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[snadge]

i heard this somewhere as they have to use half the bandwidth to be able to repeat it?

my sister  has a 5 bedroom house and about 10 devices all using wifi and struggles to get connections and slow speeds, sky explained that getting fibre would be no use as it appears to be her home/devices/routers location thats the issue

Im going along tomorrow to see if we can move the router, also affix static IP's to every device to prevent ip address conflicts

I explained about the possibility of homeplugs and using 1 router downstairs and another upstairs but weve been here before in her old house and she would just stay connected to the downstairs when going upstairs etc...the reasoning was that I had heard that wireless repeaters half bandwidth to be able to repeat them, ive never used them before so dont know what to expect.

now, she is moving with BT fibre 76Mb as its cheaper - i explained that she will not get 76Mb over wifi even at close range on the home hub (I think - im out of touch with these things atm) and that the further away you are the less speed you get, she said the sky hub was installed next to the TV which leads me to believe there could be some interference getting in the way...ive asked her to move it away from the TV for now.

it might be possible to move the NTE5 into a more central location for a more even spread of wifi signal but ive yet to go to her new house and check it out tomoz

[loonylion]

i heard this somewhere as they have to use half the bandwidth to be able to repeat it?

my sister  has a 5 bedroom house and about 10 devices all using wifi and struggles to get connections and slow speeds, sky explained that getting fibre would be no use as it appears to be her home/devices/routers location thats the issue

Im going along tomorrow to see if we can move the router, also affix static IP's to every device to prevent ip address conflicts

I explained about the possibility of homeplugs and using 1 router downstairs and another upstairs but weve been here before in her old house and she would just stay connected to the downstairs when going upstairs etc...the reasoning was that I had heard that wireless repeaters half bandwidth to be able to repeat them, ive never used them before so dont know what to expect.

now, she is moving with BT fibre 76Mb as its cheaper - i explained that she will not get 76Mb over wifi even at close range on the home hub (I think - im out of touch with these things atm) and that the further away you are the less speed you get, she said the sky hub was installed next to the TV which leads me to believe there could be some interference getting in the way...ive asked her to move it away from the TV for now.

it might be possible to move the NTE5 into a more central location for a more even spread of wifi signal but ive yet to go to her new house and check it out tomoz

Firstly, static IPs on every device is MORE LIKELY to result in address conflicts than setting everything to dhcp, the whole point of which is to eliminate address conflicts and the work involved in manually assigning and maintaining addresses.

Wifi is a shared medium, the more devices there are the less bandwidth there is available to each device, plus it's half duplex (can't receive and transmit at the same time), homeplugs are not recommended because they play havok with dsl, as numerous members on this forum have found out.

Basic rule of wifi: have the access point as central and as high up as possible for best signal propagation.

[snadge]

thanks

problem with DHCP though is sleeping devices being given their IP's to a new device, then when woken you get a conflict that never repairs itself unless you reboot the device - you'd think by now windows would be able to detect this conflict and just ask for a new one

I appreciate your advice but fail to see how giving 10 devices static IP's is going to cause more problems than DHCP (especially with what i mention above)

I have already advised your last point and agree is the best way around it

[loonylion]

problem with DHCP though is sleeping devices being given their IP's to a new device, then when woken you get a conflict that never repairs itself unless you reboot the device - you'd think by now windows would be able to detect this conflict and just ask for a new one

I appreciate your advice but fail to see how giving 10 devices static IP's is going to cause more problems than DHCP (especially with what i mention above)

because with static addressing you have to keep track of the addresses in use and manually make sure you aren't creating conflicts.

I'd suggest your DHCP pool may not be big enough, alternatively disconnecting/reconnecting the device will cause a new address to be requested (if its wifi turn the wifi on the device off and on again, if wired either pull the plug and put it back in, or enable/disable the network connection. or on windows run ipconfig /renew)

Personally I've never run into an issue with sleeping devices creating address conflicts, it may just be an oddity with your specifc model of router.

[AArdvark]

problem with DHCP though is sleeping devices being given their IP's to a new device, then when woken you get a conflict that never repairs itself unless you reboot the device - you'd think by now windows would be able to detect this conflict and just ask for a new one

It is possible to set DHCP to assign the same address to a device, so sleeping or not the address is not reused.
(My old Speedtouch/Thomson routers do this by associating the MAC address with a particular IP address. This is not unique.)
Google 'DHCP Static leases' and you will find out how to assign set addresses that are served by DHCP to set devices by MAC Address.

