Those experts that Redvin was demanding - I need you!

[Plok]

Hello.

Well, I'm not going to get involved in intrigues and I'll make my request for help directly:

It's about how to act in the connection of a WiFi amplifier that I already had working in my house with excellent results, on the 10Mb copper network.

It turns out that Movistar has brought fiber optics to the area where I live and they have just installed said fiber in my house at 300 megabits.

Before I had a Zyxel router with 1 screw-on antenna, which as you can see I removed and instead screwed a "pigtail" of 20 cm that was connected to the input of that booster, to whose output and about 4 meters in the hallway, I put an antenna of about 18 dB. The thing is that with 1000mW/30dBm at 802.11g power of that amplifier, I had a very good signal throughout the house, but now they have put me a huge router with 2 antennas like

you can see on the card of the same and they are fixed and although they are 2, the power I don't think it's greater than the legally established of about 100 mW, the thing is that the router is behind the PC and a bit hidden and the signal only reaches the living room (about 8 m) with 1 or 2 bars and to the kitchen it is already lost.

I made the right antenna screwable, where I connected the booster or amplifier but the results were fatal, not even screwing an antenna with more gain there.

I have been informed that these routers work in MIMO mode, that is, they distribute the packets between both antennas, so I deduce that I would have to put two twin boosters (of type n) and duplicate the antenna in the hallway, but...

Can you tell me what I did wrong, illustrate about this type of MIMO router and give ideas?

Thank you very much.

[Espinetenbolas]

Well I don't know... try the crazy idea of putting a second antenna but I think you're complicating things too much... how easy it is to disable the WIFI of the modem and put an external WIFI Router with dual, tri or quad band or an access point in another part of the house where the signal doesn't reach

[Plok]

@Espinetenbolas:

Well I don't know… you're trying to add a second antenna but I think you're complicating things too much... it's so easy to disable the WIFI of the modem and add an external WIFI Router with dual, tri or quad band or an access point in another part of the house where the signal doesn't reach

The thing is I don't have an access point in the center of the house, the fiber is routed through where the copper used to go to the innermost room and there's the router, on a wall behind the PC and the TV, so where I have the corridor antenna the signal isn't good and in the living room even less and I understand that to put a repeater, it's best that it receives a decent enough signal, because for an access point, I think I would have to have a cable to connect it.

Currently I have the box where the fiber arrives, from there another fiber segment goes to the ONT and from there an RJ45 cat6 cable to the router-WIFI.

I thought about all this when I had ADSL over cable, and I put that amplifier so that it would at least reach the living room with a good signal and there put a repeater to reach the kitchen, but none of this was necessary, because thanks to the location of the 18 Dbm antenna, it covered the whole house without problems. Of course that antenna was the only one transmitting and receiving the packets.

Now I'm very puzzled with this router and I confess that in terms of MIMO technology I'm stuck and more lost than a Masai at the pole.

[whoololon]

The most efficient is an access point in the right place, you just need to pull an ethernet cable, there should be a nearby outlet and the old router should work, configuring it as such (disable DHCP, etc.)

;D

[Plok]

@whoololon:

The most efficient thing is a access point in the right place, you just need to pull ethernet cable, there needs to be a socket nearby and the old router should do the job, configuring it as such (turn off DHCP, etc.)

;D

The problem I have to put an access point is that I would have to pull an RJ45 cable to the living room going around all the corners, visible, and at least 16 or 17 m, and after having channeled and hidden all the cables in a 2013 renovation, I am not up for leaving cables in sight.

I have the old Zyxel router, and at the ADSL entry it has an RJ45 with 4 pins, of which I assume only the 2 central ones are used.

I have put the ONT's RJ11 output into the internal copper pair network that reaches 6 points in the house where I have wired and cordless phones. I assume that I could not plug one of the internal network cables into this router, because this network, after passing through the ONT, has already had filters applied to it to make it usable for voice, like before when microfilters or a splitter were used, so it would not be good for data, right?

[whoololon]

I assume it's the Zyxel P660 HWD1.
When a router is configured to serve as an access point, the physical connection goes from the main one to any of the RJ45 sockets (usually #1).

[Plok]

Well that's the problem, I can't run a cable from router socket #1 around corners. And it wouldn't fit in the tube where it's routed, because it couldn't be a cat5 cable, but at least 5e or better 6, which are successively a bit thicker than 5, because it already took some work to run the fiber optic cable through the tube as the copper cables for the internal network also go through it. I've witnessed the importance of cable category, because when they installed it they put a very long cat5e cable between the ONT and the router, and as I have crimping tool and RJ45 connectors, I made a custom cable of 35 cm. and it turned out that in the tests it didn't give me the 300 Mbps, and when the technician came back and put a cat5e cable, everything went back to normal. And it's that even the connectors themselves have to be of the category and crimped industrially. I'm now in the process of buying cat6 or 6a cables, but my priority is to solve the WiFi issue, to see if my wife stops giving me a hard time, because from the living room or the kitchen her whatsapp doesn't work, and it's going really badly. Yes it's that router.

