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.

[jp498]

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.