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[FurryNutz]

Awesome info man. I think your going to eventually fry you and everyone around your house man. LOL.
So you still think this AP is a good investment? Just curious about your opinion. Looking at it.

[Patrick533]

As long as you remember that your are limited by the client you are using as far as range is concerned. The AP is in the middle of my house on the 2nd floor, the reciever in it is much better then the reciever in my Linksys WAP 54G, by a bunch, and of course it is a power house. The WAP 54G would have been giving me 1-2Mbps vs 18Mbps last night, that is why I had 3 AP's before, to cover MOST of my house.

Yes, it is a good solid AP for the money and covers the whole house nicely with whatever flavor of  2.4Ghz 802.11(B,G,N) you may want to use, my only wish, a 5Ghz 1 watt AP! But I don't think I would make it my main firewall/router, even though if you only need 100Mbps wired, it will do that, just a little leary of "back doors" in chineese hardware. This AP and my DIR-825 are the solution for the next 5+ years, hopefully!

[FurryNutz]

kewl, sounds good. When well the time come, I think I'll have a real close look at it. I've got 4000 sq feet to handle and I don't think the 4500 or 825 will do it will. Like to have just one AP for all and be done with it. Keep us posted.

[Patrick533]

I think this would do well for 4K FT, mine is 3K FT plus a quarter acre lot and I have coverage everywhere, which I did not have coverage before with 3 AP's. With 3K FT I am considering going with either 3/4 or 1/2 power just to be neighbor friendly, played with 1/2 power a little and it was still good, signal dropped a lot, but still better then any AP to date. The DIR-655 gave me the best coverage for a lower power AP, but this AP beats all of them.

If you don't live in the cramped city with 10 people on every channel, you may get some major mileage. I drive a 1/2 mile in any direction and all channels are taken, 360 degrees from my home.

If I have time, I will break the laptop out this weekend and try it with Inssidder on it.

One funny thing, when I do a network map out of Win7 64bit with this AP in the system and I am on a hard wired machine, I get an error, "a network device is taking too long to respond so a network map could not be generated" (or something close to that). But when I unplug the AP, I can run the map no problem. I tried troubleshooting it last night with no luck (20 minutes and some common things). I may try moving the AP over to the switch instead of the switch built into the DIR-825 and see if that buys me anything. The map worked fine before with the old WAP 54G. Still a minor anoynance considering I would run out of WiFi by the time I hit the kitchen.

[FurryNutz]

http://amplifi.dlink.com/products/DAP-1525

Wonder how this does?

[Patrick533]

Brute force VS aimed beams is certainly another option and much better then brute force and clogging the airways, usually something that will limit interfering sources in another direction too, much like a Yagi antenna which is very good for amplifying both received and transmitted signal without a true "active" amplifier.

Could not find a single review on it, I will keep my eye on that one!

[Patrick533]

Gave up on this router as a whole house solution! The Xbox 360 slim will log in one day and work great, the next day it does not, tried every setting I could. B,G,N, channels, power settings. Everything in the house works great with this router but the stupid Xbox slim. Put the old WAP 54G back in and it works 24x7(Vintage 2002). Really no way to run hardwire to his toy without some major work.

He said when he can log into the high power router, it works great, but 90% of the time he logs in and it says he has internet connection but can't connect to the Live service. The Xbox slim supports 40Mhz channels and 300Mbps, if it can log in to the router. Even if you move the WAP54G router more then 15 feet away, it can't see it. Me thinks the WiFi built into the Xbox 360 slim was a 2nd thought and proabaly a 3 dollar chip and a paperclip for an antenna. He played on the high power router for like 3 hours with no lag Saturday, he came home from work Saturday night, no settings changed, he could not log in.

I even tried the ROCKU video box with this router in "N" mode, high def with no lags and a shared connection......

Done deal, router is in my office at the front of the house and still covers the whole property at 50% power.

Unless this Xbox slim will take a 3rd party adapter, I am done........ These Xboxes have been nothing but a WiFi nightmare from day one, for an Electronics Engineer, pity the average joe.....

