Boosting internet signal to my basement?

[astroglide]

So Im trying to boost my internet signal to my basement where my entertainment area is. We have things like a pc and xbox down there. My wireless router is on the floor above us but on the other side of the house. We cant play games on line because the signals drop and netflix movies have to keep loading. So my question is with out moveing anything from the upstairs how can I boost my internet signal down there?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Get a repeater?

[Jailbuild]

So Im trying to boost my internet signal to my basement where my entertainment area is. We have things like a pc and xbox down there. My wireless router is on the floor above us but on the other side of the house. We cant play games on line because the signals drop and netflix movies have to keep loading. So my question is with out moveing anything from the upstairs how can I boost my internet signal down there?

There are lots of different solutions for this, but my advice is to save yourself time, money and a headache with sub par work arounds, like access points, repeaters and power lines and just buy a switch and run a cable to the basement. if you cant go through walls and floors without major issues, take it outside, put in in some conduit same as the cable company's do. I had the same issue with my house, I had a double story extension put on the other side of the house and running cable internally just wasn't a viable option so I ran CAT 6 UP from my games room, through the attic, down the guttering at the side of the house and back under the house. from which it connects into an 8 port switch, that is connected to 2 PC's a network blue ray player, xbox360, wii, PS3 and a Roku box

[Deleted]

I second putting down a cable if that is possible.

I've had a similar problem a few weeks ago, and since a cable was not possible for me, I bought a dlan, which works on the power lines. It is quite expensive, so make sure you can return it if it doesn't work in your house. If it does work, it is a pretty good solution.

[Eroginous]

So Im trying to boost my internet signal to my basement where my entertainment area is. We have things like a pc and xbox down there. My wireless router is on the floor above us but on the other side of the house. We cant play games on line because the signals drop and netflix movies have to keep loading. So my question is with out moveing anything from the upstairs how can I boost my internet signal down there?

You're never going to find a wireless solution that is as GOOD in quality as running a cable. It just doesn't exist. You can run cat 5 to a switch and then plug in all your devices, or you can buy one of those powerline networking setups.

[Lemonlust]

A repeater works fine

[Deleted]

Ye you will have to get a cable, I cringe at the thought of going back to Wireless.

When I moved back home after Uni I had to be wireless and it the receiver I had was rubbish - if you have a wireless receive like me, what I did was take an old lampshade and wrapped it in tinfoil making like a mini-satellite dish - it sounds rubbish but doubled the strength of the signal for me.

But I still needed to get a cable as whenever someone used the microwave it messed with the wireless signal so much that I would get dced, so now I have a 20m bright blue cable running through the house.

[Jailbuild]

A repeater works fine

not always, you don't know what he has running through his walls floors or ceilings, repeaters are subject to the exact same issues found in any wireless device. also they can cause issues with the network and with some devices which I'm not going to get into.

[SpongeGuard]

Two words: Powerline Networking
I use the Netgear XAVB5001 Powerline Network Adapter Kit (there are cheaper alternatives, but this is $130ish on amazon)
It's basically an alternative to using ethernet, it sends the data through the electrical wiring in your walls. The speeds are absolutely magnificent, too.
I live in a 3 story house with a basement, and I can easily stream 1080p video to the basement from the roof (where our modem/router and pc are located), as well as download usually around 85-90mbps (10MB/s ish) on speedtests (which is 85-90% of the speed I pay for from my isp)
No additional set up required, either. Just buy the adapter kit and plug it into the walls in the 2 locations, and connect your devices to them via ethernet. Done.

Best investment I've ever made, lol

[Jailbuild]

Two words: Powerline Networking
I use the Netgear XAVB5001 Powerline Network Adapter Kit (there are cheaper alternatives, but this is $130ish on amazon)
It's basically an alternative to using ethernet, it sends the data through the electrical wiring in your walls. The speeds are absolutely magnificent, too.
I live in a 3 story house with a basement, and I can easily stream 1080p video to the basement from the roof (where our modem/router and pc are located), as well as download usually around 85-90mbps (10MB/s ish) on speedtests (which is 85-90% of the speed I pay for from my isp)
No additional set up required, either. Just buy the adapter kit and plug it into the walls in the 2 locations, and connect your devices to them via ethernet. Done.

Best investment I've ever made, lol

Powerlines are not recommended for gaming, they can give some really unusual latency issues, in my experience it was like being connected to a proxy server with sporadic bottle necking. also they are subject to what "Ring" / circuit the room is connected. if you are connecting on the same ring on the same floor, they tend to be fine most of the time, but when you start chaining rings and or floors they can become unstable, it all depends on your wiring. also you are looking at paying $100+ its just not worth it in my opinion.

[kidsafe]

I live in a house with thick, reinforced walls and heavy steel I-beams.

