Providing Internet to Tenants

[mikegg]

I live in the middle of 2 units.

There are 3 floors total in the house:

First floor: Garage with converted living space and tenants
Second floor: My floor with the router
Third floor: Tenants

Since the router lives on the second floor, I want to enhance the wifi signal so that my tenants above and below me can receive strong wifi signal.

There will be up to 11 people living in the house and could have up to 22 devices connected.

I have a Asus N66U right now and it's great but I fear that it won't keep up once all the tenants move in.

How can I enhance my wifi network without using any wires? Should I buy bridge, repeater, access point? One of my ideas is to buy another highend Asus router and piece them together in separate rooms so there's enough signal to reach everyone

 

[matricks]

One access point in each of the floors, ideally wire to the access points. I know you said no wires, but that would make things a lot easier, especially when you need to upgrade. Some tenants will also appreciate wired options, be it for higher performance, less troubleshooting or fear of radiation.

For a setup with no wires, I would use one dual-band router/AP for each floor, and run WDS between them on the 5 GHz band. Then let clients connect to APs on the 2.4 GHz band. It seems the N66U supports WDS.

I would advise against push-button repeaters. My landlord also provides Internet access by wireless (only), and he set up one of those things with automatic configuration by WPS (for himself, I never asked for it). It repeats both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and obviously it only has one radio on each band, so it repeats on the same channel in each band. My network worked OK before, but that REPEAT ALL THE THINGS automatic setup ruined my reception. Whatver you do, configure things manually, in a sensible way.

 

[SeanFL]

Agree with the above. You may find if you place the Asus in the middle of the structure, it coves all 3 floors and does a decent job. When you add wireless repeaters, it cuts throughput in half.

Consider using a tool like "wifi analyzer" on android (or similar on iphone) to show you the signal strength. Pick a channel that doesn't compete with other wifi in proximity. If you can get -75db or better (-60 would be better) signal level in most/all areas of the structure, you'll be fine.

www.smallnetbuilder.com is a great resource to read about improving wifi.

Let us know what you do and what works. Sean

 

[MonkeyK]

Your Router can handle 11 people and a lot more.
You may be surprised that 11 people will have more than 22 connections:
-laptop
-tablet
-phone
-gaming consoles
-TVs
-other oddly internet connected devices (my washer and dryer have internet connections)

But your Asus router will handle all of this like a champ.

Make sure that you use your guest networks. This will protect you from your tenants accessing your devices. Not sure how many tenants you have, but if there is one contract per floor, create a guest network for the other floors and keep the main network for yourself.

 

[Binky]

You may be legally liable for what your tenants do on the wifi. Do you really want this?

 

[NetWareHead]

You may be legally liable for what your tenants do on the wifi. Do you really want this?

Was going to post this as well. Your tenants download software, torrent movies, stream childporn etc... it is your name on the internet account that they will come looking for. Id tell my tenants to get their own internet access accounts.