Workshop has 17 inch adobe walls here…OK internal walls only about 14. Chicken wire and stucco over that. From the current router it’s 2 normal drywall walls, plastered ICF wall with plenty of rebar…may e 100ft to the workshop then at least 2 adobe walls…
My dang weather station drops everytime my phone hooks onto the wireless channel I have setup for it vs the one it’s supposed to use. Wireless is pain if it ain’t working right…
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I was having lots of issues with my Wi-Fi a while back, and upgraded the modem/router (and plan), but still saw big slowing and disconnects on the 2.4GHz band… When the tech came out, he advised me to use an analyser to find an unused channel, and select that channel in the router setup, rather than relying on the auto-select channel default setup. The logic behind that advice was that when your router is set to auto-select a channel and another router comes in on its currently selected channel, your router will disconnect and then come back up on a new channel. By forcing yours to stay on one channel, if another one with auto-select turned on comes up on it, the other one will be the one that disconnects to move. Seemed logical, and things have been working better since I did that too.
BTW, most of the devices in the house that can connect to my new router’s 5GHz band still generally see at least double the speed they could get using the 2.4GHz band (60-80mbps on 5GHz vs 20-40mbps on 2.4GHz), so unless that is wildly atypical, I would have to disagree with people saying having ac capability isn’t beneficial if you have b/g/n, at least for those of us with less 5GHz-opaque walls!
I can also now vouch for the adapters that use the house wiring to transmit the network communication. In my case, I moved my home office upstairs recently, but there was no easy way to move the router upstairs too, so I got this,
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00AWRUICG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I plugged one in beside the work router downstairs and connected it to the modem with a network cable, and plugged the other one in up in the new office. With the laptop wired directly to it, I get great speed, generally faster than the stated limit of the plan my work connection has! Oh, and the downstairs receptacle is wired to a separate sub-panel, while the upstairs one is wired to the main panel, and it still works fine. Of course, with the Glowforge being Wi-Fi only, you would either need to get a expensive kit that has a wireless access point built into the remote unit, or get one separately to plug into the remote unit.
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In my case it was the combination modem and router.
I was using a combination Motorola unit and was experiencing signal drops.
On the advice of a close friend who happened to be a senior network manager for Oracle who had a similar problem, he suggested I get a stand-alone wireless router.
I did. A TP Link . It’s all good now.
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Yes, generally a good idea to use the DSL or cable modem only as modem and your own router for wired/wireless connection for your stuff. Gives you much more control.
I’m still debating if I want to use a plain range extender or a wireless bridge to be able to get an Internet connection in the workshop space…
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I turned off all my 2.4 radios and only use 5 so much 2.4 overlap with xfinity hot spotting every single cable modem that they rent and I’m in a 90 unit condo building. There is no channels left in 2.4 that don’t have at least 10 ssids at any time. Meanwhile 5ghz is darn empty. I didn’t know the gf was 2.4 only? 5ghz has been around for a long bit so I’m surprised. Then again I have always been extremely disappointed not Ethernet connection… Because just what I want is a wifi hack and a laser spooling up at 100 watts and explodeing
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The Glowforge unit is just 2.4 GHz, no 5 GHz. When things get congested, we just run an ethernet cable to the unit and put the access point right next to it. Then, the challenge is usually the conference internet that goes up and down. (When we say ‘conference wifi’ is the problem, more often than not, it’s really the internet backing the wifi that’s the problem!)
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2.4 ghz has a throughput of 54 mbps under “absolute perfect, ideal, LABORATORY” conditions.
No household will do that. You will have about a 25-15% loss in getting through an average modern constructed homes walls, you will have more loss if you have a lot of wireless devices (as devices on your network talk with the router are almost always communicating very little bits of data, but enough to take a couple meg a second) and you can get much more significant loss by other environmentals in the home.
The 5 ghz frequency does allow for a higher throughput than the 2.4ghz band, so you getting an extra 40mbps is not strange.
An inverter microwave, usually will cancel out a wifi signal. All your monitors and flatscreen tvs are impassable walls. Do not, I repeat, do not put your router on top of your mini fridge. For everytime that large metal heavy appliance kicks in, the em field it generates will have your first person shooter character killed, and screenshots will be taken from your buddies of your character in compromising positions.
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5GHz might be nice someday if it’s an easy swap, but it would be a mess for me. We have a 5GHz net along with the 2.4 from our router, and signal strength varies enormously from step to step around the house. As in move to a different seat on the sofa and lose your connection. Murphy says that wherever I put the gf it would be in a signal hole.
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Bad news for me. The 2.4 GHz wifi connection where my GF will be located drops almost every time the microwave on the floor above is used. It looks like I’m one of the owners that will find out how tolerant the GF will be when it sees a dropped connection. Or live with a wired GF connection. There are worse things in life I suppoose.
I used to share internet with a friend 4 houses down the street using a wireless connection with two access points pointed at one another.
I am confident there is a solution for you, even if it is a bit convoluted.
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I’m pretty sure that the glowforge is wireless only. No wired connection
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100% sure there is no wired connection.
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Only reason I put pretty sure is because he was responding to a post by @dan that mentioned Hardwiring it. But he has said multiple times it will be wireless only, I was just trying not to eat my foot.
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I believe that the post meant putting the hardwired access point right next to the Glowforge.
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Please make the configuration better than some products that must be configured via an app and will only connect to the same SID as the app sees on the device.
Had an annoying experience where I had to move to the 2.4 network on my phone just so when I connected to the 2.4 only device it could connect to the right SID.
kind of that statement doesn’t it show a problem to run a wire to a ap next to the gf to get a wifi connection . wouldn’t it be nice to just plug the cable in sense you running it anyway. but to late now
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Yep, and this is about as asinine as it gets…
Yep, if the gf had shipped a year back I could have understood that it’s too late to add. But with the 1 year delay, no reason not to add (so much for not ranting about this again 
).
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While it gets a bit pokey if you’re <1mbps, it’s still quite usable. Anything >1mbps is quite fast. We use it semi-regularly via a tethered phone connection.
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I should have remembered that - bummer.
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