Example: http://lifehacker.com/5822605/how-to-set-up-dhcp-reservations-so-you-never-have-to-check-an-ip-address-again

I appreciate your advice but fail to see how giving 10 devices static IP's is going to cause more problems than DHCP (especially with what i mention above)
I agree, 10 devices can be managed in your head, if you have a logical numbering system for your addresses.
(I do this as the addresses have meaning to me)

I could use 'DHCP Static leases' but want the devices to have a working address that does not rely on something that could hang or fail.
(The number of devices is less than 25 so not a problem. I remember numbers well, better than names. )

[roseway]

I use a hybrid arrangement here. In the router I assign a DHCP range which leaves a chunk of the available range unallocated, then I assign fixed IP addresses to permanent devices using addresses from the unallocated range. That way there's no conflict, and having fixed IP addresses for the permanent devices makes networking easier.

[snadge]

they way i see it is DHCP uses the lowest number available first, so therefore i set them well above 50 or 100 and that way you have loads of available DHCP IP's if you say fix static IP's at 192.168.0.100 - 192.168.0.110 - 192.168.0.120 and so on, DHCP is just going to give a device 192.168.0.2 then 192.168.0.3 etc etc, i never set low end static IPs cos of this, my own PC is 100

[IMgoRt]

This is the correct way to do things - separate your fixed addresses outside of the pool

I use a hybrid arrangement here. In the router I assign a DHCP range which leaves a chunk of the available range unallocated, then I assign fixed IP addresses to permanent devices using addresses from the unallocated range. That way there's no conflict, and having fixed IP addresses for the permanent devices makes networking easier.

The below is wrong, addresses are allocated from the pool using a pointer which stores last allocated and allocating the next available.  Said pointer initially started at first address in the range at pool initiation time (not router boot time)

they way i see it is DHCP uses the lowest number available first, so therefore i set them well above 50 or 100 and that way you have loads of available DHCP IP's if you say fix static IP's at 192.168.0.100 - 192.168.0.110 - 192.168.0.120 and so on, DHCP is just going to give a device 192.168.0.2 then 192.168.0.3 etc etc, i never set low end static IPs cos of this, my own PC is 100

[guest]

The Sky wireless extender* will work as a repeater (fully wireless) or as an extender (plug it into a network socket).

Repeater will obviously result in a maximum of slightly less than half the throughput possible with a single wireless station.

Extender will (in theory) provide the full throughput but in practice won't as the wireless stations will overlap. Largely dependent on the client - it may not switch over to the extender until the signal strength from the "hub" is so low that it drops out (think phones/tablets moved from one area to another).

I have to say that 10 devices on wifi concurrently (and possibly switching from hub to extender) is going to produce bloody awful results in most homes as the ISP-supplied routers are total junk in terms of wireless capabilities.

By that I don't just mean range (ie decent front-end RF design), I also mean having the cpu available to deal with all this.

I gave up a while ago, bit the bullet & got one of these for indoors :

http://linitx.com/product/ubiquiti-unifi-uap-ac-1300mbps-80211ac-24ghz5ghz-access-point/13806

and one of these for outdoors :

http://linitx.com/product/ubiquiti-unifi-uap-outdoor-24ghz-80211bgn-aphotspot/13957

The handover between them is controlled by the wireless stations & not the wireless client so its seamless - you don't even notice a break on VoIP calls. Expensive - yes but not in terms of the house value & it'll stay in place when we sell.

Regarding DHCP - I generally reserve the first 16 addresses & leave the rest of the pool dynamic.

That way I can have static IP addresses on certain devices (router, NAS, various streaming TV devices etc) based on their MAC address while not having to configure gateway/DNS/etc on an individual basis. I have a server doing DHCP, not a router so I can also supply aliases for those devices - eg NAS-A, Skyjunk, etc which will be locally resolved (eg ping Skyjunk pings the router). I prefer keeping "always-on" stuff on those addresses as when something goes awry on the network then its easy to rule out what the problem isn't.

As to whether anyone else in the house could fix that if it all went wrong - yes but it'd take my wife a while to remember any TCP/IP 

Best plan for free support stuff like you're doing is to make it idiot-proof & that means full DHCP from the router. Anything else & I guarantee you will regret it.