[whoololon]

In my case, and I present it as something indicative, I use a normal 5e cable of 20m prefabricated (12 €), it runs along half a wall, borders a door (always behind the cover) until behind a showcase, drill from the 10 and striker on baseboard to the adjoining room, it follows half a wall behind a wardrobe, borders another door only up to the lintel, new drill at that height until my room, borders door, follows the wall, corner and half wall more until the equipment.

Simply, know that the connector measures almost 12 mm and must be wrapped with insulating tape so as not to damage it when passing the hole.

[Plok]

I understand you, as I have been in that situation several times, and it's not because I don't have the means, I mean tools, but once I have the conduit, I don't like to put it superficially.

You should know that when the Movistar technician came, I was not only the first to receive fiber in my block and in my urbanization, but in the town it belongs to, and I forced the technician (with my help because they come alone, since they are subcontracted self-employed) to look for the conduits from the stairwell box to the back room where the PC is, and it turned out great. The other neighbors didn't even bother to look for the tubes, they put it on the wall with staples and even on the stairs (because I didn't see it as I am the president) also on the wall in a sloppy format, with how easy it is to use the copper pair to hook up the fiber and pass it.

So before reaching that solution through walls (which I don't rule out if there is no other way) I will try to find another solution, perhaps the one with a double booster and an antenna in the hallway, but what I would like is for someone to explain to me how MIMO routers work, in which I suppose that the 2 antennas must be exactly the same to not unbalance the signal...

[whoololon]

MIMO is not something new, it's just being advertised as the latest thing, usually in devices where not having it would make no difference.
It's based on signal offsetting, allowing occasional reflections to increase its coverage. But for this to work, devices must support the "n" standard, because if they're "b" or "g" we'll find a reduction in coverage (as they're not capable of restructuring the offset packets).
However, for WiFi to reach a data rate of at least 300 Mb/s with 2T2R (2 transmitting and 2 receiving antennas), the channel width must be 40 MHz, and I'm pretty sure the Vomistar's Mirastar offers a channel width of 20 MHz, so the data transfer rate won't go beyond 150 Mb/s.

Apparently, if it detects nearby networks it doesn't matter that you set it to 40 MHz manually, it goes back down to 20 MHz.

…yes, that router looks like a paperweight with an antenna and lights. Sorry.

[Plok]

Well, I'm afraid you're absolutely right, this router is a disaster.

Regarding nearby networks, I can't avoid them as I live in a block of 16 neighbors with some influence from the neighboring block.

The thing is, as I told you, I was the first to have fiber, and I made the mistake of recommending it to my neighbors, since I have quite a following when it comes to technical matters (I'm a retired mechanical-electronic technician from the days when HW was repaired, but I'm up to speed with SW) and now I'm surrounded by signals, almost all 802.11n. Fortunately, I have a program called Xirrus that locates all the channels around me, and I try to put myself on a channel that has as much free space as possible in front of and behind it.

Now I have 3 neighbors on channel 11 (one.11g and another.11n, the closest ones with 60% and 58%), 3 on channel 1, 1 on channel 2, 2 on channel 6, 1 on channel 10, and me on channel 8 with 100%.

I have a laptop, and the maximum speed I see on WiFi is 130 Mbps, even when I put it in front of the antennas.

Thank you very much for enlightening me about MIMO, because I had no idea or only a vague idea, but I don't understand: When it receives the signal from a laptop or a mobile or tablet that transmit in.11n or.11g, they will do so with a single antenna. How does that work?

[whoololon]

First, let's download some iron about the Mirastar mentioned. It's not that it's a paperweight, it's just that it could be better.

I'm going to try to go step by step, trying not to get too confused.
For a mobile phone or a tablet, we'll agree that the most important thing is coverage, since they usually don't require much bandwidth, also ignoring the fact that their hardware is quite limited.
As we move to more powerful equipment, like a laptop, speed will start to be equally important. The protocol thing is the controller's thing and is usually compatible with a/b/g/n, as for the antennas, it depends on the type of device and manufacturer: generally, phones and tablets have one WiFi antenna, while a laptop usually has two.
But that's not what we're here for. Ideally, with a laptop and on WiFi, we should be able to reach the speed we have contracted. But this is very complicated since the "Wi-Fi Alliance" protocol states that if there are adjacent networks, it automatically switches to a "non-aggressive" channel width of 20 Mhz, (each channel has a range of 5 Mhz) which limits our connection to 130 Mb/s anyway. With a channel width of 40 Mhz and neighbors around, it would cause interference in their connections, which is why some people opt to switch from 2.4 Ghz to 5 Ghz… which are also not without sin as they offer less coverage area.
To sum up and be specific: 2.4 channels with a width of 40 Mhz are, today, a panacea. For WiFi, I could almost say that everyone goes to 130 Mb/s unless they live quite isolated, their router allows the forced 40 Mhz mode or they have modified the router's firmware (in both cases violating the IEEE 802.11-2012 standard :rollani:) or are bluffing. The solution: switch to 5 Ghz, bearing in mind that not all the devices we have will be compatible (802.11 ac) and their coverage range is less.

