Router placement

[willet]

Hi all,

Done some searching, couldn't find an answer to my question. I am about to have cable installed in my house for internet, and have a choice as to where to place the modem/router.

The house is 2 story 2500sqft, with PC on 2nd floor all the way to the right of the house. Also have a laptop with wireless, and DirecTV box in the same room as the PC, which will have a wireless adapter. I would like to be able to use wireless all throughout the house.

So, option 1:

Place modem on 2nd floor with PC, hardwired, wireless signal to lappy/DirecTv.

Option 2:

Place modem and router center of 1st floor, with wireless to all devices.

My main concern overall is speed of internet on the PC, so that is why I am also considering option 1, since it would not require wireless for the PC. However if placing the router upstairs off center would cause the lappy to lose signal in the house, that would be a negative.

I also have not picked a router/wireless adapter for the PC, am looking at N routers right now, since everything I have read is that they have greater range with the MIMO and such. Any thoughts?

 

[carnageX]

If you could, mount it on the ceiling, and generally in the center of the house to get the best coverage.

 

[candlectj]

It does not seem to be a problem. Adapter has to be 802.11N as well, otherwise you won't get the benefit of N standard.

 

[moshkid213]

My advice? Buy a router that cranks up to 5Ghz to get the extra coverage. Ive never had a wireless router not reach through out a whole house before... So you should be fine.

 

[LA1]

My advice? Buy a router that cranks up to 5Ghz to get the extra coverage

Frequency has very little to do with it, it is the wattage. Most wireles routers only put out about a third of a watt, that is less than one of those small Christmas tree lights. The job before what I do now ( IT for large government contractor) I used to do home and business PC/ NETWORKING repair. I saw plenty of houses that 802.11g would not work in. I have never tried 5ghz N, maybe they increased the output of the wireless router. For my house I started out with 802.11B in 2000. The G later on. 802.11G started getting flakey about 3 or 4 years back. I don't know if it is all the other wireless PC's. toys, burlar alarms...I had to get a 1watt 802.11g "booster" works great, put it in my attic. The booster is two parts, had to make my own cables from LMR 195. I can also bring in more of my neighbors wireless signal for blocks around thay I could not before. Another thought too about 5ghz N , there may not be as many devices using the same freq....I remeber the good old days of 802,11b...when nobody had it..great reception.

 

[septic]

The D-Link Xtreme Nâ„¢ Gigabit Router (DIR-655) is a draft 802.11n compliant device that delivers up to 14x faster speeds and 6x farther range than 802.11g while staying backward compatible with 802.11g and 802.11b devices

Newegg.com - NETGEAR WNHDEB111 HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit - Wireless AP / Bridges Netgear 5ghz

IMO, d-links has the best arranged firmware. Its easy to mac address filtering, see who's on my wireless, but that's just me and I've only used lynksys, netgear, and d-link. Maybe its diffenrent now compared to a couple yrs. ago but I'm glad I didn't buy a wireless router based on WEP, and WPA because I had a ton of problems trying to keep that going and once I purchased the same "name brand" router and modem my problems ceased.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16825112104 I like to split my electronics bc if one goes out I don't have to replace both....fishfinder\gps depthfinder & gps