Wireless + 3 storey house = Headache!

djshowdown

My girlfriend has trouble with wireless in her home.

The house has 3 storey's and the walls/ceilings are very thick.

The router for the internet is on the bottom floor and moving it is not really an option.

The bottom and middle floors have good wireless coverage but the top floor has very poor reception.

I had looked in to using an additional wireless router as a wireless access point/repeater/extender (I'm unsure of the correct terminology) on the middle floor to extend the signal to the top floor but all the guides I have found require a permanent network cable be connected between the two routers.

I may be asking for too much but is it not possible to make the two routers talk to each other without wires?

I ask this because my gf's mum WILL NOT have wires running through the house.

If not, are there any other options?

I have seen the networking solutions that run through the electrical sockets in the home but have heard mixed reviews.

All suggestions welcome!

Thanks

Thrax

Wireless range extender: http://compnetworking.about.com/od/wireless/ss/wirelessgear_7.htm

mirage

You can buy a wireless router with repeater bridge function and place it somehere in the middle floor where it can get a good signal from the main router. I would recommend a router that can be used with DD-WRT so that you can use repeater bridge even it is not available in the stock firmware.

Linksys WRT160N (available for $35 refurbished at Amazon), Buffalo WHR-G300N are cheap routers with great performance and they can use DD-WRT. I have two WHR-G300Ns; they work great as repeater bridge. They also have great 802.11n performance at a close distance that is enough to saturate the 100Mbit/s ethernet ports.

But keep in mind that repeater bridge configuration will reduce the wireless performance to half although it may not be noticeable for web browsing.

Read the wiki at DD-WRT website on configuration of a repeater bridge.