, ive sold the asus .. have a basic airtel router .. which also im planning to throw or just use it as a adsl option only .. no wifi. need something to sort this out.. i cannot use a wired repeater. or a router which needs a wired connect as there is a big hall in between and cablework is a pain.. is there any option which spreads across one side of the house to another.. any help is much appreciated. thanks :)
What does across the house mean ?

It seems like all you want is a connection between your room and your sisters.
 
ok, then what metal spree said should work. however your positioning of the repeater matters.

Does your sister's laptop have an 'n' adapter or is it g ?

lets say it is g, 'old' dell laptop bla bla...

That means the max she can recieve is 54mbs tops. You want to place the repeater as close as possible so it repeats a strong signal. if you go half way it only get 27mbs. The repeater will further cut it down to ~13mbs. Her actual throughput is going to be about ~2mbs.

is that acceptable for your sister ?

What's worse is when she is browsing she will be hogging the connection because she is so slow your throughput to other devices will also be slowed for the duration she is connected to the router.

Now if you both do nothing more strenuous than basic web browsing this will be workable. Anything more data heavy and you will notice the slow down.

otherwise you better get her a usb 'n' adapter for her laptop. best to keep all n devices. mixing b, g & n means low performance for n clients.

There might be another possibilty here and that is to use the second N13 as a client to your sister. I'm not sure whether the N13 can function in this way however. But it means no halving as a repeater. Basically the second N13 acts as a super wifi adapter and is connected by ethernet to her dell laptop instead of wirelessly.
 
her model is a 2009 dell studio 1555 or similar studio .. i think it has the N chip/ seeing a cnet spec sheet online. my laptop is also N ..
 
If the dell adapter is N150, she gets 3Mbs, if its N300 she gets 6Mbs

The other n clients that are closer should continue as normal.

You say 3 walls how thick are they and what is the distance between the router in your room and her laptop ?
 
around 9/10 inches under 12 for sure. .. & indy although she has a phone connection and previously had a airtel connection in her room aswell (its via telephone lines in my building) all indoor lines rj11 types. not your regular cable connection rj45 ... i have no idea how to make the linksys work here.. we later decided to cancel one connection and just use the other high speed one, so i have a 8mb connection now that i need spread across the house
 
around 9/10 inches under 12 for sure. ..
Ahh, you have either 9 inch or 11 inch walls then. When you said 'regular' i was wondering if they could have been 6 inchers. You might have got away with just one N13 if it was the latter.

& indy although she has a phone connection and previously had a airtel connection in her room aswell (its via telephone lines in my building) all indoor lines rj11 types. not your regular cable connection rj45 ... i have no idea how to make the linksys work here.. we later decided to cancel one connection and just use the other high speed one, so i have a 8mb connection now that i need spread across the house
Would it matter a lot if your sister did not see 8mbs but half that speed ? You can do a lot on the net with even 2Mbs.

There are two options with the linksys, the one mentioned by indy is ~Rs.8k (PLWK400) and has two adapters which you plug into the power socket in either room. The other adapter has wifi in it so any wireless device can access the net.

The second option costs ~rs..5k (PL SK400) and the only difference is it needs a wire on the other end to connect up. If she uses an tablet or smartphone in her room then she will not be able to access the web with this model. You would have to purchase an access point in addition to support that (Rs.2k by tp-link). This would provide wifi not only in her room but across one wall into adjacent rooms as well.

Since your sister is using a laptop, it would need an ethernet cable to connect between the plugged in adapter and her laptop. Now if she is static with that laptop, does not move around the house much and only uses the laptop in her room that too in a fixed location this option becomes an alternative.

Under ideal conditions the expected throughput is somewhere between 20-40Mbs. The way these adaptors work is you plug them directly into a power strip (ensure there is no surge suppressor or any sort of line conditioner in that strip, it has to be a plain vanilla one) or directly to the wall point. Connect a patch cable from your router to the adaptor in your room, do the same in her room and connect to her laptop. Then press a button on both to let them pair up and if after a minute or two if all is good it should be ready to use. Simple as that.