[FurryNutz]

Why I recommend wired for Gaming man. I know the slims only support N 2.4Ghz max, so you should only see 130-170Mb connections. The few buddies I have that use slims on wireless have the router set for Single mode G. I presume you have set up the router and xbox as in my sticky over on the DGL-4500 forum? You could try getting the USB wireless adaptor. I bought on last year before going to Canada for the holidays. Took my xbox with me and had to connect it thru my WNDR3700 in bridged mode to my familys DIR-628. I had the xbox adaptor connecting to the 3700 at single mode N at 5Ghz and the 3700 was wired to the 628. Worked pretty good.

Let me know if you need some help on the router and xbox settings. I do prefer wired though. I wouldn't be surprised if the wireless in the slim isn't the best. 

[Patrick533]

My other kid has a D-Link WiFi gaming adapter that uses ethernet, it works fine with my current settings that are pretty close to your sticky in the other forum(with the high power router). Doing a quick search on the Xbox slim brought up a bunch of problems with its WiFi. How do you tell a 17YO that his latest and greatest is a POS, they don't get it.

I have a couple of 150Mbps USB 2.0 B,G,N dongles, but I did not even try, Microsoft proabaly has them blocked or no driver.

I did try G only mode and set the router to be just about as fault tollerant as possible, but for whatever reason, the thing won't connect to Xbox live, the internet yes. Literally unplug the high power router and put the WAP54G in its place and it works. Can't be the DIR-825 and being my 20yo's D-Link adapter will hook up to the high power router and work with a regular Xbox 360, that leaves one culprit. Never have like Microsoft ever since the DR DOS vs MS DOS days! Much prefer Sun Unix!

[FurryNutz]

I hear ya, well, Might have to just bite the bullet and do wired man or have the slim 360 checked out. Sounds like thats the only issue here.
I prefer OSX Unix. 

[Patrick533]

Short GI disabled, everything works perfect! Xbox is sharing with video chat and surfing on a 40Mhz channel, G & N modes enabled which enables MIMO x2.

Tested 3 days, no problems!

[FurryNutz]

Nice, I'm going to break out the 825 again this weekend and do some testing. Now that the 50Mb internet is cooking. 

[resolute]

I live in a rebar & CBC house with metal stud.

This helped me alot! I use 2 on a DIR - 825 aimed facing backward to the direction needed.
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html
A pic from the website.

Looks basic, but it helps. And if you don't like the look, you can design it with fancier papers.
If there is any doubt of the tech behind it,check out the rest of his website.
A lot of homework behind it.
http://www.freeantennas.com/

[Patrick533]

No doubt a directional antenna will increase the signal in 1 direction, I much prefer a 2.4Ghz Yagi if I need to go in one direction. The AP we are discussing above has 21Db gain over the DIR-825, 360 degrees both in the X and Y plane, for covering a large house/property. The secret to using the above AP is also using low gain antennas so the radiation pattern looks more like a ball then a flying saucer(My AP is on the 2nd story). When I put a 14Dbd directional Yagi on the above router, I am getting MILES both transmit and receive. BUT I am also causing interference for miles. I just want to cover my home including all rooms and my little 1/4 acre, so far so good!

I have a 3000SQ ft home and the Furry has a 4000SQ ft home, covering a home this size with one AP has eluded me for years until now. I am now at 1 week with no complaints from anyone and I went from 3AP's to 1AP. I just wish D-Link made something with a little more power, the quality of the above AP is OK, but not D-Link or even Cisco(And I hate Cisco, even though I have to spec their EXPENSIVE junk everyday).

If my router was on the far side of my home and the clients were all scattered about, directional would work. Here is an antenna similar to what I use for "interference" trouble shooting. http://cgi.ebay.com/16-dBi-2-4-GHz-Wifi-Yagi-Antenna-RP-SMA-Booster-16db-/150582894039?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item230f709dd7

[XpAcErX]

@Patrick533

I have been reading your posts about your wifi house coverage and you mentioned the PremierTek PL-APN.  is this still the same router your using for your whole house coverage?