Need Help: Walls too thick for Wi-Fi... How can I set up a network? (Map included)

Need Help: Walls too thick for Wi-Fi... How can I set up a network? (Map included)

Hey guys,
I wrote about this a while ago but I have had no luck. I'll attach a map I drew of the apartment building.



The map above is of the Clipper Ship Gallery in New Buffalo, Michigan. My buddy's family owns the gallery located on the first floor and rents out the rest of the building and shops. He lives on the second floor and can't receive a wi-fi signal at all. Here are some stats:

1. This building was made in 1860?? The inside walls are over 2-3 feet thick!! The outside walls are about 1 foot thick!
2. There has to be a Wi-Fi router in the office to supply internet to the shops in the back.
3. The gallery itself located on the first floor barely gets any signal at all!?
4. There is no good way to drill holes in the walls to run Cat5 because the building was added onto over the years so there is no clear route.
5. My buddy Paul has a Playstation 3, a PC, and a wireless laptop he wants to use in his apartment.
6. We have purchased the latest most expensive Linksys WMP600N wireless router and cards and it still won't work.

Here are my questions:
1. If we were to drill about 15 holes and somehow able to run Cat5 from the office router to his apartment, could he buy an additional wi-fi router and plug that in supplying a wi-fi signal to the front half of the building?

2. What type of equipment do I need? (I have been told I need a switch, to a wireless router, to a network bridge, to a blah blah blah... We have tried a number of different set-ups with no luck.)

3. How would we get a clear signal to the gallery below? Right now it only gets just 1 bar if we are lucky from the router in the office. Drill more holes and run Cat5? (We need the gallery to be a wireless area as well.)

4. Basically he would ultimately like all the rooms, both the apartments upstairs as well as the gallery downstairs to have Wi-Fi. The Playstation 3 and his computer can be hooked up with Cat5 but the general area needs to be wireless for laptops.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have spent hours on the phone with Linksys, D-Link, and talking to salesmen at Fry's, Tigerdirect, and Best Buy with no luck. We have spent over $1,000 at this point and have a pile of Wireless N routers and cards, network bridges, switches, hubs, and various networking devices that have not solved the problem.

Although I've never given the technology any consideration, I wonder if this may be a case where PowerLine Ethernet might be an option...

as per question number 2, you should have no prob hooking one router to another, i do it all the time. no need for special switches yadi yada,

nd4spdbh2 said:

as per question number 2, you should have no prob hooking one router to another, i do it all the time. no need for special switches yadi yada,

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Really? Because the sales guys and teh IT department at my civilian job said that you can't hook up one Wi-Fi router into another unless you go into the setup and disable certain things effectively making the second router a simple hub/switch. (I don't want to do it that way because if the power goes out and resets the setting on the router, I won't be around to set it up the proper way and troubleshooting can be difficult.) Are you sure there are no problems? I might just bring a 2 foot drill bit and start drilling holes to connect the office to Paul's Apartment with Cat5.

TommyHolly said:

Really? Because the sales guys and teh IT department at my civilian job said that you can't hook up one Wi-Fi router into another unless you go into the setup and disable certain things effectively making the second router a simple hub/switch. (I don't want to do it that way because if the power goes out and resets the setting on the router, I won't be around to set it up the proper way and troubleshooting can be difficult.) Are you sure there are no problems? I might just bring a 2 foot drill bit and start drilling holes to connect the office to Paul's Apartment with Cat5.

Click to expand...

All you really have to do is wire them at the switch ports, disable DHCP (some even have a setting to make it a DHCP relay) and you've created an extended AP to your wireless router.

I do this at home so that my mother-in-law can access my media server (and get Internet access) next door (router is on the other side of my house.).

This was what my Powerline recommendation was for (the intermediate between wireless routers), but if you can still drill and run line, it will be cheaper than Powerline.

If it were me, I'd run one Cat 5 from the first story to the second story. Wherever your ISP connection comes in, you're gonna want to go ahead and put a router in there. Then, from the back of you're router (I'm assuming you have one that has the built in switch in the back), run that cable to you're next level in the building to a wireless bridge.


This will take you're ISP connection coming from the router and spread it further on the next story. They are real easy to setup (Just like any home router), you plug in your default gateway, what you want your subnets to be, etc.....and it boosts your signal.


Can you get signal from your wireless routers on the same level (IE from shop to shop if say your router was in the gallery)? If not you may need to buy multiple wireless bridges and place them strategically throughout your building.

I actually live less than five minutes from where your talking about, a buddy of mine and I do networking like this a lot. We may be able to help you out.

PLOBBY said:

I actually live less than five minutes from where your talking about, a buddy of mine and I do networking like this a lot. We may be able to help you out.

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I'm having my buddy join this forum soon... One of us will contact you soon.