Solve : Multi-Floor Wifi?

1.	Solve : Multi-Floor Wifi?
Answer» Hello Everyone, I require your help with an issue that has been plaguing me for the past year and a half. I live in a building with multiple floors. My unit is the top unit of the building but my laundry room / basement is about 7 floors below me. The whole building is made of concrete (floors, ceilings, walls... all of it) and I am trying to get a Wireless Internet signal from my unit to the basement. I do not have the ability to place multiple adapters throughout the halls or run any cabling from my unit to the basement. I am also unable to use power line adapters as the main unit and basement are on different fuseboxes. I need the strongest signal possible as this is mainly used for remote access for work (and a little bit of MMORPG gaming). If anyone has any questions or ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.Only idea I can come up with is use the existing wiring for a power adapter ethernet bridge. This turns the outlets in the building into dual purpose power / data lines. *BUT these devices are not perfect. In some cases they work and in other cases they dont work. I have seen these work ok in some applications as well as in a commercial building it plainly did not work because either there was too much electrical noise or the outlet in one part of the building was on a different phase or ground and isolated. Your not going to be able to broadcast a signal powerful enough between PC and the Access Point without spending lots of money on high power equipment that likely would also require a FCC license to operate. Other means of a communication would be if there was telco copper wire pairs in the basement and you have an unused copper pair going up to your apartment and use a Copperlink Bridge device at both ends of the copper pair to make a private DSL bridge connection over old copper pair telco wiring. These Copperlink Bridges are usually around $900 for a pair of them, but they work well and can broadcast up to 9 miles for some copperlink modem pairs with one set to master and the other to slave. One can not, by law, use huge amounts of power on Wi-Fi. Quote I am also unable to use power line adapters as the main unit and basement are on different fuse boxes. Where are the fuse boxes? There is a way to cross couple over to another leg of the electrical system. You need to find a technician that is familiar with how they do this. It means installation of some type of passive coupler that will transfer RF from on electrical branch to the other. This article is relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines New FCC rules allow use of the radio spectrum to transmit data over power lines. You aren't going to be able to get a single wireless device that can go that distance through concrete, this can only be done with a cable or repeater stations on floors below. Even high power point to point wireless links designed for connecting separate buildings together still need an almost clear line of sight to work. If you can't do this then you are probably out of luck unfortunately.More questions. How do people in the building get phone service? How do they get cable TV? Do the apartments have ground floor doorbells? Any copper wires that go from basement to the top might be used for data transmission of some kind. Quote Any copper wires that go from basement to the top might be used for data transmission of some kind. Quote Other means of a communication would be if there was telco copper wire pairs in the basement and you have an unused copper pair going up to your apartment and use a Copperlink Bridge device at both ends of the copper pair to make a private DSL bridge connection over old copper pair telco wiring. These Copperlink Bridges are usually around $900 for a pair of them, but they work well and can broadcast up to 9 miles for some copperlink modem pairs with one set to master and the other to slave. Geek and I touched on same subject here of using unused copper wiring that may already be run. To go cheaper than the CopperLink Modems you could establish a serial link between them and use that as a means, but your speeds would be way bottlenecked down to a maximum of 2x the speed of dial-up if there is no noise to interfere with high speed serial RS-232. USB unfortunately wouldn't reach because of the 18 foot limit otherwise USB would be far better than regular serial null connection between 2 systems with one in your apartment acting as a gateway over serial to a system with high speed. RS-422 is even better for longer distance serial communications, but you would need hardware to get RS-422 and still be on a very slow connection. If you had USB hubs connected in series to act as boosters between the 7th floor and basement USB would work, but I doubt you have ability to have everyone in between you acting as a USB repeater. If you were somehow able to sneak a Cat5 cable run down that would be the best method. Either through an unused pipe forced hot air duct work. However you would need to use Plenum Cat5 due to fire code, while you'd probably be violating some other codes in use of a convenient PATH of inside duct work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenum_spaceDaveLembke, in the psst few years some new technologies have started up with very low cost Ethernet over any copper pair. But it is still i very small market. Some apartment have doorbells and intercoms that carry pairs of wires a long distance. With the right equipment you can force a signal over such wiring. Then thee is the hack method. You do it yourself. Ethernet over telephone wire Current DSL equipment can run up to 5 Mbps over a single pair phone wire. And it can run 4500 feet. So a 7 story building would not be an issue. Just find a pair of wires. Biggest danger here is being SURE you have the correct wires at both ends so you dont fry anything. Could be shocked by touching telco wires if there is an incoming phone call for the ringer too Quote When the phone is not in use, this is a constant DC signal (about 50-60 volts). When the phone rings, the signal is a 20 hertz AC signal (about 90 volts). When in use it is a modulated DC signal (between 6 and 12 volts). The phones lines even have power during a blackout in most cases. You will want to make sure that these are not connected to a service and are available to be a dedicated point to point between basement and appartment without anything else connected to these wires. Friend of mine is into computer forensics and told me about a criminal that had a USB thumb drive wired to the back of a Phone Jack plate. The Criminal made a USB to RJ-11 cable to access his hidden USB drive that was hidden in the wall with illegal material on it. I guess they found it when searching the residence and trying to figure out why the phone line was dead at that jack. They removed the jack from the wall and there it was a thumb drive hidden. Lots of METHODS to repurpose wiring for other communication methods. The 4 telco wires were the exact match for USB to work, as well as with 4 you can have half-duplex Network CONNECTIVITY with maybe 100mbps if your lucky, but throttling it to 10mbps might be better for signal stability because pairs are not crossing and are straight just like the original network cables for 10 megabit which werent CROSSED for signal protection shielding.The solution is actually quite simple. Make friends with the other tenants who are close to the laundry room and ask them for their wifi password or pay them a few dollars a month to host another of your own access points. Once that is done, if you need access to other devices on your home network, use a VPN.

