Router or modem router?

[Mutiara]

I rent a livebox from France Telecom (my third !) in France and am generally satisfied as it works well , but the WiFi  range is awful in one end of my French farmhouse (thick walls etc).

I noticed that Netgear now have a new range of MiMO modem/routers that have over seven internal aerials that increase coverage up to 10 times of a standard wireless range. However I am confused as to whether I need to buy a just a Router or a Modem /Router ?

Basically I want to give the livebox pro back to France telecom and hence save 6 euros a month, and then set up a new wireless/wired network, but am unsure of what to buy.

Thanks in advance,

Mut

 

 

[Bugsy]

Before spending any money you could simply try putting the router as high as possible (even in the loft). Technically I don't know why but it can increase your signal range.

You will need a modem/router (min. 802.11g) and a means of receiving on your other PC. If it's not built in (most modern laptops do) you need a PCMIA card or USB receiver.

Setting up is really straightforward, provided you follow the instructions.

Good Luck.

[Bob T]

Second that Gary, try www.cdiscount.com for modem routers. The Netgear ones are easy to set up.

[Dick Smith]

I second any recommendation for Netgear - I recently set up a wireless network and it was easy and quick, no hassles.

Sorry, make that third any recommendation...

[AnOther]

I'd be very sceptical about claims of "up to" 10x better range, in practice think yourself lucky if it doubles.

You can often improve range by changing the wireless channel which is commonly set to 11 by default.

Also, if you have any cordless phones around make sure they are sited well away from both the router and your PC or laptop as they work in a similar frequency range.

Re Router - v - Modem - you will always need a modem but may or may not need a router, in practice of course they are all commonly contained in the same box and it makes absolutely no sense at all to buy seperate units and try to cobble them together yourself.

Briefly the modem is the bit which actually connects your PC to your phone line and ADSL service just as the old dialup modems did. If you had just a modem all you would be able to do is plug in one PC.

The router is what allows you to connect one or more PC's to the modem and also together, either hard wired or wirelessly. It will also usually have a built in firewall which helps protect you from some of the nasty things floating about in the ether.

If you are planning to buy your own then what you should be looking for is an ADSL Wireless Router. It may be worth looking out for one which has a detachable antenna because it is possible to buy replacement high gain antennas which could potentially significantly increase the wireless range.

Hope this helps.

[Mutiara]

Thanks for the replies, unfortunately, it would be too much work to move the Livebox upstairs due to the phone wiring etc. However I think that I have found the latest netgear modem at this link http://www.netgear.fr/produits/produit.php?prod=DG834PN

Anyone else got one?

[Deimos]

The transmission power density is regulated by law (i.e. there is a limit you cannot exceed that is part of the rules allowing the devices to be deregulated). the power levels allowed are higher in the US than in Europe - thus coverage distances quoted on UK sites are always higher than achieved in Europe.

Thus the main thing that determines coverage is the antennae and environment.

Better antennae will give better coverage. Note however that where there are multiple antennae normally only one will be used for transmission, the others(s) being used for reception (diversity antennae). Using diversity antennae can improve reception where there is a lot of signal reflection causing standing waves (remember the pools of water with bobbing balls and the waves being reflected from the sides in physics at school). For example, setting up a RF system in an industrial freezer/chiller is a nightmare. There are more directional antennae but once you mode to APs that accept these you go up in price and the more directional antennae are pricey (plus you need to consider the transmitted power density).

There are several things that affect coverage in "the environment" - e.g. absorption, reflection, interference, etc.. DS systems can operate at negligible signal level provide that the signal quality is OK. What is limiting coverage in your environment is difficult to say without checking out what is going on (and I have no idea what facilities are available in the Livebox AP for scanning for interference, watching signal levels and signal quality, etc.

One thing to consider (often forgotten) is reciprocity. Thus, however good your AP/base (router or whatever), if your mobile end has rubbish antennae then you will get rubbish signal level. Often if using little PCMCIA cards at the mobile end you get pathetic little antennae which becomes the limiting factor. Similarly, a mobile end might have just a single antennae and thus cannot benefit from diversity (meaning that in some environments the base can "hear" the mobile OK" but the mobile cannot hear the base !!).

For most dipoles, think of the signal as a large doughnut around the middle of the dipole. Directly above and below there well be very little signal. Radio signals tend to travel in straight lines. Diffraction effects that cause them to turn a bit will ruin the signal quality. Similarly, if the environment has reflecting surfaces this will cause the "hot spots" through standing waves (often seen as areas around the size of a football with no signal - and these can move around). Reflection can be pretty frustrating as it seems to work well one moment and fails the next.

All that said it is also true that some manufacturers produce equipment that is better than others. I once had to RF survey a warehouse where the customer had not yet decided which manufacturer's equipment to use - so we had to survey for both). They were basically the two leading industrial RF manufacturers and I was amazed that one really could not get coverage at all in one area (interference) and yet the other could operate find through the interference (it saw it but could manage through it). You can often tell how good a system from its default settings for things like packet fragmentation. Smaller packets are less prone to interference and thus a manufacturer with poorer equipment might set the default packet fragmentation to e.g. 512 bytes (smaller and the FTP throughput figures will suffer, larger and they will need more retransmissions). Other and better equipment will set it above the Ethernet packet size (e.g. Aironet tend to be at 2000 plus).

With your own system, check that the configuration is allowing rate fallback from 11 to 5.5 to 2 to 1, etc. Although the fall-off at the edge of "coverage" is quite fast, you might find this helps.

If not, you might try buying a wireless repeater. Some Access Points will also act as a wireless repeater (i.e. they will sit with juts power (no network). These are not just RF repeaters but receive the packets and retransmit them. A mobile would them roam to the wireless repeater AP and communicate with it - the wireless repeater then transmitting packets on to a AP on the network cable. Of course this introduces a performance restriction but provided only a single "hop" to the cable is used then its not too bad. One thing to watch is that not all RF APs include wireless repeater functionality (its a software thing) and many high street stores are useless when advising on this. Last time somebody I know tried this they were continually back and forwards to PC World changing models until it finally turned out that PC World did not stock the slightly more expensive variant that supported wireless fallback.

Ian

[AnOther]

Seems like a good choice and there is a review here:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/review/2006/01/04/NetGear-DG834PN-Wireless-ADSL-Router/p1

however, if you can wait and know anyone who's coming over in the near future it is available in UK for considerably less than 149 Euros.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BRYOQ8/pricegracom-21/ref=nosim

 Probably still cheaper to buy in UK and have it posted.

[Simon]

You could try something like this?

Simon

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Assuming that you've got a wireless modem/router with a few ethernet sockets as well, how feasible is it to just run a cable out to the area where the signal dies and add a straight wifi base station there? I'm thinking of something like a longere with a base station at each end.

I'm guessing that you'd need to operate them on different channels but you could probably have the same security settings on both.

My original wireless setup had separate modem & router, replaced with a combined unit, so I could try it out, but I'm too lazy unless there's a reasonable chance of success.

[Bob T]

Who said "however, if you can wait and know anyone who's coming over in the near

future it is available in UK for considerably less than 149 Euros."? Well if you look at the site that I quoted above you can get it for €75 here in France, you don't need to change the plug then, and you save money over the UK price.

[AnOther]

Twas I but I simply followed Mutiara's own link..................