Home Network Setup/Router recommendation/Signal Extension/Security

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bmigga

Member
My girlfriend just moved into very small house. The house has 2 rooms - a kitchen and a bedroom. There are two others exactly like hers within a 20 or 30 ft distance. One on the left, one in the center, one on the right. We know the other tenants very, very well.

The landlord is cheap and makes them get P.O. Boxes (yes, there is a point to this story.) Because of this, all three houses are considered one residential address.

We brokered up a deal that we were going to split up an internet and cable bundle package 3 ways. The internet package offers download speeds of up to 30 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 2 Mbps. Monthly data usage allowance - 350 gigabytes. Since the three houses are considered as one address, the cable company verified that they could in fact run a single line and it work on all three houses. Personally, she will be using her tablet on WiFi, Netflix (on a Wii), and her laptop. Let's just assume everyone is running the same configuration on their side as well.

My questions about this are:

1. Is the internet going to be dreadfully slow when all three tenants are using the WiFi?
2. Is there a (very) powerful router you'd recommend to extend the signal strength to where everybody would get a strong signal?
3. If a router wouldn't do the trick, is there some sort of signal extension?
4. Is there a possibility to split the network into 3 separate networks to ensure security?

I understand that this is a lot of information. I'm not asking any one person to answer all four questions, but any help would be greatly appreciated from anyone. I'll try and check back every few hours to keep the responses flowing.

Thanks again.

EDIT: When searching for routers, what is a spec to look for to fit my scenario? What spec tells how far or strong a signal strength is?
 
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Or each tenant can get their own router and run a cable from one to the next. That way each tenant would have their own network and security. But may get difficult to set up. Not an ideal setup she has there. Don't know why each tenant couldn't get their own service. just add a,b,c after the address.
 
johnb35 said:
Or each tenant can get their own router and run a cable from one to the next. That way each tenant would have their own network and security. But may get difficult to set up. Not an ideal setup she has there. Don't know why each tenant couldn't get their own service. just add a,b,c after the address.
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Well, also there lies the factor of money. Splitting three ways is the only way to afford it.

Could you explain a bit about running the cables? Are you meaning each tenant would have a router in their house?
 
Yeah, each tenant would have their own router and security. But like I said, its not the ideal setup. One person would have to have the modem in their residence. They would have their router hooked up to it and then a cable from an lan port to the internet port on the next router and then a cable from an lan port on that router to the internet port on the last router. As long as each router is hooked up using the internet port, each residence is on a separate network and neither household can see the other computers. Of course each router would have to have the internal IP changed. Example, most routers have the 192.168.1.1 default setting. So the other 2 would be manually set to

192.168.2.1
192.168.3.1
 
johnb35 said:
Yeah, each tenant would have their own router and security. But like I said, its not the ideal setup. One person would have to have the modem in their residence. They would have their router hooked up to it and then a cable from an lan port to the internet port on the next router and then a cable from an lan port on that router to the internet port on the last router. As long as each router is hooked up using the internet port, each residence is on a separate network and neither household can see the other computers. Of course each router would have to have the internal IP changed. Example, most routers have the 192.168.1.1 default setting. So the other 2 would be manually set to

192.168.2.1
192.168.3.1
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But all three routers would be housed in the house that the modem is located in, correct?
 
johnb35 said:
No, there would be a router in each house.
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I'm sorry, but I'm not following you. There would be a physical cable running between the three houses? Would they run out of the windows or something?

Again, I apologize, but I'm confused by what you're saying.
 
Yes you would have a cable running from house to house. I'm not sure if one single router would service all 3 houses. The asus router is good but I don't know about going through all those walls and stuff. I think the minimum you could get by with is 2 routers. If you have a house in the middle, one router would point to house on the side and the other router would point toward the other house.

I would try contacting the cable company to see if the could run a separate cable line to each house and each house has their own modem/router. One line for 3 houses is a bad situation as far as I'm concerned.
 
johnb35 said:
Yes you would have a cable running from house to house. I'm not sure if one single router would service all 3 houses. The asus router is good but I don't know about going through all those walls and stuff. I think the minimum you could get by with is 2 routers. If you have a house in the middle, one router would point to house on the side and the other router would point toward the other house.

I would try contacting the cable company to see if the could run a separate cable line to each house and each house has their own modem/router. One line for 3 houses is a bad situation as far as I'm concerned.
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They are going to go with the two routers connected to a single modem. Once you start dealing with multiple modems, the price starts to increase. One of the tenants will barely be using the internet, so hopefully two routers will suffice. Just as a precautionary measure, I will turn off all file sharing on my girlfriends computer.

The modem will be setup in the middle house. Router A will be connected to the modem and will be pointed to the left. I'll run a cable from Router A's LAN port, and will connect it to Router B's internet port, and point Router B to the right. This way, there will be two separate networks that the three tenants can split. I should then log into Router A and verify it has a 192.168.1.1 address & set a password. Then I should change Router B's address to 192.168.2.1 and set a password.

^^Is this correct?
 
Yes. And if the house that has the modem and routers doesn't use wife then they can just hook up to one of the lan ports on the router.
 
johnb35 said:
Yes. And if the house that has the modem and routers doesn't use wife then they can just hook up to one of the lan ports on the router.
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Thank you sir! I'll keep you updated if I have any trouble. Would you recommend using one of their gateway modems as one of the routers? Or should we buy two separate routers to ensure maximum signal strength?
 
If you are gonna have more than one router its always best to get a dedicated modem and then 2 routers. Some gateways can be difficult setting up a second router on.
 
johnb35 said:
If you are gonna have more than one router its always best to get a dedicated modem and then 2 routers. Some gateways can be difficult setting up a second router on.
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I hate to keep bothering you with this situation, (thank you a lot by the way!) But would you recommend a stronger router than the one Voyager has recommended?
 
I have the same router and its pretty good. But like I said, not sure how well one router would work for 3 housed even though they are only 20-30 feet apart. Would start with 2 routers and see how it works out.
 
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