best wifi setup for a large family???

kizatt

looking for some advice on how best to set up our wifi cos what we have currently isn't working for us!

there are 6 of us - myself, hubby, 15yo gamer (pc & ps3), 13yo socialite (social media by whatever means), 10yo gamer (pc & ps3) & 3yo whizzkid (youtube/apps) & a couple of cats who thankfully don't seem all that interested in wifi!

we live in a relatively large house - two storeys of 90m2 each - with mainly solid internal walls. we'd ideally like the wifi to reach all rooms....

between us we have wired connections to pc (win 7) and 2 x ps3s and use wifi for 3 x laptops (2 x win 8 & used mainly for gaming & streaming, other win 7), ipad, wireless printer, 3 x android phones. and there's a smart tv in there somewhere....

kids are home educated so can be using internet connection simultaneously at all times of day & night (& me, too, but my needs are so small they pale in comparison!)

we have broadband with virgin (thru cable) & we recently upgraded to 60mb broadband, have a virgin superhub in modem mode & d-link dir-615 router.

problems with current setup:

range of router is low. used to have range extender (tp-link tl-wa830re) connected, but can't get it to connect to new router despite lots of effort! (superhub + range extender gave us the range we were looking for, but wifi cut out continuously cos of superhub. now have a much better signal, but useless range)

new router doesn't have open ports for gaming (i know less-than-nothing about this, so have to take my son's word for it ) as superhub did. despite many hours faffing and setting up various port-forwarding thingumies, can't resolve satisfactorily. both sons would like to be able to host on pc & ps3 games.

one laptop on win 8 still loses wifi signal quite frequently. haven't completely ruled out problem with laptop, but is furthest from router & signal strength/speed seems to vary considerably at that distance.

there's some issue with which wifi device is given priority - ie huffy kids doing the same thing at the same time on different devices at vastly different speeds. my sons would clearly prefer gaming to have priority :rotfl:

i think i've come to the conclusion that we should just buy a new dual-band router,continuing to use the superhub in modem mode, but i have no idea where to start & ideally want it to do all the things we'd like it to do, with the range extender connected if necessary.

help????? :beer:

ChristopheB

You could consider a power line adapter to easy the load on your WiFi. These use the electrical cables in your house as a network. You plug one into a socket next to your router and then connect it via a standard Ethernet Cable (Network Cable) and then do the same to the device you want to connect to the network. It worked really well for me. I got mine from Currys for £19.99. The site is down at the moment but they do have a link on the maintenance page to a money off voucher.

This will at least ease the contention on your Wifi network and range is not an issue. It might be suitable if gaming from a desktop computer for example.

To fix the issues with gaming you would need to look at the "Quality of Service" settings on your router. There is some generic advice on this website although you would need to look at the instructions for your router model.

This won't fix the open port issues for hosting games but I'm sure someone else can help with that.

poet123

How long have you had your superhub? We had very similar problems and complained all the time to Virgin, eventually they admitted that the firmwear in the early version of their hubs was not up to scratch, they changed it and there was a big improvement. Also, check out your network map on your computer to see where the bulk of the bandwidth is going.

kizatt

poet123 wrote: »

How long have you had your superhub? We had very similar problems and complained all the time to Virgin, eventually they admitted that the firmwear in the early version of their hubs was not up to scratch, they changed it and there was a big improvement.

we got the superhub in july and have since had it replaced twice. eventually, after waiting for the most recent update (r37) to fix all the issues as virgin hoped it would, virgin gave in and sent us the d-link router. (i'm summarising, actually it involved, as i'm sure yours did, several million hours on the phone to virgin )that has solved all the issues of the wifi connection dropping out (except on my son's laptop), but caused the issue with range which we had previously sorted with the range extender....

poet123 wrote: »

Also, check out your network map on your computer to see where the bulk of the bandwidth is going.

:huh::huh::huh::rotfl:
could you explain how to do that in a techie-stuff-for-dummies kind of way? tah

poet123

Control panel, network and sharing centre,then click "see map" This should then show you all the devices on the network.

kizatt

ChristopheB wrote: »

You could consider a power line adapter to easy the load on your WiFi.

i considered powerline adapters back when i got the range extender & decided i preferred the way the range extender worked. i've thought about looking at it again now, but tbh i think we've got an ethernet connection to almost everything we want wired. (old-fashioned ethernet cables going thru walls & ceilings )

my son might benefit from another ethernet connection in his room so he can connect his laptop without disconnecting his ps3, but i know he'd prefer to use it wireless & only uses the ethernet connection when wifi is unbearable. although, ideally i guess he could have the option & he's the one with the smart tv so if he had a couple of powerline adapters it might improve things for him....

