Need a good router for a vast connection - Page 2

Originally Posted by Xinoxide 

I used the 2 pair cat3 from my existing phone lines ( reterminated with RJ45 ) to run back to one of my switches. They are all less than 50 feet so I experience 0 packet loss.
I just set the WAP's / Routers ( DHCP DISABLED ) with the same SSID. As long as they are on the same subnet it makes a seamless wireless network.

Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider 

I've never used a high-end access point or wifi router, so maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but my feeling is that they probably all pretty much suck through walls/floors, and at much shorter distances than they claim - I don't think there's anything fundamental a well designed router/AP can do to overcome the very low transmission power limits the law imposes, so no matter how good the router/AP is, there is an upper limit to possible performance that is quite low.
As someone else said, all you have to do is cable two access points together (simple ethernet cable from a LAN port on one to a LAN port on the other) then make sure only one of them is doing DHCP (so you'd just leave your existing router as-is, and disable DHCP on the new one). Set their SSID to be the same and set the encryption mode and PSK to be the same on both, and make sure they are on different channels (use inssider to scan your location and see what the quietest channels are), clients will then seamlessly roam between them. Set the routers to have different IP addresses (both outside the DHCP scope) do you can access the administrative interfaces on both of them without any problems.
If routing an ethernet cable would be awkward, you can use a pair of those powerline ethernet adapters to carry the ethernet bit over your household electrical wiring from one router to the other.
I did this a while back in a very poor radio environment with thick stone walls, and an additional dirt cheap TP-Link access point in a strategic location made all the difference.
If you go that route, or indeed if you just replace the existing main router with a better one, do yourself a favour and get something that can run OpenWRT or Tomato or similar, manufacturer firmware is just junk.

Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider 

I've never used a high-end access point or wifi router, so maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but my feeling is that they probably all pretty much suck through walls/floors, and at much shorter distances than they claim - I don't think there's anything fundamental a well designed router/AP can do to overcome the very low transmission power limits the law imposes, so no matter how good the router/AP is, there is an upper limit to possible performance that is quite low.
As someone else said, all you have to do is cable two access points together (simple ethernet cable from a LAN port on one to a LAN port on the other) then make sure only one of them is doing DHCP (so you'd just leave your existing router as-is, and disable DHCP on the new one). Set their SSID to be the same and set the encryption mode and PSK to be the same on both, and make sure they are on different channels (use inssider to scan your location and see what the quietest channels are), clients will then seamlessly roam between them. Set the routers to have different IP addresses (both outside the DHCP scope) do you can access the administrative interfaces on both of them without any problems.
If routing an ethernet cable would be awkward, you can use a pair of those powerline ethernet adapters to carry the ethernet bit over your household electrical wiring from one router to the other.
I did this a while back in a very poor radio environment with thick stone walls, and an additional dirt cheap TP-Link access point in a strategic location made all the difference.
If you go that route, or indeed if you just replace the existing main router with a better one, do yourself a favour and get something that can run OpenWRT or Tomato or similar, manufacturer firmware is just junk.