Answer»

Hello Everyone,

I require your help with an issue that has been plaguing me for the past year and a half. I live in a building with multiple floors. My unit is the top unit of the building but my laundry room / basement is about 7 floors below me. The whole building is made of concrete (floors, ceilings, walls... all of it) and I am trying to get a Wireless Internet signal from my unit to the basement.

I do not have the ability to place multiple adapters throughout the halls or run any cabling from my unit to the basement. I am also unable to use power line adapters as the main unit and basement are on different fuseboxes. I need the strongest signal possible as this is mainly used for remote access for work (and a little bit of MMORPG gaming).

If anyone has any questions or ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.Only idea I can come up with is use the existing wiring for a power adapter ethernet bridge. This turns the outlets in the building into dual purpose power / data lines.

*BUT these devices are not perfect. In some cases they work and in other cases they dont work. I have seen these work ok in some applications as well as in a commercial building it plainly did not work because either there was too much electrical noise or the outlet in one part of the building was on a different phase or ground and isolated.

Your not going to be able to broadcast a signal powerful enough between PC and the Access Point without spending lots of money on high power equipment that likely would also require a FCC license to operate.

Other means of a communication would be if there was telco copper wire pairs in the basement and you have an unused copper pair going up to your apartment and use a Copperlink Bridge device at both ends of the copper pair to make a private DSL bridge connection over old copper pair telco wiring. These Copperlink Bridges are usually around $900 for a pair of them, but they work well and can broadcast up to 9 miles for some copperlink modem pairs with one set to master and the other to slave.

One can not, by law, use huge amounts of power on Wi-Fi.
Quote

I am also unable to use power line adapters as the main unit and basement are on different fuse boxes.

