[Nuckle]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

A repeater sits on your main wireless network more or less as another wireless device. It just plays the proverbial telephone game between your main access point and the wireless devices that are talking through it. The problem this introduces into your network are these:

1) Increased latency. Looking at the communication session of one wireless device. The wireless device sends a chunk of data to the repeater. The repeater then sends the data to your main AP and then it gets sent to where ever: your internal LAN, Internet, etc. Now with a single device, the increase in latency most likely isn't a big deal. Now add more devices on the other end of that repeater. Every one of those devices will need to wait their turn to transmit their data until the device that is currently talking to the repeater finishes. Now, this is just in one direction. When communications goes back the opposite way, you're dealing with the same issue. With what I discussed so far is only looking at the communications between the AP, repeater, and wireless devices associated to that repeater. Now add in other wireless devices that are associated to your main AP. Those devices are also fighting for air time to talk to your main AP as the repeater is also fighting for the same air time. You can see how this latency issue can get out of hand very quickly as many people have IOT devices in their home.

2) Speed degradation. When you insert a repeater, you divide your effective operating speed in half. Say you insert a repeater that supports 802.11n. And your effective speed to that repeater is say 144Mbps. What your max effective speed along the entire wireless path is going to be half of that at 72Mbps. Now tie this back to the above talking point about latency. Wireless currently is a half duplex technology; meaning only one wireless device can talk on the wireless network at any given time. Part of the reason why faster wireless technologies keep coming out isn't just for the sheer speed of transmitting data. It's to help in getting a wireless device to talk on the network and get off of it as quickly as possible to reduce over all network latency. This was an issue with wired networks back when Ethernet was first created. Ethernet devices were connected together via hubs. When switching hardware was created/introduced, this was the game changer in making Ethernet as successful as it is today and its ability to support the crazy fast speeds we see today.

Hope my explanation makes sense to you.

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain it to me. I do understand and will do some more research and post back.

[stevenc]

I sort of agree. Good ethernet over powerline adapters allow you to send a high speed wired internet connection to anywhere there is a power plug in your house. Then plug in a mess system into the powerline adapters and you should have complete coverage of the house with a good backbone.

Ethernet over powerline adapters work great but sometimes die and need a reset but given your situation, i think its a great option.


https://www.walmart.com/ip/Google-Wi...Wifi/157933144

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600...s%2C169&sr=8-3

[Nuckle]

So in doing some reading it appears that the Powerline adapters have to be on the same leg of the 220v service which seems logical but is that correct? Could the AP on the other side of the Powerline adapter be wireless? I really need wireless at some point. Just an example of my basement between my game room, home theater and outdoor sound system comprises of:

3 TV's
2 PS4's
1 PS3
4 AVR Recievers
1 DVD Player
Temp and Humidity Monitoring for my safe
Probably some thing I am forgetting about lol.

My basement is on a separate panel from my main.

[stevenc]

Couple things

1) You can plug in any thing into the powerline adapter including an AP. The powerline line adapter just effectively acts as a cat 5 connection back to the router.

2) If the panel in the basement is a subpanel of your main panel it might work. If they are completely separate panels, it wont work. No harm buying a pair of powerline adapters and testing if they connect to each other from the basement to the main house. When they work, they work amazingly well. Using them right now in my house since im working off the dining room table, my work computer plugs into a powerline adapter and back to the router to give me an ethernet connection in the dining room.

[Nuckle]

Originally Posted by stevenc

Couple things

1) You can plug in any thing into the powerline adapter including an AP. The powerline line adapter just effectively acts as a cat 5 connection back to the router.

2) If the panel in the basement is a subpanel of your main panel it might work. If they are completely separate panels, it wont work. No harm buying a pair of powerline adapters and testing if they connect to each other from the basement to the main house. When they work, they work amazingly well. Using them right now in my house since im working off the dining room table, my work computer plugs into a powerline adapter and back to the router to give me an ethernet connection in the dining room.

Ok dumb question probably but let's say I want to have an wireless access point in the attic and one in the basement and I can get the powerline adapters in both. Would I have to access those wireless AP's individually or could I set them up where they operate just like the wireless access point in my cable modem? Meaning one wireless connection for the whole home and not have to switch networks when I go downstairs on my phone.

[stevenc]

Originally Posted by Nuckle

Ok dumb question probably but let's say I want to have an wireless access point in the attic and one in the basement and I can get the powerline adapters in both. Would I have to access those wireless AP's individually or could I set them up where they operate just like the wireless access point in my cable modem? Meaning one wireless connection for the whole home and not have to switch networks when I go downstairs on my phone.

What you are talking about is a mesh network. One network made up of multiple AP's and as you walk around the AP's automatically hand your device off from AP to AP seamlessly.

That is why i keep suggesting the Google Wifi. Its a complete mess network and can use a hardwired backbone for the AP's to talk to each other.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by Nuckle

Ok dumb question probably but let's say I want to have an wireless access point in the attic and one in the basement and I can get the powerline adapters in both. Would I have to access those wireless AP's individually or could I set them up where they operate just like the wireless access point in my cable modem? Meaning one wireless connection for the whole home and not have to switch networks when I go downstairs on my phone.

Originally Posted by stevenc

What you are talking about is a mesh network. One network made up of multiple AP's and as you walk around the AP's automatically hand your device off from AP to AP seamlessly.

That is why i keep suggesting the Google Wifi. Its a complete mess network and can use a hardwired backbone for the AP's to talk to each other.

Some clarification here on terminology. A wireless mesh system describes the method of which all the access points communicate with each other on a dedicated wireless backhaul. A unified wireless system is a better name for describing a wireless network where all the APs operate together as one big virtual wireless system.

The system I use in my home is from Aruba Networks which consists of a 7008 controller and 4 APs (technically 5 but the fifth is an RF spectrum monitor). All the APs are wired into my LAN and communicate back to the 7008 controller.

The nice thing about implementing a unified wireless system is what you bring up which is the ability to roam from one are of your wireless network to another seamlessly. I have taken my laptop streaming full HD video from one end of my house to another without a hiccup. Some of the other benefits of a unified wireless system is the ability for the APs to coordinate with each other by adjusting some things such as RF output. You don't want APs in your network broadcasting at their full RF potential stomping over each other. Another benefit is the ability to have auto channel selection on a continuous basis. A good system will constantly monitor the RF quality of the air space it selects to operate its APs on. If there is too much interference on the channel space, the built in logic will select the next best channel.

If you're able to get power in the attic and basement, what's preventing you from having Category cabling pulled?