Wifi needed at bottom of garden

dearlouise · 1 February 2015 at 1:18PM

I am creating a 'garden office' at the very bottom of my garden, too far for the wifi to reach.

What are my options in getting the wifi down there? Are there boosters? Is it something my provider can do (I'm with Virgin Media).

Thanks!

Swipe · 1 February 2015 at 2:00PM

You'll want the power line plugs (assuming the garden office has power) or the wifi repeater;

http://store.virginmedia.com/discover/broadband/your-broadband/powerline/extending-your-network.html

Or you can take a very long ethernet cable from your router down to the shed/office

dearlouise · 1 February 2015 at 2:08PM

Swipe wrote: »

You'll want the power line plugs (assuming the garden office has power) or the wifi repeater;

http://store.virginmedia.com/discover/broadband/your-broadband/powerline/extending-your-network.html

Or you can take a very long ethernet cable from your router down to the shed/office

Yeah it has electrics etc.

Thanks for this!

Hadn't even thought about going old school with an ethernet cable...! :rotfl:

macman · 1 February 2015 at 2:22PM

Electrics as in a power circuit? You can't run powerline networking over a lighting spur. It needs to come off the same CU as that already installed in your house.

matelodave · 1 February 2015 at 4:27PM

I've got powerline to my garden office which is about 20 metres from the house. The spur to the office is from the house Consumer Unit via it's own fuse and an additional CU in the office.
The router is in the hall connected to the ring main via another fuse in the CU. Works for me.

An alternative is to get a router with external antenna connectors and use a high gain antenna. Have a look at the Solwise website for a few options

dearlouise · 1 February 2015 at 5:16PM

macman wrote: »

Electrics as in a power circuit? You can't run powerline networking over a lighting spur. It needs to come off the same CU as that already installed in your house.

It has it's own small 2 switch (lights & plugs) CU feeding from the house CU. So would that work?

dearlouise · 1 February 2015 at 5:17PM

matelodave wrote: »

I've got powerline to my garden office which is about 20 metres from the house. The spur to the office is from the house Consumer Unit via it's own fuse and an additional CU in the office.
The router is in the hall connected to the ring main via another fuse in the CU. Works for me.

An alternative is to get a router with external antenna connectors and use a high gain antenna. Have a look at the Solwise website for a few options

Yeah this sounds like the electrical set up in mine.
What brand do you use, if you don't mind me asking? Netgear?

Roland_Sausage · 1 February 2015 at 5:18PM

Get a length of armoured Cat5 cable, and bury it under the path/lawn/hedge, etc. Job done. It's fairly cheap and will be more reliable than any wireless solution.

http://www.cablemonkey.co.uk/cat5e-bulk-cable/1358-armoured-external-cat5e-utp-solid-cable-price-per-metre.html

EDIT: maybe not cheap from that site as the minimum order is 50 metres, but you can probably source elsewhere.

Swipe · 1 February 2015 at 6:01PM

Or use regular ethernet cable and buy some cheap trunking

kwikbreaks · 1 February 2015 at 11:28PM

I've run coax antenna cables in hosepipe in the past with no problems. I don't see why that wouldn't work for ethernet as there is no safety aspect involved.

dearlouise · 3 February 2015 at 3:39PM

I've just realised with the ethernet, that wouldn't allow wifi for iPads & iPhones to be used in there...

I was hoping to be able to use the iPad as a form of tv while I'm working.

Grrrr. Ethernet looks so cheap!!!

Wifi needed at bottom of garden

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