Internet WiFi Access Points and HDMI thru Cat 6 Cabling providers

[avander]

I need to have 2 or 3 WiFi Access Points installed along with a couple of HDMI thru Cat 6 cable runs to be made for a multi-zone Home Theatre system.

Does anyone know of any local reputable, English speaking companys that have the know-how and could provide the services needed?

I would prefer to use one supplier for the lot if possible.

[avander]

Due to the overwhelming response I decided I'd post an update for this topic and the questions I asked some time ago with a solution setup by myself and my brother-in-law with help from my friend, Google.

Although not completely finalised it works. All that's left is to see if I can get the routers on levels other than L1 connected by Cat 6 if possible. If I can do that I would expect better performance on the other levels however, from my reading I have some suspicions the routers won't support it so we'll see and I'll post the result back here for anyone interested.

Anyways, I now have 3 wireless Access Points (APs) installed on 3 of 5 levels of our house shop.

I seemed to know what I was on about so with a little information and recommendations from Banana IT in Tukcom I bought two Tenda W309R+ Wireless routers to go with the TP-Link WR741ND router supplied for our initial TOT 20mbps fibre connection. The Tenda routers seemed quite reasonable at 1,400THB each if I recall correctly? Their selling points were speedy 320Mbps throughput and twin high gain 9db Antennas.

The setup is as follows:

On Level 1, to get the most WiFi distance and the best speed I swapped out the TP-Link (which is only 150mbps) with one of the Tenda's (ears upwards at 45^o) as the 1st point connected after the modem (NEC).

On Level 2 (my wife and my living level), I reconfigured the TP-Link as a universal repeater AP to L1 . I used the slower TP-Link as normally there won't be many Wi-fi devices connected on Level 2 (2-4 max). As an aside, my desktop PC there is hardwired to a LAN connection on the L1 Tenda router to get the best streaming performance off the net. So far, so good and it seems to work fine.

Level 3, the kids bedroom has no access point but on Level 4 I put the other Tenda with one of the Antennas pointing down down (for the kids) and the other up for Level 5. This Tenda provides good signals down to L3 and up to L5 (guestroom and outdoor area) and like the TP-Link on L2 even reliably wirelessly connects to the main Tenda router on L1.

I am now wiser on how and why some Hotels create different SSID (network) names on the different floors as essentially it's like creating a separate wireless LAN on each Level. That's what we've done here using the wireless routers as universal repeater APs. After reading up it seemed the simpler and better option for us than either WISP or WDS (other options) for these devices.

I am quite proud of our little achievement to get this working. My brother-in-law did the CAT 6 cabling and I configured the hardware (Google is my friend;o) ) and while it took a little fiddling around we did 'make it so'.

My next job is to get the HDMI via CAT 6 (for additional distance) multiple zones working. I have hardware that converts HDMI at both ends to CAT 6 but it is yet to be tested as we need to set up the HT system after getting furniture to do so.

If anyone has any questions on the above I would be happy to share but please, not too technical.

[Rimmer]

Most interesting, well done.

I will move this to the Internet Forum so others can benefit from it

[RichCor]

If your shophouse is mostly vertical (Up/Down) you'd get better signal coverage out of your WiFi Access Points if the antennas are all laid fully horizontal at 0°

------[- -]------ especially so with 9dbi gain antenna as the signal will be shaped to reach distance (and through objects).

And if you want to run video over WiFi, then I'd suggest running Cat5 or Cat6 LAN cabling between the boxes so they can achieve full throughput.

Some people like to name all their WiFi Access Points with the same SSID, but you may be better off having unique SSID on each box.

[Popscene]

Give this guy a ring Nor ( the best Thai electrician I have seen in Thailand almost british standard ) 0808157161 he installed my Crestron system for me, speaks good english.

[PeterSmiles]

My next job is to get the HDMI via CAT 6 (for additional distance) multiple zones working. I have hardware that converts HDMI at both ends to CAT 6 but it is yet to be tested as we need to set up the HT system after getting furniture to do so.

I'm interested in the hardware since I have also 2 Cat5e cables pulled to use as substitute for a 20 meter HDMI cable. Did you buy in Thailand or on Ebay ?

Please update when you have tested the hardware.

I understand that both network cables have to be of the exact same length otherwise sound and picture are not in sync.

[Satcommlee]

My next job is to get the HDMI via CAT 6 (for additional distance) multiple zones working. I have hardware that converts HDMI at both ends to CAT 6 but it is yet to be tested as we need to set up the HT system after getting furniture to do so.

I'm interested in the hardware since I have also 2 Cat5e cables pulled to use as substitute for a 20 meter HDMI cable. Did you buy in Thailand or on Ebay ?

Please update when you have tested the hardware.

I understand that both network cables have to be of the exact same length otherwise sound and picture are not in sync.

not sure that the cables have to be the same length for picture and sound to be in sync, electricity travels at 300 million meters per second!

If one cable was 300 million meters longer than the other then you would have a lip sync problem of only 1 second.

[avander]

If your shophouse is mostly vertical (Up/Down) you'd get better signal coverage out of your WiFi Access Points if the antennas are all laid fully horizontal at 0°

------[- -]------ especially so with 9dbi gain antenna as the signal will be shaped to reach distance (and through objects).

And if you want to run video over WiFi, then I'd suggest running Cat5 or Cat6 LAN cabling between the boxes so they can achieve full throughput.

Some people like to name all their WiFi Access Points with the same SSID, but you may be better off having unique SSID on each box.

Thanks Rich,

I'll try laying the antenna as you suggest! I already have the Cat6 in but I'm not sure how to configure the routers and would appreciate some guidance there? Also, I am not sure if the routers support a wired config as a repeater?

[avander]

Give this guy a ring Nor ( the best Thai electrician I have seen in Thailand almost british standard ) 0808157161 he installed my Crestron system for me, speaks good english.

Where is he located and how is his pricing?

[avander]

My next job is to get the HDMI via CAT 6 (for additional distance) multiple zones working. I have hardware that converts HDMI at both ends to CAT 6 but it is yet to be tested as we need to set up the HT system after getting furniture to do so.

I'm interested in the hardware since I have also 2 Cat5e cables pulled to use as substitute for a 20 meter HDMI cable. Did you buy in Thailand or on Ebay ?

Please update when you have tested the hardware.

I understand that both network cables have to be of the exact same length otherwise sound and picture are not in sync.

I bought the Vox brand HDMI CAT 6 device at a shop in Tukcom here in Pattaya. It requires two Cat6 cables. I purchased the noname Taiwan component/RCA (analogue) extender on Ebay US. This only needs one Cat6 cable.

Will let you know how it all works when I get organized in a couple of weeks.