It's convenient to check which channel the adjacent networks are broadcasting on, and thus choose one that is far from the range.

Now, what brings us here, the bandwidth or the lack of coverage? If it's the former, I tried to clarify it above, if it's the latter, it's even higher up. ;D

Sorry for the wall of text.:wall:

[Plok]

Yes... It's not the broadband that's the issue, it's the coverage and I take good note of your proposed solutions.

By the way, what brand and model of router do you think would be good to replace this crap put in by MStar? If it has screw-on antennas, the better the better.

For me the issue remains open to anyone who can contribute something that ADDS to what has been written. Thank you.

[whoololon]

Asus rt-ac87u ac2400

[Plok]

Damn, man! That router you're suggesting me costs more than 200 €urazos! I think that's amazing…

On the other hand, I think I might have the solution to my problem so I don't have to run a cable over and through walls, and the possible solution was given to me by one of my sons who is very "gamer". He can only have 10 Mbps of speed for the moment, well actually 6.5, and he can't put in fiber because he has a permanence contract I'm not sure with Orange currently, although fiber passes in front of his house, but when Movistar put the router with the TRIO, he complained because he demanded to have the same coverage as before with ADSL and they put 3 PLC's through the electrical network (they were going to bill him 300€ but in the end he didn't have to pay) so he has one next to the router connected with an RJ45 and in a plug and another next to the PC and the third one upstairs. Maybe I'll try that although I won't be able to get the same deal.

Isn't that a possible solution?

[Espinetenbolas]

I haven't had a PLC or messed with them, but depending on the electrical installation, it can work well or be a disaster... it also depends on the model, but I don't see it as a definitive solution... mainly because it either won't work and you'll discard it, or it will work but then you'll have other problems

You can also try changing the modem's location by splicing the fiber optic cable, but I'm not aware of the material and economic feasibility of such a feat, but it's all about being informed

[whoololon]

I don't recommend messing around with fiber optics. Just the fusion splicer costs €2000, and then there's the cutter and the stripper... it's better to call someone who has them and can do it.

I see it clearly: if you already have the RJ45 crimping tool, I don't even think about it: I pull Ethernet cable, set up an access point and take advantage of a router we already have and can still provide that service.
What about doing (more) drilling? Use the corrugated tube for that. Then we check with the multimeter that no pole has broken along the way and it's time to crimp. No cable is so bad (if in good condition) that it suffers a significant signal loss in 15 or 20 m. In fact, the maximum length for a cat6 is about 50 m for 10GBaseT, and a maximum of 100m for 10 to 1000BaseT. Neither are 25 m insurmountable for a cat5, no matter how many curves and bends it has to cross.

In no way do we want to change detergents, because we have PLC solutions with WiFi from around €60, which, as Espinete says, may work well or not... but I add that we always have the right of withdrawal (14 calendar days from the purchase), if for one reason or another the issue doesn't convince us.

Anyway, good luck.

[Magog]

Easy and cheap option: keep the Zyxel. You enter the Zyxel, configure it with the IP 192.168.1.2 (I put this because the fiber one excludes from 2 to 33 and so another device will never step on it) and you disable the DHCP. You connect any port of the fiber one to any port of the Zyxel and ready, it keeps the previous network.
I see that whoololon had written more or less that. I replied without reading, I don't have much time lately.

Best regards.

[Fassou]

Magog! lucky eyes

[Plok]

I can't even think about reforming the fiber optic.

On Monday I'll stop by Media Markt to see what they have, although I've already seen something online. The doubt I have is whether it would be better for me to have a PLC at the electrical outlet and another one at the outlet with WiFi and a plug, since I could put it in the living room in the outlet of an air conditioning unit, or put it without WiFi and put the Zyxel router as a transmitter, and if it doesn't work well, as whololon says, I'll change it and look for another solution.

But another doubt that just occurred to me regarding the use of Zyxel as a transmitter is that this router is type.11bg at 54 Mbps and yet the signal that would enter it would be.11bgn of at least 130 Mbps that couldn't come out, right?

And if the PLC were type.11ac at 5 Ghz, it would be better, since in the living room there won't be many walls to dampen the signal.