what to do to extend our wireless to the whole house?

Hi - We are Mac users and have an airport extreme from 2007 which I have continued to update when prompted. Our wireless - through our cable company - works great in the main part of our house. We added on a large garage with an upstairs with bedrooms over the garage. this is connected to the house. Absolutely no wireless connection over there. Not sure if I need to have someone come in to evaluate this or if there is a simple solution. Any ideas?
Thanks,
sue

That sounds like a challenging project since it appears that your new bedroom over the garage might be a considerable distance from your Airport Extreme. Generally speaking the Apple Airport Express units can be used to extend the range of an Airport Extreme but again it depends on the distance. Your results will vary.

Apple Airport Express

My husband thinks we are about 50 to 60 feet away.

The advice above about extending with Airport Express is spot on, but in your situation I would recommend a slightly different approach that might get tricky.

Since your base station is quite old (6 yrs) I would opt for a new AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule to use as a replacement base station. To this I would add an Airport Express and relocate your old AirPort Extreme to your Garage addition.

The Airport Express I would locate midway between your new and old bases.

With only fifty feet between you might be able to get by without the addition of an Airport Express, but you may run into signal strength problems without it.

Alternately, you could run an Ethernet cable to the new addition and attach an Airport Express that way also.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: For what it's worth my house is a 2100 sqft tri-level and I originall ran it with a TimeCapsule base station with an AirPort Extreme to extend the network. That worked OK with occasional signal loss (especially in the upstairs bedroom). Currently I am running two Time Capsules, an AirPort Extreme, and an Airport Express. Probably overkill, but seems to work well.

Extending wireless

In the UK we can, provided it is single phase, use the electricity 'network' using a neat gadget called a wireless adapter. I have just installed a TP-Link Wireless n Powerline Extender. This consists of an adapter plugged in to a mains electricity socket connected to our wifi router. The second wireless adapter can be plugged into an electric socket anywhere in the house to duplicate the wireless signal. You need a starter kit consisting of the base adapter and the wireless adapter.

I don't know if this will work where you live but, if you can't use a powerline extender, there are wireless boosters available on the market.

Alwyn said:

In the UK we can, provided it is single phase, use the electricity 'network' using a neat gadget called a wireless adapter. I have just installed a TP-Link Wireless n Powerline Extender. This consists of an adapter plugged in to a mains electricity socket connected to our wifi router. The second wireless adapter can be plugged into an electric socket anywhere in the house to duplicate the wireless signal. You need a starter kit consisting of the base adapter and the wireless adapter.

I don't know if this will work where you live but, if you can't use a powerline extender, there are wireless boosters available on the market.

Click to expand...

These devices can be effective, as said, if both units are on the same power phase. I would not recommend these if you have any neighbours within a few hundred yards that are amateur (ham) radio operators. Even though newer devices have their outputs notched to reduce emissions on the amateur radio bands, they do cause excessive broadband interference. Here in the UK if we detect interference as typically caused by powerline devices we contact OFCOM (FCC USA equivalent) to track them down. They would then ask for them to be removed and suggest alternative means of extending the wi-fi.

Thanks for the great replies. It sounds like this is doable but probably not for me to do myself. Neither my husband or I are great at setting up the technology. I think I've got to find someone to come in and evaluate. Don't know how to find that someone. Is that something I should do through the apple store or is there a smart way to find a good tech person?
Anyhow - thanks again,
sue

Of course it's up to you, however, hiring someone to do the installation may turn out to be more than you want to spend. I believe with a bit of inquiry and reading, you and your husband could do the work yourself.

Thanks. I will start researching a little more and see if we can do it!

Hi again,
So - RavingMac - reading your post made me go look at my airport extreme. It seems it is attached to our cable modem and my husband's IMAC plus cords going to the printer I think. Remembering that we are ignorant tech people - if we use another base station over the garage or an express somewhere - what are they plugged into? Or are they just wireless receivers or something? I think if I can just understand how this sets up and works, I will be able to do it myself.
Hope this question isn't too confusing!
Sue

The second base station can either connect wirelessly, or by a direct Ethernet cable connection. Both have advantages:

1) Wired (Ethernet cable) - faster and no significant signal loss with distance
2) Wireless - no cables to mess with