Repeater Help

[danielf]

Wifi in my house is a little patchy. I've got a router Bebox TG582N (which is a Thomson 585V8 if I'm not mistaken) in the first floor study, and I get decent but patchy wireless on the groundfloor. So I decided to buy a repeater (TP-link WA730RE) to improve the wireless. I managed to get it all setup, using the same SSID, channel and security as the repeater. I ended up putting the repeater basically in a room just yards away from the router (but on the other side of the bath room and central heating water tank), and it's definitely improved wireless reception on the ground floor, with browsing being a lot more responsive, and I'm getting a better signal on my phone.

So far so good, except that my download speeds have virtually halved. Being on ADSL with a sync speed of 23MB, I get download speeds of about 20MB going hard wired through the router. Wireless, on the ground floor I can get about 17-18Mb, and when I go through the repeater I struggle to get 10Mb, even though it's got a stronger signal than the router. The problem isn't the hop from the router to the repeater. When I plug my laptop into the repeater's ethernet port, I download at 19Mb, and when I connect to it wirelessly, sitting next to it, downloads immediately drop to about 12Mb.

I'm confused, and things aren't being helped by there being no way of telling if you're connected to the router or repeater... Any thoughts?

TIA

[qasdfdsaq]

Halving your bandwidth is part of how repeaters work. It has to spend half the time receiving from the main router and half the time retransmitting from it. Since wireless is half duplex, it can only do one at a time, so you end up with half the speed.

The WA730RE looks like it's one stream, and guessing your Bebox is set (as it should) to 20Mhz mode, the maximum raw connection rate of the repeater will be 65mbps, which halved would give you ~30mbps, but due to wireless inefficiencies only 10-20mbps useable data. So it all looks, fairly normal/expected.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Halving your bandwidth is part of how repeaters work. It has to spend half the time receiving from the main router and half the time retransmitting from it. Since wireless is half duplex, it can only do one at a time, so you end up with half the speed.

The WA730RE looks like it's one stream, and guessing your Bebox is set (as it should) to 20Mhz mode, the maximum raw connection rate of the repeater will be 65mbps, which halved would give you ~30mbps, but due to wireless inefficiencies only 10-20mbps useable data. So it all looks, fairly normal/expected.

Hmmmm, not the answer I wanted to hear, but thanks anyway. So it looks like it's a tradeoff between responsive browsing and download speeds. I'll have to mull that over, but I'm tempted to stick with the snappier browsing.

[qasdfdsaq]

One thing you could do if there's not a lot of other wireless networks around, is to set both the router and repeater to high-throughput mode, which more than doubles your bandwidth, hence giving you the "Up to 150mbps" speed labelled on the repeater. I'm not actually sure if the Bebox supports it though, if not the only way to get better speed is to buy a better repeater, or best of all, run an ethernet cable between the two.

I would personally also stick with the snappier browsing too, since then you could always plonk the device closer to the main router for faster downloads when you need them.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

One thing you could do if there's not a lot of other wireless networks around, is to set both the router and repeater to high-throughput mode, which more than doubles your bandwidth, hence giving you the "Up to 150mbps" speed labelled on the repeater. I'm not actually sure if the Bebox supports it though, if not the only way to get better speed is to buy a better repeater.

Cheers, I'll have a play.

One other question though: The bebox has a built-in print server, which I'm quite happy with as I don't have to have the desktop that lives in the study switched on. I've set up the laptops to print from the bebox, but that no longer works now I'm going through the repeater, and I noticed my macbook is now trying to print through 192.168.1.253 (the repeater) rather than 254 (the router) as I set it up. Should I still be able to print through the router when connected to the repeater, or is that not expected to work anymore?

[qasdfdsaq]

You should still be able to print. Depends on what mode the repeater is set up though - either it's creating a new, seperate network, or "bridged" on to the same one. The former can cause problems as the "virtual" network is hidden from the main router, the latter should work fine.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

You should still be able to print. Depends on what mode the repeater is set up though - either it's creating a new, seperate network, or "bridged" on to the same one. The former can cause problems as the "virtual" network is hidden from the main router, the latter should work fine.

How can I tell which it is? The repeater automatically sets up a network with the same SSID, channel and security as the router. But, I have this wifi analyser tool on my phone which shows two distinct networks with the same SSID.

