Dumb home Wi-fi question

I can either spend a weekend trying to research my options, or ask the gurus on here:

House has Verizon Fios. Modem is in home office, and the TV/media room is on the other end of the house. My home wifi signal is pretty good in most parts of the house, but fades rapidly in the media room due to distance/walls/lack of direct signal route. What are my best options for creating a stronger wifi signal in my media room? I'd like my web browsing on my iPad to be much better, plus am wondering about streaming content to my TV via wifi. Right now, the signal is just too weak. I have already added an external antenna to my modem, and it does help a bit, but I need more signal strength.

Do I buy a wifi "signal booster" and plug it into the wall mid-way between my modem and the media room? Is there a device I can plug into my Verizon Fios box that would "repeat" my wifi signal in the media room? Other solutions? I guess it comes down to having ONE wifi source in the house and finding the best way to boost it vs. determining if there is way to create a second wifi source to cover the back half of the house.

Clear as mud?

If you have an open attic, you'll have the most reliable long-term improvement by running cat5/6 cable from one end of the house to the other. A signal booster will work, but possibly not well, especially if all your neighbors have wi-fi.

We just added a wireless N router via a cat5 outlet we had upstairs that is hard wired to the Verizon Fios wireless router. Now we have great coverage throughout the house. Just go to Frys and buy a cheap wireless N router and add it.

On my DSL modem/router, you can 'turn up' the power of the wi-fi signal. Can't think what the setting is called off the top of my head.

May be something similiar on FIOS?

A WiFi repeater should do the trick as well. I don't have any personal experience with them though.

There are no settings you can change in the Verizon Routers. All you can do is try to relocate the router in a central area of your house. If that is not possible try any "Range Extender". I have no personal experience with any particular brand but here is a review of the top 10 http://wi-fi-booster-review.toptenreviews.com/

There are amplifiers that can replace the external antenna. They boost both the outgoing and incoming signal. But best bet would be the cat 5 run through the attic if you can. Then you will get the best possible performance.

First determine if you have a signal problem. Download inSIDDer http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/. Run it to see if you and your neighbors are stepping on each other. Clear channels are 1, 6, 11. They bleed over +1/-1 one channel. If your neighbor is on 3 he is basically killing channel 1 and 6. Once you have clean air see if the signal is better. If not add an access point (AP).

My house was wired for CAT6. Wifi in the backyard was weak, no internet radio, so I add a second access point via the CAT6 cable to a room in the back of the house. I gave it a different name (wifi1, wifi2) and different channel based on what the neighbors were using. When you do this you will need to do a couple of things.
1. Do not use the same name as the other AP, unless you can centrally mange the APs, which you cannot.
2. You will need to give it a different IP range or it will not route traffic to your Verizon AP. If the Verizon network is 192.168.x.x you will need to use 172.16.x.x on the new AP or it will not know how to route to the 192.168.x.x network.

If your neighbors are really screwed up and stepping on the range of signals, access their APs and change it for them. My friend said they will never know. Be sure to rename your PC "NSA Surveillance Team" prior to accessing their network. This will leave them guessing if they ever look at the DHCP tables.

We got AT&T UVerse just added an "N" wireless router and told the UVerse wireless portion of its router to stand down.

Speeds are faster, range is decent, wife is pleased, kid is pleased, winning!

Not sure if you can do that with you new fangled FIOS but it was a cheap and worthwhile upgrade.

I used to do that too with my ATT DSL gateway. I would basically turn it into a bridge to a router I had running tomato firmware.

Thanks for all the advice. Now I can spend my weekend looking up all the technical terms y'all just threw at me. Falling behind the technology curve sucks.

I assume the Cat 5 cable option entails running a hard wire from my current modem to the back room, and then attaching a second modem/router that spits out the same wifi signal?
And I need to look into this "N wireless router" option.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by miataspeedracer

Thanks for all the advice. Now I can spend my weekend looking up all the technical terms y'all just threw at me. Falling behind the technology curve sucks.

I assume the Cat 5 cable option entails running a hard wire from my current modem to the back room, and then attaching a second modem/router that spits out the same wifi signal?
And I need to look into this "N wireless router" option.

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My son would probably do it for you if you give him some beer money.

If you cant run Cat5 (I run Cat6 for POE) Powerline Adapters work great. I have used them for several clients and they work and are crazy simple. http://www.dlink.com/us/en/home-solu...nect/powerline .

Good Luck

I bought a set of powerline adapters from Fry's (think they were Netgear), and they throughput was miserable. I tried them in various outlets around my (small) house and couldn't get a clean signal, which resulted in a low link rate. I wound up adding a second wireless router running DD-WRT, but it's not for the non-tech savvy.

C