House Networking opinions needed

[vyx]

I recently purchased an older home about 2300sq ft. Ideally i would be able to pull cat 5 everywhere but don't want to open up walls at this point. My modem/router is in my living room and I've set up a gaming room upstairs, consoles /PC. Im currently running off of wireless ac for my gaming rigs but i'm not getting the best speeds ~1/2 of what i should.

 

So i have a few questions:

 

• Is an access point going to provide faster speed than a wireless ac card for my pc? or is it faster than wireless N on PS4?
• If so how many should I buy to cover my house?
• What brand? Ubiquiti?
• What about powerline carrier? (i have a trendnet one, was above a baseboard heater and stopped working is there better options?)

 

Thanks for the feedback

 

 

Info about current setup

• Airport extreme ac router
• 150mbps cable
• wood frame house
• only 4 other networks in range of my gear

[Alaradia]

just run a cable not inside your walls

[ARikozuM]

You can run cables by going to the attic and dropping them down where you need. You can also put a cable along the ceiling running to wherever a switch can be placed. 

[newgeneral10]

An access point won't replace your wifi cards.  The access point attaches to your router while the wifi card is connected to your computer.  You need both to have wifi (even though most routers have built in access points).  Also, upgrading your access point wont make your ps4's internet faster.  The speed you get is always lowered to the lowest rated speed in the connection.  So you would have to upgrade the wireless in the ps4 in order to see faster speeds.

[Skiiwee29]

Your best bet would be to get some channel strips and run it that way attached to the way through the ceiling/floor. I did this and have the channeling spray painted to match or a damn close match to the wall color to blend it in. I will be doing more of this soon as well when I get my pf sense router up 100% running and switch over to that instead of the SOHO I have been using. 

[The Benjamins]

Order of what is best

Ethernet > Powerline (really good latancy, about 500Mbps) > Wifi 

I would look into seeing if you can fish cables down from the attic to the inner wall rooms (those do not have insulation).

if you can not do that anything that is stationary use powerline.

[KenjiUmino]

17 minutes ago, newgeneral10 said:

An access point won't replace your wifi cards.  The access point attaches to your router while the wifi card is connected to your computer.  You need both to have wifi (even though most routers have built in access points).  Also, upgrading your access point wont make your ps4's internet faster.  The speed you get is always lowered to the lowest rated speed in the connection.  So you would have to upgrade the wireless in the ps4 in order to see faster speeds.

he could get an access point that can operate in client mode to bridge the gap between living room and upstairs game room, then attach a switch to this client and wire everything in the game room to it ... 

 

this could in theory improve wifi speed because the router in the living room does not need to serve wifi to multiple clients at the same time (wich decreases overall wifi speed) and devices without ac wifi (PS4) will benefit as well.

 

i would reserve a seperate channel and SSID for the game room if possible to maximise performance and minimise interference

 

i kind of did the same in our house where i have a client with a LAN switch in my brothers room serving his and the girlfriends computer and gave them a wireless N 5GHz channel and SSID dedicated to only serve THIS client and nothing else. 

 

we had issues when we used wifi cards and usb sticks for each computer individually but now with one single access point acting as a client and a 5GHz channel only for this one single client, the connection is rock solid and speeds ain't bad 

[KenjiUmino]

-snip- quoted myself instead of editing

[Donut417]

If you have Coax then you can look at MOCA 2.0 adapters. Run them in to a switch and put everything on a wire. You could also set a AP up to have better wireless in the area. Thats assuming you have Coax ran to where your modem is and where your gaming room is. 

[vyx]

Wow thanks for the awesome feedback. A couple of things then. I only have max 150mbps available to me. It being Shaw I'll be lucky to get 70. So in theory powerline should work well.

 

Is there one anyone would recommend?

 

I've read that AirPort Extreme isn't the best as well. Would it be work upgrading that as well? There are definite spotty patches in my house.

 

modem - switch - powerline?

                           - wireless router?

 

or modem - wireless router - powerline.

 

 

 

thanks again

[vyx]

5 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

If you have Coax then you can look at MOCA 2.0 adapters. Run them in to a switch and put everything on a wire. You could also set a AP up to have better wireless in the area. Thats assuming you have Coax ran to where your modem is and where your gaming room is. 

I do have coax pulled to my gaming room and to where my modem is, however I don't know how these are tied and may just be outside in the Shaw box. Is moca better then powerline? If so I'll grab a tone generator and figure it out.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, vyx said:

I do have coax pulled to my gaming room and to where my modem is, however I don't know how these are tied and may just be outside in the Shaw box. Is moca better then powerline? If so I'll grab a tone generator and figure it out.

To my understanding yes its better. You will need two adapters, Moca compatible splitters and a moca filter on the main line coming in to your house. 

[The Benjamins]

17 minutes ago, vyx said:

Wow thanks for the awesome feedback. A couple of things then. I only have max 150mbps available to me. It being Shaw I'll be lucky to get 70. So in theory powerline should work well.

 

Is there one anyone would recommend?

 

I've read that AirPort Extreme isn't the best as well. Would it be work upgrading that as well? There are definite spotty patches in my house.

 

modem - switch - powerline?

                           - wireless router?

 

or modem - wireless router - powerline.

 

 

 

thanks again

Modem - Router - switch - access points

                                        - powerline, ect

I would recommend going with a router like the Edgerouter X and 1 or 2 ubiquity AP's (im not so good at recommending which ones for your setup)