5e cable to Bluetooth

[John Farley]

Chaps

I have a BT infinity home hub hardwired to various rooms and equipment.

What sort of device do I need to plug in to the existing feed to one room to give me WiFi there?

JF

[mixture]

Just to clarify, did you really mean Bluetooth or did you mean to say WiFi ?

I really wouldn't recommend trying to use the internet over Bluetooth, it may bring on your early demise !

If you indeed meant to say Wifi, doesn't the BT Infinity home-hub come with that built-in as standard ?

Taking a guess here, what you probably are after is a WiFi access point for another spot in your vast mansion where the signal is poor ? Am I along the right lines ? In which case, I must congratulate you on having the foresight to have run CAT5e cable around your castle ... because that will make your life a lot easier in trying to properly implement local WiFi hotspots in different areas of your castle !

[John Farley]

Mixture

Ta. I did mean WiFi. Sorry!

It is not a castle (I wish) it is a wooden hut BUT we have added a room and modern building regs have resulted in the insulation of said room being a Faraday's cage so far as the BT hub is concerned. Hence my need for a device.

JF

[Bushfiva]

Some wifi routers such as the Buffalo WSR/WZR-1166 have beam forming: they work out vaguely where the client is located. If the client is compatible, they'll do it even better. It's part of the 802.11ac standard. Some routers extend the capability. So you may not need to run anything anywhere. Also, moving your router even slightly might make a major difference.

[Loose rivets]

But no SIMPLE repeater device available on the end of a yellow wire?

[Bushfiva]

What do you mean? Add another access point at the end of cat5? No problem. Give it the same SSID and security settings. Some manufacturers have an "access point" button or setting where it will automagically set DHCP, etc correctly to the other router. Otherwise, it's a bit of menu twiddling.

[mixture]

Good Morning John,

Well, given your background and the pangram of abbreviations usually suffixed to your name, I don't think it should pose too much of a challenge to you to setup.

Conceptually we're looking at this (although I get the impression you already have that in mind)....

http://s27.postimg.org/ky23f93ib/wifi.jpg


The "problem" is that we want to avoid double-NAT because that will cause you no-end of problems if you are a user of VoIP, Skype, Facetime or any such technology.

This means we need to rule out anything that is sold as a "cable router". You need a box that supports "bridge mode" operation in order to allow wireless clients to obtain their IP addresses from an upstream DHCP server (in your case the BT HomeHub).

My initial thinking would be something like one of these Netgear boxes (http://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/wireless/soho-wireless/), but I haven't used those ones myself so I'll need to take a quick look at their datasheets and let you know .....

Edit to add:

The Netgear WN604 seems to be a likely candidate given the description in the introduction section of their manual :
The access point acts as a bridge between the wired LAN and wireless clients. Connecting multiple access points through a wired Ethernet backbone can extend the wireless network coverage. As a mobile computing device moves out of the range of one access point, it moves into the range of another. As a result, wireless clients can freely roam from one access point to another and still maintain seamless connection to the network

Only £27 on Amazon...plus Amazon have a nice no-fuss returns policy....and they are currently running a special "Extended Christmas Returns Policy" (see here) .... so you've got even longer to play with it than the generous time they would usually allow !

Edit again:

PPRuNe seems to break amazon links, this was the returns information address....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161016

and this is the product page

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-WN604-100UKS-Wireless-Access-Point/dp/B003T0A03A

[John Farley]

Bless you mixture.

That is just the sort of advice I was looking for.

Regards

John

[B Fraser]

Hi John,

I would have posted earlier had I seen this thread. I presume the wall insulation is the stuff that has the foil layer hence the problem. There are a couple of extra suggestions.

Is the room really a Faraday cage or do you actually have wireless channels clashing ? An app such as "WiFi analyzer" on a tablet device will show up any services from your neighbour fighting for the same channel. A reboot of your BT hub may cause it to select another channel.

Can you move your router to give you line of sight through a window or doorway ? I solved a problem in my house where the wireless has to deal with a 6 foot thick wall by placing the hub "just so". If you have Cat 5 cables to your hub then I presume not.

I hope all goes well.

Brian

[John Farley]

mixture

Sorry for the delay but life got in the way.

This weekend the kit you recommended has been installed and all the wifi equipment inside the faraday's cage room is now working perfectly.

Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks to everyone else as well for their comments.

JF

[mixture]

All's well that ends well then !

Enjoy your new found wireless freedom !