Router Strength Through TV


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I have limited options with my place, and I am being picky. I want things clean, minimal.

 

In my room I am moving my computer and three wall mounted monitors to the other side of the room (behind my TV, on the other side, make sense?).This opens up my fairly small room for more options, and this wall is empty, so hiding cables inside is simple and easy compared to the other side of the room.

 

The problem is once my monitors and desk are there, I have no where for the router and modem. Desk would be right above where it was, and I simply do not want it on my desk (minimal remember).I think my optimal placement for my modem and router is actually behind my TV (wires go into the wall, run into the next room behind it, clean).

 

My router is the WRT1900AC, and I have a 2013 LG Smart TV. I am thinking of mounting it to the wall (its feet have this option) and pointing the antennas outward and upward right behind my TV.

 

Will my TV and this wall mounting direction cause the signal to be blocked or weakened? I don't have a huge place and its one floor.

 

I am not really sure how these antennas work and how these signals travel, would it still be able to get into my room (behind it)?

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Will it weaken the signal? Yes. Will it weaken it by enough to matter? Won't know until you test it.

 

Wireless works best when there is literally no obstructions between the sending and receiving devices. Any obstructions will have an impact, but the severity depends on the material, multiple antennas, interference, and a variety of situational factors.

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I really wouldn't put a AP next to any sort of electronic equipment for optimal performance to be honest. Will it work, most likely yes - what devices will the TV be between to the AP, and what is the distance?

The best place for an AP is in the ceiling to be honest. But people wonder why they have crappy coverage when they put their wifi router on the floor under their desk, next to their PC ;)

For general purposes - think of the antenna poking through a donut hole.. If you made the donut bigger and bigger this is the pattern

This might help

http://en.data-alliance.net/omni-directional-antennas-dipole/

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You say its best on a ceiling actually.

 

That confuses me, I know in my parents place with 3 floors, they can hardly get a single on the second floor as the router is on the bottom floor. So are you saying as long as its one floor, being on the ceiling it would push the most coverage around the place?

 

We are talking a 400sq (I think) condo apartment. In front of the TV, there is nothing else blocking, it would be connecting to phones, tablets, and one iMac. Behind the TV is a wall, and then my small-ish room with all hard-wired devices. Only when I go in there with my phone etc would it need a strong connection.

 

Your ceiling idea is interesting, the only issue would be the fact of wires, and that it would take effort to get to if you need to reset it lol

 

I think my only option is to do it and test how it works then.

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Yup, you should do it. But it's easy to predict what'll happen actually if you have experience - with the 2.4 GHz bands in your router, you'll hardly notice the difference. The signal may drop by as much as 10 dB but that may not be even one 'bar' lost.

 

The 5.x GHz bands will suffer a little, you may lose 20-30 dB and 1-2 'bars'.

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I am not saying you put your wifi router on the ceiling - I am saying you would put a true AP there..

Say like this

http://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/

Mine is in the hallway - center of the house. Here is crappy picture took awhile back to show the LED light, etc.

post-14624-0-45004400-1417022282.jpg

And yes in a multi floor house you would normally put a AP on each floor if not multiple on the floor depending on size of the house, make up of the walls - possible stuff that might interfere with the signal, etc.. Thinking you put your wifi router where you connection comes into the house and expect great coverage for the whole house is just nuts - and never going to work out to be honest.

Think about the pattern of the antennas.. Does a corner of the house under stuff make sense, or does the center of the house, etc. Most true AP are designed for omni to be mounted in the ceiling in the center of the coverage area you want. They make wall mount ones as well with different antenna orientation, and normally directional if going to be placed on outside wall, etc.

For your soho wifi router, put it up high - say on top of bookshelfs or desk in as close as possible to center of coverage area. Think about it if your condo is like this

Do you want it on the edge

post-14624-0-03614900-1417022813.png

Or in the center of the space

post-14624-0-34813900-1417022865.png

So you want to put a TV in front of the AP while its on a outside wall? Or is it in the center of the space, or close to it? Draw a circle around your AP, how do you get the majority of the circle to cover your area.

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I have both my Aruba RAP109 APs on different floors. One in the living room and one in the office. Set up with nice hotel/hospital style fancy layer 3 roaming as well. I love it.

 

I want to celing mount them but we gotta paint the drop celings sometime soon so that will have to wait till then so I don't get paint on the APs lol.

 

So for now we got one of them sitting on the desk by the router (Meraki Z1) and the other is sitting on top of my d-link managed switch.

 

If you need help with setting up roaming and VLANs let me know.

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So that device you show, its wireless with batteries?

 

Does that work with a normal router? And does it not cut your bandwidth in half (like a repeater?)

 

The TV is indeed not the center of my place, but its I suppose the center of where any technology is.

Though if I can get one of those AP devices and mount it to the ceiling and it works great for wireless devices, I would do that and leave the modem and router behind my TV (as it does not effect wired stuff).

