Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => Networking => Topic started by: renluop on May 09, 2016, 03:50:49 PM
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My wife is on to me about why she loses connection sometimes when she is in her personal space in one of our bedrooms, using her IPad. She told me that it seemed to happen less with the IPod.
Unusually, we have the house plans from when it was built in 1971, though we moved in 2002! I’ve annotated these. I hope the annotations will illustrate our layout sufficiently.
One thing I wonder is that originally the heating was by warm air, and between bedrooms 1 and 2 the trunking is extant, if that could impede the signal.
An analyser shows a failure but I ( not surprised ::)) cannot see what the problem is, but could they have a bearing.
Hopefully someone can give some guidance, please.
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I'm going to move this to networking to see if someone else can come up with some ideas.
I too have a 'blackspot' in my house for many years where the TV is, that I never got to the bottom of.
Years ago I bought a wireless extension for the media player, but that didnt help that much either, so I ended up laying CAT5 (not practical in your case).
Then for some reason why I got the Zyxel I thought I'd give wifi a try again.. and it worked perfectly fine. It has also worked with a couple of other routers, although one tplink I had to move box to set up as the smartTV said it couldn't find a signal. Yet once set up it was OK.
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I have a wifi blackspot upstairs in our house so I filled it using a TP-Link homeplug wifi socket thingy (https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-WPA4220KIT-Powerline-Configuration-Smartphone/dp/B00DHB2T44/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1463206977&sr=8-2&keywords=tp-link+homeplug+wifi).
I spent a lot of time trying to improve the strength / change the positioning and channel of my main WAP to try and cover the blackspot but in the end it was a bit of a waste of time and in hindsight I should have just bought the extra WAP.
When I used my TP-Link TD-8980 as my main access point I did experience problems with some Apple devices (iPad 2 and iPhone 4 / 4S) as there was a known issue between these devices but we upgraded our Apple devices and I have since stopped using the Router.
I have a 1973 vintage house with pretty average wiring and the homeplug solution works quite well, albeit with slightly annoying extra wires to and from your main router, the plug socket WAP is pretty discreet though and works well.
GL!
C
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My house is nearly same vintage as Chunkers', 1971, and has partition wall constructed with Stramit boards.
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Our house is 1974 vintage, and we bought it specifically to add a large side extension, and consequently the main router and networking gear sits one side of the original exterior wall, whilst this does have fairly good coverage there were some dead zones. The whole house has been renovated by me and has cat5e to pretty much all the rooms and the loft where I have installed a WAP1750 access point, between the main router and this I get pretty good coverage.
PS That Stramit board looks horrible, our original partition walls are 60mm thick, made of plasterboard with a cardboard reinforcement in between, not very strong and no good at blocking sound, but very easy to push a conduit down from the loft.
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The metal ducting could well impede the signal, I have foil backed plasterboard in our ensuite and I'm sure that impedes the signal from my loft mounted AP especially the 5ghz signal.
You may find you get better coverage if you could mount an AP in a central location, or on the loft.
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Stramit, dammit, is filled with straw, and when we first took over we needed to make firm a wall switch. We ended up with making a lot of paper machie to get something firm enough to put the screws in. It's supposedly good insulator.
Loft has 10" of insulation, so not where we venture.
BTW the computer box is under desk, say 2" thick, could that have any bearing?
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To be honest there is so much that affects it, it's a case of get the best access point or modem/router you can and then experiment with it's placement. My brother once spent a long time trying to work out why he had bad wi-fi coverage, when he eventually moved it and stuck it in a different room it worked well, something in his office was blocking the signal.
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Just wondering if the problem might be, rather than a dead spot on your own wifi, a hot spot on you neighbour's, if it is using the same channel and interfering?
Might be worth changing wifi channel just as an experiment.
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A liitle OT, but I've never maged to get one of those apps like INSSIDR to find who else is operating near my location. I appear to be alone in the neighborhood digital pool.
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If you have no interference at all then, depending upon whether the iPad 8 Router are capable of 5GHz, it might be worth disabling 5GHz.
Being higher frequency it is more susceptible to attenuation from walls etc. The only real advantage over 2.4GHz is less interference owing to less crowding.
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A further thought... Lots of other radio devices, unrelated to WiFi, are perfectly entitled to use the same frequency bands. One example is baby alarms/monitors, but there's lots more. If your neighbour had such a device in close proximity to your dead spot, it may explain it?
In that case, you'd most likely find that 5GHz worked better than 2.4GHz. But you'd need to confirm the router and all devices supported 5GHz before disabling 2.4, many may not.
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She has said it has got better lately, so For now I'll leave it be. Trouble is that unless one sees it for self..... :-\
Thanks all!