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I've got a (take a breath)...Linksys wireless access point router with 4 port switch ..
and wish to extend the wi-fi range of it which i know you can do by lowering the speed..
ive got 4 pc's plugged into this switch, by reducing the speed of the wi-fi will it also reduce the speed of the network for the pc's plugged into this switch?
and wish to extend the wi-fi range of it which i know you can do by lowering the speed..
Actually it works the other way around - increasing the distance between devices will lower the speed due to an increase in error correction and packets being repeated.
ive got 4 pc's plugged into this switch, by reducing the speed of the wi-fi will it also reduce the speed of the network for the pc's plugged into this switch?
No.
Wi-Fi range is best improved by antenna height - get the antennae on all of your devices up as high as possible and position the hub/gateway in as high a position as you can without putting too many solid concrete floors in between....
TJ
I think you can buy extension antennas, though. Are those any good? That could be an alternative.
I haven't seen much benefit from positioning the router up high. Perhaps someone else has some more scientific data on the topic, however.
I won't bore you with the scientific data(!) but radio waves are funny things - mileage will always vary depending on so many different factors. Radio gets absorbed and attenuated by obstacles in the way so ultimately you don't want to force the signal through too many walls or floors.
If you're networking on one floor only, then getting the gateway up high on that floor will help a bit (or a replacement antenna mounted up high). That makes for a better line-of-sight from PC's to gateway (if the gateway is transmitting at desk level, then the signals have to travel through all those desks, and each desk is attenuation).
If you're working across multiple floors then the best system would be to have a gateway on each floor hard-wired to a central hub.
TJ
PS If you want to go really mad, do a google search for "pringle can antenna" - some nutcases have made 802.11 work up to about 15 miles with those(!), but that's just for curiousity and has no practical value....
I won't bore you with the scientific data
I know walls contribute a lot to attenuation. Especially since our building is made of brick. Maybe if I stuck the antenna in the window and sat on the front porch of the nunnery across the street... Hmmmmmm.
Hey, 15 miles would be pretty sweet. I could use my home wireless network from work. Oh wait, I'd rather mooch their bandwidth. :D
Hi I ahve done little study in the field of wireless fidelity and antenna propagation.I am electronics and communication Engineer by profession.
What ever I am going to say now is purely theoritical and I have personally not used any wireless access point (though dying to do so.)
Coming to the theoritical technology, here is how it works,
The propagation of antenna signals field strength is in the form of a hexagon.The field strength is distributed in the form of a irregular hexagon.Hence you would have varing field strengths even though you are close to the wi-fi router.
the following equation is called simplified pathloss equation.
Pr=Pt*K*([d0/d]power of r)*g
Pt is the transmitter power
Pr is the reciever power.
where r is gamma
k is a constant
pt is transmitted power
d0 is standard distance
d is the distance from the antenna and reciever(your laptop).
g is called log normal shadowing constant.This is more are less climate and area dependent,this is major contributing factor when obstacles or high rise buildings or high trees are there.
r = 2 if it's free space and
r= 4 if more attentuation is there.
r increases as more dense fields like if you go underground or deepwater.
As pointed out by TJ, it best works in line-sight path, lot of variables get away once you have line of sight,thus helping the field strenght of wirless signals.
Try to have your router, in places where it could distribute it's field strength in circular way.If you put high up it will distribute the field strength in conical way thus helping but it may not serve you if you division of various floors.
For further understanding of wave propagation please refer to Prof.Adrea Goldsmith Articles at Stanford.I find them very useful and simple to understand.
I hope this helps in you some way,
It was nice question and for once I got back to my interest.
With Regards
Aravind
My biggest regret is never being allowed to take Physics, because my algebra grades were too poor. :( I studied really hard, but I just can't do math. So I couldn't do physics, or any of the interesting offshoots of it. I'm still in denial and try to understand it, but it's kind of an uphill battle. It helps to be dating a software engineer-- he can't do math either, but at least he can fake it.
i'm going to reposition it... we are in a small 3 roomed building and trying to get the signal across the car park into the bosses house which is 100ft away... can get half way across the car park so far