If you're like me and don't want to run an ethernet cable, what I recommend is using two high-end simultaneous dual-band routers. One will act as the router, the other will act as an extender or client-bridge. There is no one solution to this problem as every house is different. The keys for wireless are to eliminate every possible signal issue. If it's a crowded 2.4GHz spectrum, then switching to the 5GHz band will help. If it's just a signal quality issue, then specific routers have more powerful radios. If you're currently using a G-router, than MIMO and antenna diversity in 802.11n routers with 3 or more antennae will help.

Using a client bridge also allows to you to set-up your devices where you want them and run ethernet cable to the bridge. You can then set up the bridging router or extender near the door to your basement or higher up on top of a shelf...wherever you get the best signal.

Powerline can suffer from line noise. I don't recommend it at all unless you're willing to pay for the '500Mbps' products.

[Deleted]

Possible to move your wireless router to somewhere else in the house?

[Zigrifid]

Ok tell the truth OP , you have kidnaped and locked a chinese in your basement so he can farm for your inferno mode TELL THE TRUTH!

[Deleted]

Powerlines are not recommended for gaming, they can give some really unusual latency issues, in my experience it was like being connected to a proxy server with sporadic bottle necking. also they are subject to what "Ring" / circuit the room is connected. if you are connecting on the same ring on the same floor, they tend to be fine most of the time, but when you start chaining rings and or floors they can become unstable, it all depends on your wiring. also you are looking at paying $100+ its just not worth it in my opinion.

I use powerline myself, and I always have a ping of 20-30 with great speed. Way better than anything I was able to achieve through a repeater or other solutions. Especially if you want to get into the basement, where the ceiling is usually worse for the signal to get through, powerline can be the only solution.

[Deleted]

If you have an antenna port you should go with the epic and classic solution....

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

[Deleted]

Try PowerLine Networking, I've used it in the past and it's generally very good. It depends on your installation of course but you may get great results.

I've used Devolo gear previously and it's been absolutely excellent. From my own experience PowerLine adds around 1 to 10ms of latency, but it's rather consistent and certainly much more reliable than Wireless in a shared environment. If your basement is on the same ring as upstairs you're likely to get near-perfect results. This technology has really evolved now to the point where it's totally viable.

http://www.devolo.co.uk/consumer/82_...on_1.html?l=en

[mafao]

I had great fun with tinfoil

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-ma...m-foil-272913/

[Nerph-]

PowerLine Networking seems like the best solution for you OP. It works pretty well, and will be better than wireless any day.

[kidsafe]

I use powerline myself, and I always have a ping of 20-30 with great speed. Way better than anything I was able to achieve through a repeater or other solutions. Especially if you want to get into the basement, where the ceiling is usually worse for the signal to get through, powerline can be the only solution.

Pinging ipv6.l.google.com [2001:4860:4001:802::1012] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 2001:4860:4001:802::1012: time=17ms
Reply from 2001:4860:4001:802::1012: time=17ms
Reply from 2001:4860:4001:802::1012: time=16ms
Reply from 2001:4860:4001:802::1012: time=16ms

Tracing route to ipv6.l.google.com [2001:4860:4001:802::1012]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  2601:9:5800:20:bac7:5dff:feca:73f7
  2    31 ms    29 ms    11 ms  2001:558:6045:c3::1
  3    11 ms     8 ms    26 ms  te-5-1-ur02.sanmateo.ca.sfba.comcast.net [2001:558:82:330::1]
  4    21 ms    23 ms    23 ms  te-0-6-0-2-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcast.net [2001:558:80:d8::1]
  5    30 ms    24 ms    35 ms  pos-2-1-0-0-cr01.sacramento.ca.ibone.comcast.net [2001:558:0:f6a3::1]
  6    17 ms    15 ms    15 ms  pos-0-3-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.net [2001:558:0:f5ec::2]
  7    16 ms    16 ms    17 ms  pos-0-5-0-0-pe01.529bryant.ca.ibone.comcast.net [2001:558:0:f600::2]
  8    15 ms    41 ms    14 ms  2001:559::386
  9    16 ms    17 ms    16 ms  2001:4860::1:0:21
 10    17 ms    16 ms    16 ms  2001:4860:0:1::1b3
 11    17 ms    17 ms    16 ms  nuq04s08-in-x12.1e100.net [2001:4860:4001:802::1012]

Wireless adds less than 1ms to my ping on average, so I'm not sure how you can claim that powerline networking is better based on your ping of 20-30ms. I would hope that is your latency to some external router or host.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I was wondering, what happens if you have a computer plugged into a powerline network and there is a power surge? A computer plugged in normally would probably be totally fine due to power supplies being designed to cope with a sudden increase in power, but how would the power surge, which would presumably end up travelling into the LAN port on the motherboard, affect that rather more sensitive piece of equipment?