Expanding my WiFi

[Frank Petronio]

What's the best easy inexpensive way to increase the radius of my wifi coverage so I can reach the backyard? The cable and Apple Airport Extreme are at the front of the house, and we're all on Macs.

[jp]

Move your airport closer to the back of the house.

Or buy a second AP (and a long ethernet cable) for out back. Things like foil faced insulation or metal screen can stop the signal dead, so house construction is a big factor in range going from indoors to out.

[polyglot]

If the AP supports an external antenna and you're in a single-floor situation, buy a higher-gain antenna (e.g. 10dBi) and make sure it's perfectly vertically oriented. And make sure the antennae on your receiving devices are also vertical. The added antenna gain means less power goes vertically (into your roof and floor; largely wasted) and more goes horizontally (out the back of the house), so you get more signal.

It also means that people driving by on the street get better signal, so make sure you're using WPA2. WEP does not suffice.

[Brian C. Miller]

Since the AirPort Extreme doesn't feature an external antenna, you'll have to either use an access point which does feature it, or else a WiFi repeater such as the Linksys RE-1000. Just do a search on WiFi repeater, and you'll have a number of hits.

[Winger]

IIRC, there's an Apple repeater for the Airport Extreme.

[wentbackward]

2nd wifi hub with same SSID and long cable between them is the proper solution. These devices are far better with close but weaker signals and when you're near the wifi hub, they should adjust power automatically. Going for anything that increases the signal strength will cause all sorts of problems especially if you have neighbours and/or other wireless devices as it will interfere with those devices and cause them to channel hop or use more power creating a pool of contention as they all fight with each other.

[c.d.ewen]

2nd wifi hub with same SSID and long cable between them is the proper solution.

So you put out another router, configure it like the first, then put a data cable between them, connecting the cable to a local port on the router near the modem, and the internet port on the distant router....right? Seems to me I did this sometime, and it worked, but I thought there were some special configuration requirments for the "slave" router.

Charley

[Bill Burk]

You could make one of these...

http://www.exe64.com/mirror/wokfi/

[Robert Tilden]

Netgear WN2000RPT works for me...

[Kirk Gittings]

My Wifi has to cover two separate buildings. I just use those Apple extender thingies. I forget the name oh yeah Airport Express. They are effortless to setup and work like a charm.

[Frank Petronio]

Yeah I just read up on them and they look a whole lot easier than anything else.

[eoghan]

Try updating the firmware on the airport, then go through it's settings.

If your Macs are not too old try switching to 5Ghz only (make sure if you are using a wireless connection to the airport while you are making these changes that you don't lock yourself out, maybe use ethernet so you could set it back if your Mac does not support 5 Ghz). You can also try using 802.11N only.

Anyway I would play with these settings and particularly if you can switch to 5 Ghz you may be able to avoid interference that limits its range.

If none of that works, Apple supports extending the wireless net with either a extreme or a express (just turn of "create a closed network" under advanced wireless options first then run through the set up on the second AP). Don't try to put the 2nd AP too far away, try mid way to where you need a signal.


Good luck

[Bill Koechling]

Our Time Capsule with Airport Extreme works well for us straight up. Our studio is in a separate building about 250 feet behind our house and our only limitation is the fact that we have DSL. The time capsule is in the studio and we work wirelessly there and in the studio.

[Light Guru]

buy a second AP (and a long ethernet cable) for out back.

No need for a long Ethernet cable a apple base station base the ability to pick up the signal of another apple base station and extend the network without Ethernet running between them. When you set up the new airport base station using airport utility just select extend existing network.

[Daniel Moore]

No need for connecting an extender via wire, but there are benefits like no loss of signal from the primary router and far greater distances of separation possible. It was noted above and it's worth repeating, putting the extender in the middle of the proposed signal area rather than trying to push it further will result in a stronger connection. For graphical feedback you can use iStumbler to monitor your results. The Airport Express was updated with a couple nice new features only hours ago. That said, I prefer to use a LINKSYS WET610N or similar, they seem to have less issues with obstructions and travel farther. They aren't quite as easy to setup but by no means are they difficult.

[Leigh]

The cable and Apple Airport Extreme are at the front of the house, and we're all on Macs.
Move the AP to the back of the house, located at a window where it has a clear view of the back yard.

Locating it at the front of the house is not desirable because passing traffic can access your WiFi.

- Leigh

[Denis Pleic]

Another vote for the Apple Airport Express (the "extender thingy").
It's not marketed primarily as "range extender", but it does that, too - without any fuss.

I used it for more than a year to extend the coverage of my wifi router. Another thing it does is to act as remote (streaming) media server. Just plug in powered speakers (e.g. any ordinary computer speakers), and listen to itunes streaming from your main/other computer...
You can also connect USB printer, and it becomes a network printer :)

Practicaly little thingy, works flawlessly.

For your purpose you can probably find something a bit cheaper, but it won't do everything that Airport Express does, and will most likely require significantly more fiddling than AE to set it up the way you like it. :)

Besides, it's small (size is comparable to a pack of cigarettes...).

[Lenny Eiger]

The extenders are called Airport Express. They plug into a wall socket. I have one for the upstairs so we can watch some Netflix on the iPad... They work great. Airport Extreme is a top-level wifi router... However, none of them can get that far.... so the extra airport expresses are needed....

Lenny

[c.d.ewen]

Netgear WN2000RPT works for me...

Picked up one on your suggestion - worked out well. Thanks!

We're a mixed PC+Apple family, so IDK if the AE would work for us. Set-up took a bit of figuring out, as the documentation is skimpy, but Googling found somebody who had solved a similar problem.

Grandma can use her iPad all the way in the backyard, now. All is well.

Charley

[photobymike]

I have an Apple 2 gig router Time Machine and it is good at almost a 1/4 mile. I can take a walk around the neighborhood and my iphone works on local network mode....I was totally amazed at the signal strength... I had to made sure this router was locked with a good password or all of my neighbors would have free internet. I even programed a pass-thru for and extra mac to run as a server. If that is not in your budget you can get a repeater/bridge for about 50 bucks to extend the range of your router.