What is not simple here is whether both of your rooms are on the same circuit. Way you find out is if you go to the fuse box and pull the fuse for your room, the power in her room ALSO goes off. This is ideal, if not the speed will be lower. There is also the distance of 40-50 feet you mentioned. And finally there are sources of interference like motors (fans, ac, fridge etc) and even cell phone chargers that can slow the speed down by injecting noise into the power circuit. The key here is the adapters need to be further away from these sources to have less interference.

I'm very interested to see how viable this tech is but its not possible to tell you whether the speed you get will be closer to 10Mbs or 40Mbs. Price wise the 5k option is what you would have to pay with 2xN13 as well. So its an either or.

Ideally, if you could get them to demo it in your place without the obligation of buying or the option for an exchange for the N13s if unsuccessful. If you get throughput of at least 20mbs then since all you want is a connection between the two rooms as opposed to elsewhere in the house the powerline option would be better than two N13s. If you then needed wifi in her room or adjacent to then an AP connected to the adapter in her room would work.

Though i wonder what possibilities there are with two rj-11 connections in the two rooms. If there was some way to get a signal through that would be the cheapest and possibly superior solution.
 
around 9/10 inches under 12 for sure. .. & indy although she has a phone connection and previously had a airtel connection in her room aswell (its via telephone lines in my building) all indoor lines rj11 types. not your regular cable connection rj45 ... i have no idea how to make the linksys work here.. we later decided to cancel one connection and just use the other high speed one, so i have a 8mb connection now that i need spread across the house

Like blr_p explained in the post above, you don't need any other wires. This will route the internet through your existing electrical wires. There is no cabling involved. Simple plug and play installation. The only problem would be if both the rooms are not in the same circuit. Even then it would work, albeit a little slowly. Also, not recommended if you plan on online multiplayer gaming...
 
Not on the same circuit is not a big problem, it will still work. The harder part to figure out is the effect of noise injected from motors. And there are a lot of running motors in an indian home. It takes some electrical skills to isolate the problem in case throughput is not as expected.

I've read lots of positive reviews from people who were very happy with the performance and some by others that could not resolve it at all. The frustrating bit is i cannot think of any way to predict performance without actually getting it and trying it out. And everybody's house is different (!).

Its harder to predict operation with this than wifi routers. Which is a pity because powerline has a lot of promise and could be better than wifi in particular situations. And this particular thread makes a good candidate for powerline, provided any potential snags can be worked around.

He will have to approach a smaller shop with the option for an exchange in case of a unsuccessful test. I prefer smaller shops because they are more competitive and accomodating than the bigger ones. One thing i would say is be wary of what the sales people tell you, do not make any snap decisions on the spot. If they tell you to go with this or that, let us know before you spend anything.
 
they r not in the same circuit. i have two seperate flats as one, have seperate fuze boxes for each side/ shes on the other one, also she does use her phone via wifi, skype/tango / FB etc .. and there is a xbox connnected where we do play on live .. quite alot to be honest, cuz i have my nephew / sister both playing lol yep they game more then me.. but i dont mind chilling for that time and not using the net . ... if i shut the repeater it should maximize the connection right? and i doubt any1 will give me a demo, honestly if these dont work.. its either that or to the te for sale section lol.
 
That means the max she can recieve is 54mbs tops. You want to place the repeater as close as possible so it repeats a strong signal. if you go half way it only get 27mbs. The repeater will further cut it down to ~13mbs. Her actual throughput is going to be about ~2mbs.

If the dell adapter is N150, she gets 3Mbs, if its N300 she gets 6Mbs.
I think your calculations might be on the low side. Can you clarify what the router-repeater link speed would be like?
 
I took 80-90% off the expected link speed
Why so much? Also in his sister's room, there shouldn't be any signal issues so her speeds should be pretty fast to the repeater, which makes the repeater - router link the only bottleneck. And I doubt it would be as low as 6Mbps.
 
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