 

What is the best one out there, and as I said, it connects with my current router, or how?

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Curious how much did you pay for the Aruba - they are bit pricy are they not? Did you get them off ebay or something? You running them in instant mode or with a controller?

edit:

No its not wireless with batteries ;) heheheh Its POE (power over ethernet) and wired to my network. As to how it connect to your current router, you just connect it with a wire to your network. Be it the lan ports on your router or a switch, etc.

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Yes repeaters/range extenders do cut youB/W in half due to it needing to send/rec to the router. Also degrades the original router due to co-channeling.


Curious how much did you pay for the Arubu - they are bit pricy are they not? Did you get them off ebay or something? You running them in instant mode or with a controller?

 

I got them from the company (they had a cloud promo running for a while and I snagged em!) .  :) Running in "instant" mode and it works pretty good. But I've had some issues with firmware upgrades sometimes the 2nd would take 45 minutes to update!

 

They retail around 500USD tho so... Not exactly cheap. Also one thing they don't have that Xirrus and Meraki have is built in logging/monitoring. You gotta setup a crude syslog server (PRTG can be one!) or shell out close to 8grand for airwave :(

 

Xirrus and Meraki have the best client controls as well. Xirrus has very powerful RF tools! Meraki has really good traffic shaping and a very nice UI.

 

 

and yes I've tested a ton of APs over the past year :D

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So I am confused lol

 

How would you install one of these APs? If its on the ceiling, you are running cables within the ceiling and walls then? Lots of work?

 

And you never answered about how it works, it does not work with my router, it would replace it?

 

 

**now I see what you wrote....so yea, lots of work to hide the cable :(

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It isn't a lot of work to hide the cable...it is if you didn't have access to the area above.  Most houses have an attic, and put your wire as haphazardly as you wish up there...it only has to look neat where it is exposed.  Maybe some ingenuity at most, but not excessive work.

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Well I love the idea of the AP (though the one you linked is Wireless N only) but I have people above me, so no access to a place to run cables or anything.)

 

Due to my place not being done and a mess, my router is currently on the ground actually, and all my devices seem to run great. So maybe behind the TV will be fine.

I will be testing it this week to see how it works out.

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budman didn't link to a model.   Budman linked to the unifi-ap page.  If you scroll all the way to the bottom you will find their models.  UAP-AC would be the AC model, that is the model that budman has in his picture.   The UAP-AC is the only indoor model that is square.

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I think my current question for my situation,

 

do I want to point the antennas out from the wall (up if it was sitting on a desk) or upwards toward the ceiling when on the wall? 

 

You should how the signal works, but its still un-certain the place placement for my situation (if I do it this way)

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Yeah its not a lot a work, took me a about 30 minutes to mount it. I already have cables from my computer room running into other areas of the house.. The run into the attic and drop into the other rooms. There is no power required because the power is over the ethernet cable - if you don't have a POE switch, then you use an injector to put the power on the cable after it leaves your switch and before it gets to the device.

Hardest part for this run was the whole in the attic and the cable I got, the boot on the end was a bit thick - had to trim it down a bit to fit through the hole ;) If I run any more cables up there might have to make that whole bigger. But the AP has another port so if I just needed a drop in another room I could just use that.. And thinking of running fiber to the living room switch anyway.. Might be a winter break project, have to cost it out and see what funds are like after xmas ;)

Sure if you have multiple floors it might be a bit more difficult for floor in the middle, say 2nd floor of a 3 floor place to mount in the ceiling. But nice thing about drywall is its easy to patch.. If you need to cut into it to hide a wire.. Doesn't take much to cover it back up a gain ;)

@remixedcat - nice, but at $500 your priced out of many home budgets that is for sure.. Cost me $300 for the unifi AC AP, and that is a bit high for many home budgets - 200$ seems to be a sweet spot to be honest, if under many homes can afford just to pick it up.. But all comes down to household income, etc. Their just plain N model is under $70 which is clearly within budget for most any household that has the wireless devices and internet connection that would warrant APs for larger home, etc.

What I like about the unifi line is the software controller that gives you lots of info, and flexibility in the managment. You don't have to run it if you don't want - but does log and keep track of users activity, etc. There is snmp and yes they support syslog.

post-14624-0-06641200-1417024801.png

Observium has support for them out of the box now, so you can monitor with that. Just fired up a copy the other day to see how the new release was working. And pretty slick

post-14624-0-83280200-1417025015.png

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Fixing Drywall isn't exactly easy when your talking about 2 feet of removal on the ceiling, and how every much to then run down the wall.

 

Thats a crazy amount to get a cable from one point to another. Which is what would be needed to be done in my place. I love the idea though.

 

Maybe I show you a picture of my setup and where it would need to go, and there is an easier way?

