so I'm in 3 story townhouse, and I have wireless which is in my first floor office. I have dtv box on 2nd & 3rd floors that I want to hook up to the internet, but they can't do wireless.

Any one have any suggestions on getting this done? (potentially without running cable b/c I rent and don't want to do that if possible)

[Edited on April 21, 2012 at 3:27 PM. Reason : edit]

4/21/2012 3:26:42 PM

What kind of cable do you have in your house for phone line. Any chance that the townhouse is new enough to have Cat5 for that? If so its pretty cheap to switch the cat 5 into phone and a network port.

Just need a couple things from home depot.

Also need to know where all your phone lines come together.

4/21/2012 4:25:31 PM

Yeah I would first see if the house is wired with cat5.

You could create a wireless bridge with a cheap Linksys WRT54G and DD-WRT.

I bought a bunch of these for 16.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122340 but just used one for the first time the other day. Seemed to get 6Mb/s down from speedtest. Pretty sure it was on the same circuit though. And I don't know if you can just go adding as many as you want or not.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122383 These are 25 bucks.

DirecTV has the wireless connection kits as well, but they're ridiculously expensive and imo not worth it.


[Edited on April 21, 2012 at 4:59 PM. Reason : ]

4/21/2012 4:55:58 PM

if the power in your townhouse changes phase it'll tough to get consistent connections

4/21/2012 7:21:17 PM

yeah, I bought some Linksys powerline adapters and those damn things work amazingly well. Simply plug them in and go.

4/21/2012 10:23:16 PM

POWERLINE ADAPTERS

Spent 75$+ for quality.


YOU ARE WELCOME.

4/22/2012 12:20:32 AM

ended up buying 2 of those wireless extenders with ethernet ports. Seems to be working quite well.

4/22/2012 3:52:57 PM

Quote :

"create a wireless bridge with a cheap Linksys WRT54G pair of 802.11n routers and DD-WRT."

Agreed, but use 2 higher quality routers with DD-WRT. I'm personally using 2 Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833162031 and it's real easy to upgrade the DD-WRT to a more recent version (instructions here: http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH) and make one of them a client bridge. Then you plug 4 devices into the client bridge and they are automagically connected to the rest of your network.

Here are some links if you decide to go this route, honestly, it's not as complicated as the documentation might look:

Quick client bridge instructions:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged

More information about generic client bridging:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

Specific client bridge for this Buffalo:
http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/DD-WRT-WZR-HP-G300NH-as-a-Bridge/m-p/49746/highlight/true#M7791

Supposedly the recent build 18777 (ftp://dd-wrt.com/others/eko/BrainSlayer-V24-preSP2/2012/03-19-12-r18777/buffalo_wzr-hp-g300nh/) is stable for this router doing client bridging. But I haven't upgraded since June of last year (DD-WRT v24-sp2 (06/14/11) std - build 17201).

This might be more information than you cared for.

^Or there's that.

[Edited on April 22, 2012 at 4:32 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2012 4:31:11 PM

Quote :

"ended up buying 2 of those wireless extenders with ethernet ports. Seems to be working quite well."

Which ones?

4/22/2012 6:06:55 PM

This:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=WN2000RPT&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=1061062019541579376&sa=X&ei=Xe2VT9rKMo-N6QGc37ibDg&ved=0CDYQ8wIwAA

4/23/2012 8:01:46 PM

Quick question as I'm in a similar situation.

In a recently built house I have, in the basement, a closet which houses 4 ethernet jacks. I wired 2 upstairs and 1 to the main floor, and 1 to my office in the basement when the house was stud walls. My plan was to have access points, bridges, repeaters.... something on the main floor/upstairs to ensure good coverage across the entire house.

I have the Ubee modem/router that TWC provides in the closet in the basement. Signal is OK in most of the house, but pretty weak at the corners upstairs. I can connect something to either one of the ethernet ports upstairs to repeat the wireless signal, but I don't know what would work best with the Ubee modem to accomplish this. Does anyone have a recommendation on how to extend my wireless signal via the ethernet ports that are up there?

6/14/2012 4:31:19 PM

Any cheap WAP should work just fine.

If you're pulling a lot of data across wireless, then you'll probably want a more expensive device.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156295

6/14/2012 4:54:55 PM

so it turns out I'm probably gonna be here at this place for another 2 years. Might look at running some cat 5.

6/14/2012 7:02:01 PM

http://get.aol.com/plans/index.php?regtype=client&offergrp=webreg

6/14/2012 7:51:53 PM

^^

Is the Trendnet you linked a "cheap" WAP example? $40 seems like it's low end-ish, which should fit what I need.

I assume I just run it in AP mode and plug my ethernet connection straight in. Easy peasy?

6/14/2012 8:08:03 PM