Where are the fuse boxes? There is a way to cross couple over to another leg of the electrical system. You need to find a technician that is familiar with how they do this. It means installation of some type of passive coupler that will transfer RF from on electrical branch to the other.
This article is relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_over_power_lines
New FCC rules allow use of the radio spectrum to transmit data over power lines.
You aren't going to be able to get a single wireless device that can go that distance through concrete, this can only be done with a cable or repeater stations on floors below. Even high power point to point wireless links designed for connecting separate buildings together still need an almost clear line of sight to work. If you can't do this then you are probably out of luck unfortunately.More questions.
How do people in the building get phone service?
How do they get cable TV?
Do the apartments have ground floor doorbells?
Any copper wires that go from basement to the top might be used for data transmission of some kind.

Quote

Any copper wires that go from basement to the top might be used for data transmission of some kind.

Quote

Other means of a communication would be if there was telco copper wire pairs in the basement and you have an unused copper pair going up to your apartment and use a Copperlink Bridge device at both ends of the copper pair to make a private DSL bridge connection over old copper pair telco wiring. These Copperlink Bridges are usually around $900 for a pair of them, but they work well and can broadcast up to 9 miles for some copperlink modem pairs with one set to master and the other to slave.

Geek and I touched on same subject here of using unused copper wiring that may already be run.

To go cheaper than the CopperLink Modems you could establish a serial link between them and use that as a means, but your speeds would be way bottlenecked down to a maximum of 2x the speed of dial-up if there is no noise to interfere with high speed serial RS-232. USB unfortunately wouldn't reach because of the 18 foot limit otherwise USB would be far better than regular serial null connection between 2 systems with one in your apartment acting as a gateway over serial to a system with high speed. RS-422 is even better for longer distance serial communications, but you would need hardware to get RS-422 and still be on a very slow connection. If you had USB hubs connected in series to act as boosters between the 7th floor and basement USB would work, but I doubt you have ability to have everyone in between you acting as a USB repeater.

If you were somehow able to sneak a Cat5 cable run down that would be the best method. Either through an unused pipe forced hot air duct work. However you would need to use Plenum Cat5 due to fire code, while you'd probably be violating some other codes in use of a convenient PATH of inside duct work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenum_spaceDaveLembke, in the psst few years some new technologies have started up with very low cost Ethernet over any copper pair. But it is still i very small market.
Some apartment have doorbells and intercoms that carry pairs of wires a long distance. With the right equipment you can force a signal over such wiring.

Then thee is the hack method. You do it yourself.
Ethernet over telephone wire

Current DSL equipment can run up to 5 Mbps over a single pair phone wire. And it can run 4500 feet. So a 7 story building would not be an issue. Just find a pair of wires.

Biggest danger here is being SURE you have the correct wires at both ends so you dont fry anything. Could be shocked by touching telco wires if there is an incoming phone call for the ringer too

Quote

When the phone is not in use, this is a constant DC signal (about 50-60 volts). When the phone rings, the signal is a 20 hertz AC signal (about 90 volts). When in use it is a modulated DC signal (between 6 and 12 volts). The phones lines even have power during a blackout in most cases.

You will want to make sure that these are not connected to a service and are available to be a dedicated point to point between basement and appartment without anything else connected to these wires.

Friend of mine is into computer forensics and told me about a criminal that had a USB thumb drive wired to the back of a Phone Jack plate. The Criminal made a USB to RJ-11 cable to access his hidden USB drive that was hidden in the wall with illegal material on it. I guess they found it when searching the residence and trying to figure out why the phone line was dead at that jack. They removed the jack from the wall and there it was a thumb drive hidden.

Lots of METHODS to repurpose wiring for other communication methods.

The 4 telco wires were the exact match for USB to work, as well as with 4 you can have half-duplex Network CONNECTIVITY with maybe 100mbps if your lucky, but throttling it to 10mbps might be better for signal stability because pairs are not crossing and are straight just like the original network cables for 10 megabit which werent CROSSED for signal protection shielding.The solution is actually quite simple. Make friends with the other tenants who are close to the laundry room and ask them for their wifi password or pay them a few dollars a month to host another of your own access points. Once that is done, if you need access to other devices on your home network, use a VPN.

Solve : Multi-Floor Wifi?

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