Wireless Range Extenders

[Harrison]

Has anyone used one? And what success have you had?

The house we have just moved into is quite long and sprawling, with the main router being in the rear bedroom/office. The main BT Hub 4's wireless signal isn't the best and completely dies by the middle of the house where there is a chimney. So I've connected a Billion 7800N router to the network to act as just a wireless access point. This gives better coverage, but the front bedroom and front living room still only get a very faint 1 bar or less signal because of the chimney.

I need to get a signal into the front room for Sky On Demand, and for using laptop, tablet etc in there.

Powerline adapters are out of the question because of the strange way the mains electric is wired in this old (300 year+) cottage. The older part has a mains consumer trip switch unit, but this is then linked to another mains consumer trip switch unit in the newer extension. The router is in the newer extension and needs to get internet to the older part. Therefore I very much doubt a powerline adapter would work. Might be wrong but I doubt it.

Therefore I'm left with either running a long Ethernet cable through the house, but that isn't an easy option (already have one running the length upstairs the other way to get the broadband from the phoneline in the front bedroom to the router/wired network at the back), or a wireless repeater.

Doing lots of research into this the TP-Link TL-WA850RE seems highly recommended and not a bad price at around £30. I'm thinking I can plug it into the kitchen which is below the router and runs along the side of the house and bridges the back and front around the chimney, so hopefully this can get a signal through.

Will let you know how it goes. Going to buy one in the morning.

 

[Gouldin]

Wireless extenders work perfectly fine, just bear in mind that you'll be halving the bandwidth speed of your WiFi network, which isn't good enough for file transfers for me. :/

 

[Harrison]

I realise that, because it needs to both receive from the router and then broadcast it on to the devices.

I definitely wouldn't be happy with halving the speed if I needed the connection for my main systems, butspeed isn't such an issue as all my equipment is on a wired lan and so I won't be using it for anything other than access the internet from mobile devices, my wife accessing the internet from her laptop for working and my Sky HD box for On Demand.

 

[Trapshot]

Agree with Gouldin on the bandwidth; but since the item you've selected is a MIMO extender, you might still get half decent speed out of it as long as your original stream is a strong MIMO and your end devices support it with multiple antennas (like iPad mini2 and modern laptops etc.), so for £30 it's probably worth a try for you.

I had the same problem when asked to look at the signal issues at a friends house and offered the same solutions - hard wired cabling with another AP off it in the dead zone; move the original WiFi beacon closer to the dead zone; enterprise solution with multiple APs and bridging; wireless extender with less speed.

They went for the wireless extender, and have been happy with it. It wouldn't be my first choice but at least you know your options.

Obviously you might want to investigate your performance in different frequency bands and channels, because you want to ensure your signal is as "clean" as it can be in your house to get the best out of it. 5ghz is shorter than 2.4ghz, and yet in my house I can push my 5ghz signal further than my 2.4 signal because of the conflicts in the 2.4ghz range near me.

Hope that helps

 

[Harrison]

Just a quick update to say the WiFi extender I purchased, the TP-Link TL-WA850RE, was fairly easy to setup and works perfectly for what I needed.

It had 2 setup modes. The easiest is to press the WPS button on your router, and then press the button on the extender and it should scan and find the router and connect. For me this didn't seem to work so I had to resort to the other method.

The second method wasn't actually that much more complicated, and was the better way to set it up as you have complete control over it's setup. You use any WiFi device (I used my Nexus 7 tablet) and look at WiFi networks and the extender shows as its own WiFi network. You connect to this and then point your browser at a specific url, and the extender's configuration webpage appears. From here you have a number of tabs and a setup wizard to enter the details. It lets you scan local WiFi networks and pick one, then enter your password details, and finally very usefully you can pick to either copy/clone the existing network SSID and security password, which means a device connected to the network will silently connect between the router and extender (which is what I've done), or you can create a unique SSID and password, so its lilke connecting to another WiFi hotspot. This could be useful for greater security if used for children to connect, or in a commercial environment like a shop or B&B offering free WiFi.

 

[gurthuk]

Might be worth checking out those Ethernet over the electrics, I bought a set for £45 from Maplins. Gave a couple of fixed ethernet points from plugs in the house plus a wifi extender on the end.

---------- Post added at 21:18 ---------- Previous post was at 21:17 ----------

Ok missed the bit about ethernet over electrics,oh:

They did work on different rings though.

 

[Harrison]

I will be buying a couple of powerline adapters later in the year, when I move back to my own house, so I can have Ethernet to my smartTV, Sky HD box etc... then it will stream 1080P HD properly.

 

[Snoozy]

Slightly late to mention - I bought this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-WS32...&qid=1390670167&sr=8-1&keywords=wifi+repeater 6 months ago and its been perfect