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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2017 7:37:58 GMT
Our extension goes quite a way into what use to be the garden, and is about as far away from the router as it could be - looking at speed tests the distance (and presumably the wall in the way) definitely slow the internet connection considerably. I'd rather avoid having to have an Ethernet cable installed, so wonder whether anyone has experience of wifi extenders?
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Post by Martin on Apr 1, 2017 8:10:55 GMT
We had a similar problem from about half way down our Kitchen as it's a fair way from the Living Room. Got a free one from SKY that didn't work well at all, it did extend the signal but it reduced the speed down to useless. After a fair bit of research, I bought a Netgear Mini N300 , which isn't too big, has twin external antennas and just plugs straight into the socket. It's good enough to steam HD TV and we only have a 5mbps connection. Just had a look and it's only £15 on Amazon, £5 less than we paid. Excellent value.  fb photo upload |
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Post by LandieMark on Apr 1, 2017 8:17:04 GMT
I tried home plugs, but I think our wiring is a touch noisy as they kept dropping out. I had to resort to running a cable externally and installing access points - wifi extenders won't work in our house as the signal is too poor due to thick stone walls.
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Post by bryan on Apr 1, 2017 8:32:49 GMT
We have a couple of the wiring extenders by to link and they seem to do a decent job
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2017 12:49:06 GMT
We had a similar problem from about half way down our Kitchen as it's a fair way from the Living Room. Got a free one from SKY that didn't work well at all, it did extend the signal but it reduced the speed down to useless. After a fair bit of research, I bought a Netgear Mini N300 , which isn't too big, has twin external antennas and just plugs straight into the socket. It's good enough to steam HD TV and we only have a 5mbps connection. Just had a look and it's only £15 on Amazon, £5 less than we paid. Excellent value. fb photo uploadI think I'm going to trust your extensive research! Thanks, Martin. |
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Post by Martin on Apr 1, 2017 15:51:31 GMT
No problem, hopefully it will work in your house.
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Post by michael on Apr 1, 2017 17:48:16 GMT
You must all have massive houses. I've never had this issue.
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Post by franki68 on Apr 2, 2017 8:11:57 GMT
The plug adapters are excellent , I would just be careful as to whether you can use them as it depends on the way your extension was wired.
When I did mine I was told they won't work if on a different circuit,e.g sockets upstairs wouldn't work because usually they are on a different circuit.
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Post by franki68 on Apr 2, 2017 8:13:09 GMT
You must all have massive houses. I've never had this issue. Not that big, you can drive from one end to the other in about 5 minutes. |
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Post by Martin on Apr 2, 2017 8:20:20 GMT
I'm sure the one I've suggested doesn't use the wiring to transmit the wifi signal. I looked at ones that did and they had mixed reviews, usually pretty poor.
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Post by bryan on Apr 2, 2017 8:33:23 GMT
I used a set of the wiring adaptors and put one in the garden plug (and god knows how the power gets to that) and after a few minutes it was transmitting the wifi down by the patio! That said I want a wired solution when the extension is built
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Post by LandieMark on Apr 2, 2017 8:34:46 GMT
I'm sure the one I've suggested doesn't use the wiring to transmit the wifi signal. I looked at ones that did and they had mixed reviews, usually pretty poor. It doesn't. It connects to the existing wifi. That's fine if you can get the wifi in the room, or it needs to be installed in an intermediate area. The old wifi extenders used to be very detrimental to speed, but the new ones are OK. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2017 8:54:54 GMT
I'm sure the one I've suggested doesn't use the wiring to transmit the wifi signal. I looked at ones that did and they had mixed reviews, usually pretty poor. I also wanted to avoid mucking about with the mains. My home entertainment stuff has mains filtration and separate mains Spurs, but no point in undoing all that effort. Ordered today. |
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Post by Martin on Apr 2, 2017 9:11:24 GMT
I'm sure the one I've suggested doesn't use the wiring to transmit the wifi signal. I looked at ones that did and they had mixed reviews, usually pretty poor. It doesn't. It connects to the existing wifi. That's fine if you can get the wifi in the room, or it needs to be installed in an intermediate area. The old wifi extenders used to be very detrimental to speed, but the new ones are OK. That's what I thought. Ours is plugged in just inside the kitchen door, where there is reasonable signal and it doesn't reduce the speed by much at all. The SKY one dropped it from 5-5.5 down to 0.5, this one is runs at 5.0. |
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Post by franki68 on Apr 2, 2017 12:04:56 GMT
I'm sure the one I've suggested doesn't use the wiring to transmit the wifi signal. I looked at ones that did and they had mixed reviews, usually pretty poor. Surprised they work really for me and the house is largeish and the walls are 2 foot something thick. I'm getting 50mbps on all my wireless connections with it,including upstairs although the extenders are all downstairs . |
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Apr 2, 2017 14:53:07 GMT
Not wifi but I've used the TP link extenders for the smart TV in the lounge which is the furthest from the router and gets poor wifi signal. I plug the router into a TP link upstairs and it uses the mains circuit to transmit the broadband signal to another TP link downstairs, which is then plugged into the TV. I've even used one at the end of an extension lead and it still worked well enough for HD TV. I see they now do wifi extenders so I'd expect them to work equally well.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2017 8:44:33 GMT
They've definitely improved the speed - it seems to be 4-5x faster in the extension and my office.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2017 15:26:12 GMT
Interesting that you can daisy-chain the devices too. I've ended up with three, and much better speeds all over the house.
