Wifi range

DrJohnZoidberg

DrJohnZoidberg

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Is it normal to be able to connect to a wifi network over 100m away using a consumer wifi AP?

My office is probably about 120m away from my apartment (as the crow flies), woke up this morning and connected just fine to our office wifi network. I can normally connect to it but never get any throughput, this morning I must have hit a sweet spot as the connection wasn't that awful.

I pinged an office server to check if I was dreaming:

Code: 
PING 192.168.40.1 (192.168.40.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=16.553 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=5.452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=5.059 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.542 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=4.374 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=6.658 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=4.598 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=12.118 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=7.779 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=3.251 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=5.396 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=7.741 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=4.170 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=3.020 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=29.639 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=2.224 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=6.703 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=4.982 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=3.715 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=1.966 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=3.571 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=7.363 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.40.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=4.651 ms
^C
--- 192.168.40.1 ping statistics ---
23 packets transmitted, 23 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.966/6.675/29.639/5.855 ms

Not even any pocketloss :D

Seems only my Macbook is able to do this, my phone can't even see the network.
 
COMPUTEK said:
You do know it's 10:42 ... you can hardly call it morning anymore :p
Click to expand...

:D

That was this run this morning at around 8:30, I'm only posting it now.

Morning is whatever I want it to be, if I can eat bacon and eggs it's still morning :D
 
That would mean your Mac's wifi radio is pretty decent. Phone's radio's are puny so they'll never connect at that range - a phone will be able to receive packets, but it won't be able to ACK as it doesn't have the transmission power.

PS, A buddy of mine stays about that distance from me and using WDS he can connect to my modem (D-Link 2750) using his TPlink something or the other.
 
YingYang said:
That would mean your Mac's wifi radio is pretty decent. Phone's radio's are puny so they'll never connect at that range - a phone will be able to receive packets, but it won't be able to ACK as it doesn't have the transmission power.

PS, A buddy of mine stays about that distance from me and using WDS he can connect to my modem (D-Link 2750) using his TPlink something or the other.
Click to expand...

The office wifi AP is also a TP-Link. These things are beasts.
 
Which Macbook is it? Model/Year.
The newer ones, especially those with the 802.11ac adapter is very powerful and if it picks up even a wiff of a signal, it boosts the power to it.
 
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