Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2016 20:40 Post subject: 1660+ foot wifi link signal strength question. 2xwrt54g
I have a 1660 foot link with two parabolic dish antennas at about 24db gain. I am currently getting 63-70 signal in the ddwrt gui on both ends. My question is is that pretty good or should I be able to get higher signal strength than that? Both are set at 251mw if that makes any difference.
1660+ seems pretty good. Since it is a point to point communications with identical setup at both ends, I believe the Tx power output at both ends will play an important role at determining the range and/or signal quality. I don't know what is the maximum Tx power that you can set for your routers. If it can be increased further, you can try that and see if you can get better result. I suppose you know that the dish antennas are very directional so accurate alignment is important. Another thing is how you connect your antennas to the router? Are they connected directly to the router without using cables? If RF cables are used, there will be losses due to the cables so try to make them as short as possible. Anyway, what is the real life performance of your setup? Does it give you a decent speed performance?
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 12:15 Post subject: Cables and router
They are both WRT54G routers so the max transmit power is 251mw, the cable type is LMR400 one router has about 22' of LMR400 and the other has 15' of LMR400 to the router. No I was just wondering if the signal strength was good for 1660' link or not or if other people have gotten lower with WRT54G routers. And should I try a amp of some sort to boost the txpower further?
I used two WRT54GSv7.2 and also two WAP54Gv3.1 for many years across 1400' line of sight
with 24 dBi parabolic grid antennas each attached with 25' LMR 400. I tried many different
power settings and other tweeks over the years but the best for me was tx power set less than 50..
..actually mine were set and left @ 42 for long time till I changed for N routers.
Signal quality would hold around 50%. Never had trouble -- these were WDS LAN-LAN links.
Build 26866 was the best I used on them. They would hold around 23 - 27 mbps.
High tx power can kill your overall performance. If you can get 30 - 45 signal quality it will do you a good job.
Using several wrt54g units as WDS links without external anntena and 30 - 38 signal quality
is good as they get but work very well.
Now using two 160NL in same setup/same antenna & cable. Signal quality holds
around 42 - 48 but they will do 42 - 47 mbps without trouble and the right
build ... 27858 is good on them .. currently running 29837 on the 160NL's without problems.
Posted: Wed Jun 29, 2016 20:14 Post subject: Thank you.
Alright thank you. I guess that means I got some tweaking to do to try and get my wireless signal better. And thank you mrjcd for answering my question about what you got at about the same distance. I didn't know the txpower would affect the signal negativley if both sides power were raised.Anyways thank you.
Yea tx power seems to affect the broadcom boxes more so than the atheros.
I remember never doing much good on any wrt54g set over 63 tx.
Lots tweaks you can figure out
One not many use is becon interval. My wrt54g boxes that are WDS links have becon interval set to 15360.
It will cut down on some overhead bandwidth.
Note - I use WDS as a link only to other APs and other devices on each side.... meaning NO other
wireless devices connect to any of my WDS routers.
The Linksys 160NL's I mentioned (my long distance link) are atheros boxes and I run them at full power
and becon interval 13312. Using them to connect wirelessly only to each other also gives flexability to
use a non-regular channel --- I use channel 13 with them.
Also my entire network is on same subnet, (aside from a few guest networks scattered around running off APs)
and using WDS as a link makes it easy to share files, stream to/from DNLA servers or anything you want to
do anywhere on the network. WDS is a transparent bridge where client bridge/repeater bridge is not.
Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 13:20 Post subject: non-standard channel
Should I try a non-standard channel like 13 or 14? And does the 160NL's support "Super channel"? And ya thanks I've gotten the signal strength up to 62,and I'm about to play with the txpower to see how much it affects it. Never played with beacon interval going to give that a go. Thank you.
Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 14:22 Post subject: Re: non-standard channel
blubaustin wrote:
Should I try a non-standard channel like 13 or 14? And does the 160NL's support "Super channel"? And ya thanks I've gotten the signal strength up to 62,and I'm about to play with the txpower to see how much it affects it. Never played with beacon interval going to give that a go. Thank you.
Nay, just use whatever channel is clear/has less traffic.
There is not that much WiFi in my area but my own which is
close so I try to keep away from used channels.
With the WRT54G and a fixed grid antenna (w/dd-wrt set to its either left or right for both tx/rx)
above most other 2.4, any other channels really should not bother you at all.
But that's a little different with the 160NL
Yea the 160NL has Super Channel capabilities but I don't use it.
The thing with it and most N routers is you have the MIMO radio technology
which uses multiple transmit & recieve antennas. So trying to use one antenna for
all is not the best of situations. Mine usually shows tx 90 & rx 120 in
dd-wrt GUI (or the reverse depending on which one you are looking at) but it varies
higher often showing 200+ one way but also the other direction (tx or rx) is usually
never over 90. This is conflict with the MIMO tech. But as I mentioned I do a
true sustained rate above 40 Mbps which is good for me.
Using CH 13 HT40 lower with them.
If you are serious about long distance radio link I'll suggest http://www.ubnt.com
I don't use any but if/when the time comes for greater speed across a distance that is where I would look.
For now I just like to play with what I have
Ya I've looked at the ubiquiti stuff before its just I had two wrts on had so I set it up with two directional antennas. I think I may order some 160NL's for kicks. But, changing the beacon interval to what you had it actually made a difference in the throughput. So I'm happy with it for right now.
160NL or E2100L they are same router/same radio
but E2100L has 64MB ram, 160nl has 32. Both are 8MB flash.
Good boxes. I have both.
The external antenna connection different than wrt54g but you can get adapters anywheres if need them.
Edit:
Plus 160nl / e2100l both have USB if you want to plug in drive to share across network
