In a Grade II listed building there is an internal corridor with thick stone walls.
There is a room each side of the corridor, one with a BT Home Hub 5 at the top end, and another with a large 'boardroom' table near the centre, at the lower end of which we place an ordinary 2.4 GHz Wireless laptop (Toshiba Satellite Pro).
We wish to get a decent wireless signal from the Home Hub 5 to the laptop, but this is severely attenuated by the stone walls - see Awful Diagram:
Code: Select all
+---------------------+ +---------------------+
| pwr || || |
| || || |
| HH5 || || |
| || || |
| || || ------ |
| || || | | |
| || || | | |
| || || | | |
| || || | L | |
| || || | a | pwr|
| || || | p | |
| || || ------ |
|pwr || || |
| |
| || || |
| || || |
+---------------------+-- --+---------------------+
Homeplugs used to work when the router was a Home Hub 3, but the new Home Hub 5 does NOT play nicely with them, causing router broadband line drops and re-establishing (we think).
Ethernet cable wiring is NOT an option (listed building).
The 5 GHz signal from the Home Hub 5 is attenuated even more than its 2.4 GHz signal.
As far as I see it, I have two options to improve the wireless coverage:
1) a Wireless Range Extender located in the pwr socket at the bottom left-hand side of the diagram. Whether this would penetrate the walls any better, I don't know.
2) a highly-directional, supposedly external, Wireless Access Point pointing through the two doors near the bottom of the diagram into the main room with the laptop. We could, at a pinch, even move the table and laptop down to give 'line of sight' for the laptop. But no PoE, please, for the WAP!
I have tried a TP-Link "Archer T2UH AC600 High Gain Dual Band USB Adapter" instead of the internal Realtek wireless facility, and that does give a better signal strength (seen on Acrylic WiFi program) in the 2.4 GHz band, about -56 dB instead of -67 dB, but the connection with the router still drops occasionally.
Bright but cheap ideas welcomed!