*given away free for a while, works reasonably well

[snadge]

thanks for advice guys

she has 7Mb connection but according to kitz is 2.1Km by road so should be much higher, i could get the full 7Mb on their AIO PC upstairs in next room, i explained the issues

I also found out the houses have steel in the walls or sommit as her friend was told this by en engineer , bu my sis says thats just the external walls, they seemed like regular stud walls to me

so she ordered 76Mb BT, bout Trendnet Powerline Passthroughs for the PC upstairs otherwise the 76Mb is going to be wasted by the looks of it

also. there were about 15 other networks local all overlapping and wifi analyzer said channel 13-14 would be best (she could only use 13) - loads on 1,6,11 but some on 7 etc

i spent my time cleaning the viri off the computer so on next visit I will check out the connectivity proper

thanks

[rob]

i heard this somewhere as they have to use half the bandwidth to be able to repeat it?

WiFi is half duplex meaning that at any point in time it can either transmit or receive.  Therefore for every WiFi repeater in use the available bandwidth is halved so wireless repeaters should really only be used if there is no other solution.

A better solution is to have several lower powered WiFi access points, each connected by wired Ethernet, configured with the same SSID and security settings to that clients will normally connect to the AP with the strongest signal.

Don't try and turn the transmit power of the existing access point up, since WiFi is normally limited by the client devices that connect to the AP (smartphones, tablets, laptops) whose transmit power is significantly lower than the AP.  Whilst it may feel good to see a strong received signal on the client wherever you are in the house, the received signal strength is useless if the client cannot talk back (imagine somebody standing at one end of a football pitch with a megaphone and somebody else at the other end whispering replies).  If you are able to see the received signal strengths of the clients from the AP then this will help identify the correct transmit power settings to use.

also. there were about 15 other networks local all overlapping and wifi analyzer said channel 13-14 would be best (she could only use 13) - loads on 1,6,11 but some on 7 etc

2.4GHz WiFi only has 3 standard non-overlapping channels: 1, 6 and 11, which is why most APs are configured to use one of those channels.  All other channels will cause and receive interference which will result in slower throughput because of retransmissions.  Whilst it may seem wrong selecting one of the 3 non-overlapping channels because it's in use by many other APs it will actually provide a better service since each AP or client on the same channel will listen on the channel before transmitting and will only transmit if clear therefore reducing the chance of interference and retransmissions.

WiFi Analyser's suggestion that channel 13 is a better channel is largely meaningless as it bases its suggestion on the number of other APs on a given channel (in this case, 13 probably has the fewest APs).  However if there are several APs on channel 11 then channel 13 will receive (and cause) interference with channel 11 and will almost certainly give a worse experience than if you'd selected channel 11.

Select channel 1,6 or 11 depending on which has the fewest APs with signal strengths larger than -80dBm (where larger means a smaller dBm number).  Since you say there are some APs on channel 7, I would be looking at channel 1 as those on channel 7 will interfere with both channel 6 and channel 11.

[snadge]

thanks for teh advice rob but the 1,6,11 thing was related to Wireless-B wasnt it as they were 22Mhz wide each, whereas wireless-N is 20Mhz wide and therefore 1,5,9 and 13 where none overlapping channels? so im lead to believe

[rob]

As you say, 802.11b has 22MHz wide channels meaning that 1,6 and 11 are the only non-overlapping channels and 802.11g/n has 20Mhz channels meaning that technically 1,5,9 and 13 are non-overlapping but the 802.11-2012 standard states that "overlapping and/or adjacent cells using different channels can operate simultaneously without interference if the distance between the center frequencies is at least 25MHz" (17.4.6.3 Channel Numbering of operating channels) so adhering to this puts the non-overlapping channels back to 1,6 and 11.

Careful channel selection may allow 1,5,9 and 13 to be used well but you would need cooperation from all neighbours and since channels 12 and 13 aren't valid everywhere (channel 14 is also Japan only) most APs, if not all, are normally configured with 1,6 or 11 out of the box (if on auto selection then normally one of those 3 will be selected on start up).  IME there aren't enough hours in the day to get others to cooperate so keeping to 1,6 and 11 is the safer method.

[Dray]

12 and 13 are valid in the UK

[rob]

12 and 13 are valid in the UK

Since 1-11 are the only channels valid worldwide, default or auto channel selection on APs almost always fall within this range.  I have yet to find an AP that defaults to 12 or 13.  On the other hand I have found clients that fail to work correctly on these channels (Nexus 7 2012 doesn't work correctly when connected to 802.11n APs on any channel greater than 11).