Which Wireless Router Will Give A Long Range?

UnderPressure

Morning All

I need to buy a new wireless router bt hub thingy me jig The reason for the replacement is currently we are using a technicolour one and the range is not great I need something that is going to give a decent wireless signal throughout the whole house and if possible the front and back garden as well, is there such a thing on the market?

Thank in advance

JJ_Egan

Asus RT N56U

Dual band wireless router works well .

Its a router not a modem and requires a separate modem .They do a similiar model incorporating a modem .
jje

marvin

UnderPressure wrote: »

Morning All

I need to buy a new wireless router bt hub thingy me jig The reason for the replacement is currently we are using a technicolour one and the range is not great I need something that is going to give a decent wireless signal throughout the whole house and if possible the front and back garden as well, is there such a thing on the market?

Thank in advance

Would rather help if you give an idea of how big your house and garden is, if it is a 20 acre estate you are not going to get total coverage without repeaters and in my old cardboard council house I can get a signal from the chap who has a virgin superhub in the flats a couple of hundred yards away.

Also so much affects the way wireless works and the design of modern houses does not help. So much tin foil being used to insulate houses also causes signal blockages.

I was in a new house a couple of years ago and was impossible to get a signal anywhere but the hall and stairs if the hub was placed in the hall with the doors shut to all the rooms. The reason was it had been built to modern eco standards.

So decent signal is one thing being able to receive it is another.

John_Gray

UnderPressure wrote: »

I need something that is going to give a decent wireless signal throughout the whole house and if possible the front and back garden as well

Unfortunately the answer is that you are going to have to try it in your environment. Mr Egan's suggestion is one of the best, but you may well need device(s) like wireless extenders (or wireless access points) to reach the parts that the router may not be able to reach. You may find homeplugs could help, too...

UnderPressure

Hello

Thanks for all your replies I appreciate it

I am quite tech savvy however not with these modems / routers I have always just used whatever the broadband provider has provided this is the first time range has become an issue so it is all a bit of a learning curve for me.

At the moment we have a plusnet technicolour modem/router that is the main box, this is downstairs and is then linked by these ethernet plugs to a bt home hub 2 that is upstairs providing wifi up there, them main issue is in our living room where signal is low and unreliable and laos in the back garden.

The house was built in the fifties is a modest detached 3 bedroomed house total area probably somewhere around 25 x 15 metres, it sits in its own plot that including the house is probably around 80 metres by 30, it is more important to have a signal in the back garden than the front from the front of the house the to back of the back garden is probably around 50 metres or so. It has fibre cavity wall insulation no "tin foil".

I suppose I could put another bt home hub 2 in the living room using another ethernet plug but as a solution it does not seem all that elegant and involves too many wires, also the actual configuration of the bt home hub 2 to get it working as an extension of the main plusnet box was quite difficult, I got it working by sheer fluke and could not tell anyone else how I did it

At one time it did not matter that much as long as me and the wife had signal it was fine but now the kids are getting older everyone wants a connection, laptops, tablets, xboxes, phones it just goes on and on so I am hoping there will be a 1 box does it all solution.

Thanks again

John_Gray

UnderPressure wrote: »

I am hoping there will be a 1 box does it all solution....

You might be lucky, you might not. You will be (somewhat) limited by where the router is located; this isn't always easily changed if you find that the coverage is not what you wanted.
As I said before, you just have to try it. Perhaps talk first to someone at a firm which specialises in this field, such as BroadBand Buyer.

closed

move the homehub

A typical house and garden shouldn't require routers/extenders/homeplugs if the wireless router is placed properly.

anotheruser

I purchased a TP-Link router for greater signal upstairs and outside.
Works fine

Virgin box downstairs connected by by ethernet cable to the TP-Link upstairs. Then my upstairs desktop is connected to that (I prefer wires where I can).
This means we have great wireless signal downstairs from the original router. When visiting the back of the house and garden, we still have great signal as it is connected to the other router.

Also try and get your wireless on a different channel to other people. Not sure how flexable the BTHH is with that but if anyone else has a BTHH around you, it will also be on the same channel which will cause interference.

John_Gray

anotheruser wrote: »

if anyone else has a BTHH around you, it will also be on the same channel which will cause interference.

Not necessarily to both parts of that sentence.

The newer routers check on the signal strengths of the other near-by routers on the various channels, and try to use the channel which is the least "busy".
And another router on the same channel won't cause interference if it has a very low signal strength.

John_Gray

There's a two-year-old US article I just came across: The Best Way To Get Whole House Wireless Coverage which makes some rude comments on the efficiency of wireless extenders...

Gloomendoom

I live in an ironstone house with walls that vary from 4 to 2 feet thick and I went through the 'What is the most powerful router I can buy" thing a while a ago. I ended up buying an a American router that had an output well over the UK legal limit. It was great, turned up to 11, I could pick it up half way across the village.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that there is no point in a powerful router if your laptop (or whatever) isn't powerful enough to talk back to it.