ChristopheB wrote: »

To fix the issues with gaming you would need to look at the "Quality of Service" settings on your router. There is some generic advice on this website although you would need to look at the instructions for your router model.

thanks i'll forward the link to my son and let him play with the settings personally, i like the picture best!

kizatt

kizatt wrote: »

personally, i like the picture best!

could i just get one of the cats to sit on the router & sort it all out? yay, a solution!

:j :T :rotfl: :T :j :T :rotfl: :T :j

kizatt

poet123 wrote: »

Control panel, network and sharing centre,then click "see map" This should then show you all the devices on the network.

pah, doesn't bring up anything except desktop, router and wireless printer. maybe cos i haven't got it all set up as a home network? i dunno i did try when we got the family laptop, but it's windows 8 and, well, nightmare :eek: win 7 & win 8 puters don't want to talk to each other. at least that's as far as i got before i decided it didn't really matter & gave up

currently have people using desktop (wired), one laptop (wireless) and one ps3 (wired), so i'm assuming at least the devices in use should show up?

esuhl

Just a few thoughts -- dunno if they'll help...

kizatt wrote: »

• range of router is low. used to have range extender (tp-link tl-wa830re) connected, but can't get it to connect to new router despite lots of effort! (superhub + range extender gave us the range we were looking for, but wifi cut out continuously cos of superhub. now have a much better signal, but useless range)

Range extenders increase latency, which can result in poor performance for gaming (in particular). Rather than using a range-extender, are you able to use a 2nd wireless access point (or a spare "router")? You'll need to connect the two via a cable, but then you'll have two wireless signals at each end of the house without the high latency of a range extender.

kizatt wrote: »

• new router doesn't have open ports for gaming (i know less-than-nothing about this, so have to take my son's word for it ) as superhub did. despite many hours faffing and setting up various port-forwarding thingumies, can't resolve satisfactorily. both sons would like to be able to host on pc & ps3 games.

You can set up port forwarding on your router by following the instructions on page 38 of your router's manual: ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/dir_products/dir-615/DIR-615_Manual.pdf


If you do use port-forwarding, you will probably need to ensure that local devices use fixed IP addresses (you can probably assign them in the DHCP settings of the router).



Alternatively, UPnP (Universal Plug 'n' Play... not to be confused with completely unrelated term PnP for Plug 'n' Play) is a feature that tries to dynamically configure port-forwarding. Maybe turning that on would help? Have a look at page 50 of the router's manual.

kizatt wrote: »

• one laptop on win 8 still loses wifi signal quite frequently. haven't completely ruled out problem with laptop, but is furthest from router & signal strength/speed seems to vary considerably at that distance.

Probably due to signal strength, but my Win 7 wired PC continually dropped the network connection. I spoke to my ISP and they explained that a bug in Windows can cause this problem when the PC doesn't have a static local IP address. I was sceptical, but setting a fixed IP for that PC on the router and in the network settings resolved the problem. Maybe worth a go...?

kizatt wrote: »

• there's some issue with which wifi device is given priority - ie huffy kids doing the same thing at the same time on different devices at vastly different speeds. my sons would clearly prefer gaming to have priority :rotfl:

Tricky! In theory you should be able to use QoS (Quality of Service) settings on the router to allocate a more "fairly balanced" bandwidth between connected devices depending on the kind of network traffic each is using (so gaming and video would be high priority, sending an email would be lower)... In practice, I don't really know how well this works.

There is an option on your router labelled "WMM enable" (see page 50 of the router's manual) which enables QoS... I think this will give streamed video a higher priority than normal web traffic. I assume games will be prioritised too, but I don't really know! There's some info here about hacking your router by using third-party firmware to adjust QoS settings... probably not for the faint-hearted non-techie, though: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080712084825AAJLWFw

As I said, dunno if that helps (or if I've confused you even more), but I hope you get it all sorted!

esuhl

kizatt wrote: »

pah, doesn't bring up anything except desktop, router and wireless printer. maybe cos i haven't got it all set up as a home network? i dunno i did try when we got the family laptop, but it's windows 8 and, well, nightmare :eek: win 7 & win 8 puters don't want to talk to each other. at least that's as far as i got before i decided it didn't really matter & gave up

currently have people using desktop (wired), one laptop (wireless) and one ps3 (wired), so i'm assuming at least the devices in use should show up?

Not sure if this is the problem, but Windows introduced the concept of a "HomeGroup" to simplify network configuration (pull the other one!).

Anyway, HomeGroups are only compatible with other modern versions of Windows (Windows 7 onwards, I think...?), so it might help to ensure that your local network is NOT configured as a HomeGroup on your Windows PCs...

poet123

We had the IP address issue too and changing to a static one did help. Also, the homegroup, all our PC's run similar operating systems so we did need to set the homegroup up. When it ever dropped out it defaulted to the public network which then caused major issues.

In the end I was so fed up of it I contacted the CEO and he sent out someone who did resolve the problem. The call centre in India is worse than useless as they respond from a script not to individual problems.