Wireless router for use thru walls?

[Yuki the Third]

Well, my room is on the other side of a wall or two, and I was wondering if there's a router with decent enough power to get some good speed through it.

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

[trezoid]

Yuki the Third

Well, my room is on the other side of a wall or two, and I was wondering if there's a router with decent enough power to get some good speed through it.

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

How old is you house? (I ask because wireless signals go through walls just fine...the problem is very old houses with wire mess plaster support or lead based paint)

[Yuki the Third]

trezoid

Yuki the Third

Well, my room is on the other side of a wall or two, and I was wondering if there's a router with decent enough power to get some good speed through it.

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

How old is you house? (I ask because wireless signals go through walls just fine...the problem is very old houses with wire mess plaster support or lead based paint)

No idea, but it drops 2 bars.

[Andiii]

If there is a bathroom behind the wall where your router is the pipes been copper will destroy the signal of more wireless signals, happened to me .. moved it over 1 meter and had full coverage
or any strong metal or wiring behind the wall may disturb it.

[SlackerInside]

I'm a little skeptical of the piping as an issue, but bathroom mirrors are notorious signal destroyers.

Try an external antenna before you go out and buy a bunch of new hardware, usually clears things up.

[Gharbad]

To add onto Slacker's post If you only have a single floor to your place you can get fairly directional antennas for a big gain with no drawback.
The standard little crappy ones are like 2-3dBi while you can go buy 7 or even 13 if you really want... An extra 3dBi doubles your effective receive/transmit power if you're in its field of view.

[psychic stalker]

Yuki the Third

Well, my room is on the other side of a wall or two, and I was wondering if there's a router with decent enough power to get some good speed through it.

Brick, concrete, coated glass (like mirrors or UV-treated exterior windows), and wood are the biggest trouble in RF propagation. Make sure that the wall between you and the router isn't made of anything other than wood and drywall. (Knock on it a few times: If it sounds hollow and soft, it's probably just drywall. If it sounds hard, it may be plaster. If it makes no sound at all, there may be concrete.) Any metals - especially a mesh, like found in plaster or concrete walls - will block or reflect any signals. Copper pipes will cause signals to bounce around, but you might be able to find a "hot" spot. Concrete and coated glass will block most of the signal - about 10-20dB.

Yuki the Third

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

5GHz signals are an order of magnitude less efficient at passing through solid objects, and have about half the practical range, to boot. If you're having trouble at 2.4GHz, 5GHz will probably be worse, since at 5GHz, any of the attenuation effects you see from materials in the wall will have almost 5 times the effect.

[Gharbad]

psychic stalker

Yuki the Third

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

5GHz signals are an order of magnitude less efficient at passing through solid objects, and have about half the practical range, to boot. If you're having trouble at 2.4GHz, 5GHz will probably be worse, since at 5GHz, any of the attenuation effects you see from materials in the wall will have almost 5 times the effect.

Where did you get the factor of 5?
Not really seeing it, absorption increases on the order of 3dB/octave while a wire mesh would attenuate less at the higher frequency. The factor of 5 implies about 14dB/octave increase in attenuation.
What am I missing?

[psychic stalker]

Gharbad

psychic stalker

Yuki the Third

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

5GHz signals are an order of magnitude less efficient at passing through solid objects, and have about half the practical range, to boot. If you're having trouble at 2.4GHz, 5GHz will probably be worse, since at 5GHz, any of the attenuation effects you see from materials in the wall will have almost 5 times the effect.

Where did you get the factor of 5?
Not really seeing it, absorption increases on the order of 3dB/octave while a wire mesh would attenuate less at the higher frequency. The factor of 5 implies about 14dB/octave increase in attenuation.
What am I missing?

I was looking at a chart of tested absorption levels for various materials, which showed a 4-20dB difference for concrete and a few other things.

This PDF, starting on page 96.

[Gharbad]

psychic stalker

Gharbad

psychic stalker

Yuki the Third

Or, will 5 ghz N work better?

5GHz signals are an order of magnitude less efficient at passing through solid objects, and have about half the practical range, to boot. If you're having trouble at 2.4GHz, 5GHz will probably be worse, since at 5GHz, any of the attenuation effects you see from materials in the wall will have almost 5 times the effect.

Where did you get the factor of 5?
Not really seeing it, absorption increases on the order of 3dB/octave while a wire mesh would attenuate less at the higher frequency. The factor of 5 implies about 14dB/octave increase in attenuation.
What am I missing?

I was looking at a chart of tested absorption levels for various materials, which showed a 4-20dB difference for concrete and a few other things.

This PDF, starting on page 96.

Interesting, that's a really cool resource. I'll look through it...

Edit:
So they don't really say how they tested but it must take into account a lot more factors than just the material. I'm assuming this was a fairly practical test where they set up actual access points which would bring in all sorts of issues with signal propagation mostly unrelated to the actual material. Either way it's a more realistic number comparing the two wi-fi signals, with their differences being between 2 and 13 dB.

It's really interesting how different the models are for different applications of the same phenomenon. I'm more into minimizing very short range propagation these days which gives a real bias to a lot of things.

[ArrDee584]

5ghz dual band will be awesome pawsum.