I don't think there's a high throughput mode available on the router btw.

---------- Post added at 14:53 ---------- Previous post was at 13:49 ----------

Oh. I solved the printing problem. The Macbook hadn't reset itself to print to 192.168.1.253, I had set it up that way. The bebox is at 192.168.254, but you need to print to 253. The repeater happened to have a default ip of 254, so I set that to 253 to make it work, not realising that that was where I was printing to. So, in efect I was trying to print to the repater when the printer is hooked up to the router...

So I set the repeater IP to 252, and printing now works again.

[qasdfdsaq]

I guess the only way to test is to try and ping a device connected to the repeater from a device connected directly to the Bebox.

But since you've solved the problem anyway, that's not too much of an issue.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

The WA730RE looks like it's one stream, and guessing your Bebox is set (as it should) to 20Mhz mode, the maximum raw connection rate of the repeater will be 65mbps, which halved would give you ~30mbps, but due to wireless inefficiencies only 10-20mbps useable data. So it all looks, fairly normal/expected.

Hi, I'm still a little confused by this. As I understand it, I would need a two-stream repeater which wouldn't half the data rate, but I'm still struggling with what data rate to expect. The bebox is indeed set to 20Mhz (but can be put into 20-40mhz mode through telnet). However, it ought to have a data rate of 130mbps out of the box (which is what windows reports)? If the 20mhz setting restricts it to 65Mbps (and 40mhz is ill-advised due to interference), then what's the point of wireless N over G which gives you 54Mb. So, unless I'm mistaken, the repeater should halve the 130 mbps rate to 65 (which is what windows reports), and that surely ought to be enough to support a 20mb download? I'm sure I've got something wrong. Just wondering what it is...

[qasdfdsaq]

Not quite.

All repeaters will halve the data rate. A 2-stream repeater would only have the data rate once, whereas a 1-stream repeater, which is only capable of 65mbps to begin with, would halve it twice.

20Mhz mode gives your Bebox 130mbps out of the box, 40Mhz mode would give you 270mbps. Your rate isn't being halved by the 20mhz setting. Your repeater is only capable of half the speed, even before it loses half again through the act of repeating. Since your repeater only does 65mbps *before* repeating, it's actual repeated rate is around 30mbps.

That said even at 65mbps wireless N gives you about 50-100% more throughput than wireless G at 54mbps, simply because it's a lot more efficient. Repeating however, loses some of this efficiency, so you end up with ~30mbps PHY rate and about ~15mbps actual useful data rate.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Not quite.

All repeaters will halve the data rate. A 2-stream repeater would only have the data rate once, whereas a 1-stream repeater, which is only capable of 65mbps to begin with, would halve it twice.

20Mhz mode gives your Bebox 130mbps out of the box, 40Mhz mode would give you 270mbps. Your rate isn't being halved by the 20mhz setting. Your repeater is only capable of half the speed, even before it loses half again through the act of repeating. Since your repeater only does 65mbps *before* repeating, it's actual repeated rate is around 30mbps.

That said even at 65mbps wireless N gives you about 50-100% more throughput than wireless G at 54mbps, simply because it's a lot more efficient. Repeating however, loses some of this efficiency, so you end up with ~30mbps PHY rate and about ~15mbps actual useful data rate.

Ah yes, that makes sense. I figured the data rate was somehow quartered, but wasn't sure if this was due to the 20Mhz rate or the or the 1-stream aspect. It all makes sense now. If I wanted to max out my line in terms of download speed, I'd need to get a two-stream repeater, which would be limited to 65 rather than the current 30odd, and 65 should be sufficient for my line's 20meg capacity.

Thanks for that.

[qasdfdsaq]

Yes, pretty much. Note that while it will be limited to 65 it doesn't mean it'll go at that speed all the time.

But the cheapest and fastest option would still be to run an ethernet cable between the two, if possible.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Yes, pretty much. Note that while it will be limited to 65 it doesn't mean it'll go at that speed all the time.

Yes, obviously it's an upper limit.

But the cheapest and fastest option would still be to run an ethernet cable between the two, if possible.

Wife says no

Cheers for your help. Most informative

[qasdfdsaq]

Urgh. Women.

[mikbak]

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