 

 

*now that I think, could jsut do the small hole above the AP...and just push the wire to the right spot on my wall, and pull it down to the right spot to my router...Hmmmmm

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Cutting a hole in drywall be it wall or ceiling and then patching is not very much work.. Painting it after is more of pain if you ask me ;)

Yes its much easier if you have attic to get above, or drop ceiling is real easy ;) But it sure is not too much work to get a wire to where you want it to go. Hire someone to do it if your not the DIY sort of person.

Depending sure it might be as simple as running the cable up the corner of the wall into the ceiling and then sure the hole where your going to mount the AP.. You might even be able to do it without any patching, etc. Depends on what is in the ceiling are you going across the joists, or if your between them, etc. Running a cable up a wall can be done with 2 holes one near the bottom, one near the top unless you have fireblocks, and or bracing - depends when and where you place was built, and what specific wall your running the cable in. IF you have a outlet its quite possible to run along or in the conduit. If you don't have access to the attic, then can be easier to just remove a whole section of drywall floor to ceiling and then replace, etc.

Running a wire is always the best choice in the long run - no matter the work involved ;) You would be surprise how easy professionals can make it look, well worth few hundred to get it done right some times, etc. My cousin does this sort of stuff for a living, and he makes me look like a monkey trying to start a fire with a screw driver and hammer.. Then again, when it comes to IT related he is the monkey with the stick.. But even a monkey can run a wire, just takes a bit longer..

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One good thing I like about dropped celings... easier for AP installs... he he.

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Fixing Drywall isn't exactly easy when your talking about 2 feet of removal on the ceiling, and how every much to then run down the wall.

 

Thats a crazy amount to get a cable from one point to another. Which is what would be needed to be done in my place. I love the idea though.

 

Maybe I show you a picture of my setup and where it would need to go, and there is an easier way?

 

 

*now that I think, could jsut do the small hole above the AP...and just push the wire to the right spot on my wall, and pull it down to the right spot to my router...Hmmmmm

Wire molding is your friend.  Can run up the corner and not look like absolute trash, can even paint to look like the rest of the wall.  A neat way to conceal wires. 

 

The wire runs up to the ceiling in the corner molding then there is crown molding in the ceiling that a wire comes out of to the speaker.  It can be done to look neat with very little effort, but at some cost.

http://daddysatwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_1756.jpg

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I have gone ahead and placed my modem and router behind the TV.

 

Currently, its just placed in there messy, with wires on top, and the antennas bend in wrong ways and its about half my speed (iMac normally gets 80Mbps, its getting 40Mbps).

 

So I think once I place things cleaner, fix the antennas so that are pointing correctly and so forth. It will be very viable behind there.

 

 

**actually, I just ran a Chrome update and rebooted, and now I am getting 120Mbps (if wondering, my connection I pay for is 200Mbps, and I am talking internet speeds not internal network speeds). So I guess not the best test. My router was actually on the ground before (my place is a work zone thats why).

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So you pay for 200mbps and are happy with the 80? And even now 120?? Dude why would you pay for 200 if your only seeing 80?? Thought you had a AC router in the same room, etc.. You should real world numbers much higher than 80mbps or even 120..

Here just did a quick wifi test over AC.. My card is under the desk, and the AP is out in the hall.. Seeing a 1gig connection, bouncing down to 877 for the reported data rate.. But real world with iperf seeing over 600 without much issue..

post-14624-0-41873300-1417235788.png

You need to do something with your wifi, that router should clearly be able to do 200. Do you see your 200 with a wire?

edit, so I fired up just a N connection on 2.4 and still able to hit 200. What is you client, is it only 2 streams? That would be my guess. So I would either always use a wire, vs say tables/phones or do something with your wireless client. If your paying for 200, and only getting 80.. Drop the package down to 100 if your happy with 80 and save some money, so you can hire someone to come install a true AP in the ceiling ;)

Here - this 2.4 N connection, real world still seeing over 200..

post-14624-0-61383600-1417237712.png

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What he hell?

 

Of course I am seeing 200 with my wired connections.

 

We are talking about mobile devices, and an iMac. It's only wireless that is slower, and I am pretty sure that's because these devices aren't rated for higher.  (we are talking 5Ghz)

 

Tell me does the late 2013 iMac, an iPhone 6 and Nexus 9 all support 200Mbps?

Also, do something with my wireless client? I have a top of the line router with the latest firmware, what are you expecting me to do.

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iphone 6 supports AC, same with the late 2013 was ac as well, nexus 9 also support AC.. So you clearly should be getting much better than 80 or 120..

Didn't know what your clients were, update them to support more spatial streams or ac..

And AC is only 5ghz..

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"Didn't know what your clients were, update them to support more spatial streams or ac.."

 

I don't know what you are asking me to do. I said, my router is updated. And all clients are updated to latest firmeware/OS.

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