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Post by Martin on Apr 6, 2017 15:28:02 GMT
Excellent!
Pleased and slightly relieved that thet have worked in your environment
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2017 15:54:07 GMT
Just finished connecting TV, amp, Blu-ray and Fire stick to the daisy-chained connection. Much better, didn't doubt you for a second...
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Post by Tim on Apr 6, 2017 16:01:50 GMT
So do you just plug these in and go?
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Post by ChrisM on Apr 6, 2017 19:29:06 GMT
^
The ones that use mains cable to boost/repeat the signal, yes.
The wireless repeaters need to be set up but the instructions are generally straightforward. When I went over to VirginMedia in Dec 2015 their router was placed in one corner of the house downstairs leaving me with poor signal upstairs at the other side of the house so I bought a wireless plug-in TP Link booster which works quite well - its repeater signal is generally stronger everywhere in the house other than the room where the router is. It creates its own network name, same as the normal one but with the suffix "_2GEXT" so I also have to get my wireless devices to recognise and connect to the new network name
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 9:03:34 GMT
If your router has a certain button on it, they can connect automatically. Mine didn't, but the instructions were straightforward, like Chris says they appear as another wifi source that you have to link to the router (with your PC/tablet) - sometimes it took a bit of persistence to get them to accept passwords, but I think that's because it insists on the tick-box for them being hidden.
If your wifi is under crappynet123, the signal for the extension will be under crappynet123_ext, and if you link a subsequent extender to the first extension (which made sense for me - stronger signal than linking the furthest one to the router itself), that'll show as crappynet123_ext_ext.
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Post by LandieMark on Apr 7, 2017 10:55:27 GMT
I've set up mine as a roaming network, I.e. all my network names to exactly the same with the same password. It means any device seamlessly switches to the strongest network and I don't have to set up each device with new network names and passwords.
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Post by ChrisM on Apr 7, 2017 12:14:02 GMT
^
I wish I knew how to do that, if it is possible to do so with my relatively low-tech set-up
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Post by LandieMark on Apr 7, 2017 13:48:02 GMT
It should be possible. You will need to log onto the extender by typing in its IP address into your browser - the IP address is usually on the back of the device. There are usually advanced instructions in the box.
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2017 13:56:36 GMT
Just a quick addendum - it's a pain getting these things to abandon their new-found identities and sync with a new modem. Do-able, but not without a lot of swearing. Needed their technical people in the end, and at the end of it they tried to flog me longer-term access to them, for three years. Even for six months it would have cost more than replacing all three of the buggers. Declined this kind offer, funnily enough...
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Post by humphreythepug on May 8, 2017 21:57:53 GMT
You must all have massive houses. I've never had this issue. Me too, I can even get a decent WiFi signal in the garden. |
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Post by michael on May 8, 2017 22:38:21 GMT
We switched to EE broadband in February. Rural as we are we can't get fibre so 2mb was the best we'd get on a good day. With EE we found that the broadband started to drop out with increasing frequency until it simply didn't work. In fairness to EE they tried hard to solve things and gave each of us 5gb data packs for out mobiles so we could use them as hotspots but after seven BT engineer visits it was clear they couldn't solve the problem.
Anyway, we are now on the rural high speed wireless broadband network and its incredible with a consistent 49mb connection. It only cost £25 a month and the installation was free thanks to government funding. Best of all we can get rid of the BT line for good.
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Post by johnc on May 9, 2017 6:56:00 GMT
We switched to EE broadband in February. Rural as we are we can't get fibre so 2mb was the best we'd get on a good day. With EE we found that the broadband started to drop out with increasing frequency until it simply didn't work. In fairness to EE they tried hard to solve things and gave each of us 5gb data packs for out mobiles so we could use them as hotspots but after seven BT engineer visits it was clear they couldn't solve the problem. Anyway, we are now on the rural high speed wireless broadband network and its incredible with a consistent 49mb connection. It only cost £25 a month and the installation was free thanks to government funding. Best of all we can get rid of the BT line for good. We had the same problem with BT Broadband until we finally got fibre (BT Infinity)- that was only after one of my letter writing frenzies and a claim for full repayment of my broadband charges because the system was not fit for purpose. With the normal BT lines, I reckon there must be much greater use than capacity - it appeared that the signal got better for a while every time after I complained. However it then just began to slide back until it was basically unusable a few weeks later. BT can prioritise users on their normal lines and I think that's all they are doing every time you complain but ultimately if there are more people trying to use more data than the system can cope with, something has to give.
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