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[Bzzz]

Hi,

I need to set up some sort of AP at my aunt's. She has a cable connection and a DIR-615 from her provider which is located in the living room, the central place in the house. However, three rooms totally lack WiFi connection. And as I am the most nerdy person in the whole family, I am supposed to change that. Except that I have never installed a WiFi with more than one AP/router per network, so I have no idea what product to buy.

Yesterday I have checked the whole house for coverage problems. It turns out that everything is absolutely fine except those three rooms (kitchen, dining room, and the child's room exactly above these). I walked around with my Thinkpad T400, pinging the router 10 times per second, watching signal strength and quality. The laptop is equipped with an Intel Wifilink 6300 Rev4 (3x3), which should be one of the best cards available. Entering the dining room, the speed goes down from 270 to 1 Mb/s within a few centimeters, signal losing over 15 dBm. Beyond that, the connection vanishes and will never be restored (no IP will be issued, etc.). The other rooms grant a little more space until the signal stops, but the problem remains the same. So there has to be something inside the walls, and therefore a repeater doesn't make any sense.

So I guess one needs an AP, which uses a to-be-deployed LAN cable to initiate a network at the other side of that wall. However, roaming has to work properly even if router and AP cannot see each other via WiFi, as one might start a session in the dining room and then go to the living room or vice versa. I checked the DAP-1360 and people commenting at Amazon say this might be a problem. But as there are at least three hardware revisions on the market (and there have been firmware updates as well), I don't know if that should stop me from buying one.

Any suggestions for other hardware?
* n-WiFi would be nice, but is no must. The internet connection doesn't exceed 8 Mb/s, there is atm no NAS or any other storage device that would encourage larger data transfers
* has to work with the said DIR-615, installation doesn't need to be one-click, they won't fiddle around after I set the thing up
* power consumption has to be low, the first DAP-1360 apparently had a power supply with 5V/2,5A (according to the PDF manual), 5W real-world usage would be okay
* stable use with up to ~5 clients, roaming with the DIR-615 network has to be working without additional configuration of each client device
* PoE functionality not needed, as there is no PoE installation. Free power outlets are available.
* device may be large, heavy and ugly in shape and color. But not too expensive 

[FurryNutz]

I would check out and review the DAP 1360, 1522 or 1525 APs for this. I think the 1525 will be best suited for this purpose. Should help you get better coverage on those rooms. Can even be on same ssid name for roaming.

[FurryNutz]

You can find links to some of these modes here with additional information:

Bridge Mode vs Relay vs Acess Point (AP) / Routers vs Dedicated Access Points (AP)

[Bzzz]

Thanks for the suggestions. The 1525 isn't available in Europe and has a steep price tag anyway. Let's put that one aside.

The 1522 looks promising, but the four gigabit ports will never be used. I'm not a big fan of buying (or in this case: recommending) a jack of all trades if there is a more suitable device available.

And well, the 1360 again.
What about other manufacturers?

btw, the 1360 link of your FAQ returns a 404 

[FurryNutz]

You might check out the DIR-500 series listed in the sticky.

Thank you for let me know about the error. It's fixed.