Increase Range of Router

[Carl DaBeast]

Is there a way to increase the range of a router? At my Dad's house his router is sitting in his work room, which is in the basement floor. He wants it to reach out to the guest house. The guest house is about 15 meters away from the router and about half a floor higher.

 

Is it even possible to increase the range or is it better to get a relay unit or extension unit? Or should he just "split" the main cable and connect one to the main router and connect a router in the guest house?

[tlink]

is his router in the basement or on ground level? if its in the basement than the signals don't go far sideways, only up. 

[79wjd]

Range extenders/relays are crap. Don't touch those ever. 

 

There are "better" antennas you can buy and if you hack some routers you can boost the power....but honestly, the best solution is to buy a wireless access point/router in access point mode and position it more conveniently for coverage of other areas (and just run a wire from the router to the access point). 

[Electronics Wizardy]

get anouther wifi access point. Your not splitting the signal. Don't get anouther router. Id get something like this https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite-UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY

[SCHISCHKA]

Get a second router and link it with ethernet. Multiple floors require a different antenna than standard routers. Most routers output a donut shaped signal. You can get ceiling mount routers that can fill a house over two floors better, but you will still need a second router for second house

[Doramius]

21 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Range extenders/relays are crap. Don't touch those ever. 

 

There are "better" antennas you can buy and if you hack some routers you can boost the power....but honestly, the best solution is to buy a wireless access point/router in access point mode and position it more conveniently for coverage of other areas (and just run a wire from the router to the access point). 

Agreed.  Don't get Range Extenders or Relays.  

I recommend getting a Wireless AP, but more specifically, one with a removable antenna.  Replace with a higher gain antenna.  A stronger antenna with a separate Wireless AP will allow you to place the AP in a location in the main house with an ethernet cable, and allow you to mount the replaced antenna in a more easily accessible location, as well as more directly focus the signal.  Yagi antenna's are pretty cheap with some incredible gain.

[Donut417]

Just like to point something out. Even if the router has increased range. The device on the other end has to be able to send data back. So, if the device has a weak ass WiFi card you could have an issue where it can send data to the router. 

[Doramius]

On 1/24/2017 at 6:49 PM, Donut417 said:

Just like to point something out. Even if the router has increased range. The device on the other end has to be able to send data back. So, if the device has a weak ass WiFi card you could have an issue where it can send data to the router. 

Kind of, but not quite.  If the device has a weak card it has trouble handshaking so it would either have reduced signal strength or not work at all.  This is why Yagi antennas are recommended, they can be directional and they can pick up pretty weak signals fairly well.  

 

From the sounds of things, there's a second router trying to receive signal?  If a client bridge is what you're trying to do, then you may want to put a Yagi on the receiving router.  What equipment are you using and are you flashing with an Open firmware to allow the router to bridge?  [IE: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, etc.]