Extending wifi to garden room (and a network problem I forgot I had)

silvercar

Following as we can’t get decent WiFi from one side of the (wide) house to the side extension on the other! Solid walls plus an extension on the side seems to have blocked the WiFi. Power line doesn’t work well, possibly because the extension is on a different circuit. We called someone in who put a white circle disk on the wall (begins with a U) that was meant to work, but that also drops out intermittently. Mutterings about old electrics being the problem with the power line. We now have a new virgin hub that combines 2G and 5G which has improved things a bit, but not brilliantly.

apologies for the intrusion doozer!

ashe

I would definitely avoid powerline, it can do a job but it's so often problematic. I tried several and it was spotty, very video I tried to watch buffered etc, and I tried several "good" kits. What works for some people doesn't work for others, and even when speeds are good there was often packet loss or bad ping which suggests an unstable connection. There are easier trouble free solution so they would be a last resort to me

best option would be an Ethernet run especially if to be used as a home office where you don't want to be diagnosing WiFi dropouts 

my home office is opposite end of the house; we have a mesh WiFi system by deco, but as I wanted fastest and most reliable speeds for gaming and work, i run an Ethernet cable from the lounge to the office around the outside of the house, and this connects two of the nodes so have best if both worlds, known as a backhaul - Ethernet connection, stronger WiFi in the whole house, and it's all plug and play. The mesh rebroadcasts the WiFi, the Ethernet between units gives both units max speed, meaning the upstairs one has full signal; otherwise each mesh node has a slightly weaker signal to rebroadcast. For most people the mesh will be fine but longer distances and stability, for the low cost of a cable and drilling two holes was a no brainer. 

Already had the second kit so only cost me £20 for an external rated Ethernet cable of 25m

Rdwill

You see, I disagree.

I use devolo powerline adapters and they work absolutely fine for me.

I have three 'wired and the wifi' version upstairs. One in my son's bedroom his laptop is wired into it and he gets the wifi, one in my office which also has a laptop wired into and gives of a wifi signal and one in our bedroom which I just use as wifi.

Then we have another 'wired and wifi' downstairs in the kitchen, which we just use as wifi

The wifi signals are the same frequency so you don't have to switch between them as you move around the house. 

The main bt internet hub is in the living room, you do have to switch onto that one if you are sitting in the living room and want the best signal.

It all works fine as far as I am concerned. You can add extenders onto as you wish.

This is what I have

https://www.devolo.co.uk/products/dlan-powerline

Bendy_House

ashe said:

What works for some people doesn't work for others...

Ain't that the truth!

Of course 'wired' is best - it is the most reliable solution to any such connectivity issue. It made me go to the trouble of running a couple of Cats to the main PC and TV from the upstairs location of our router. By 'trouble', I did it because it wasn't too much trouble - I could run the cables across the eaves space, and then down a boxed-in section of wall where the gas and leccy meters are, and hence through to Ethernet sockets either side of the wall.

But, had it been much more hassle than this, then I'd have stuck with WiFi or used Powerline adaptors.

Our new extension is on a completely different 'ring' to the upstairs - each has their own, and they are separate again to the rest of the house. Powerline has worked between these two circuits 100%.

So, for us, it works.

If Doozer can run a Cat betwixt t'house and t'garden, then great - that's the way to do it. I'm just saying that one of the other two very obvious and cheap solutions will almost certainly work, and it's no great loss to find out for certain.

980233

Doozergirl said:

I'm not even going to pretend that I know what I'm talking about here.  

If the doors to both the house and garden room are open, we can pick up wifi. It's October now and so that isn't
happening anymore so I need to know what the solutions are.  We have power with plenty of sockets out in the garden room.  

I've heard that there are things that you can plug in and they turn your electrical

circuits into extensions of the wifi.  Is that correct?  Are some better than others?  

We probably will end up running cable
out at some point, but I don't even know what I connect to the end of that cable.  In fact, I think we have several network points in the house run next to the TVs but I don't know what to do with them either. I didn't ask for network cables, I just have them.  Thinking back, we have FTTP and the electrician ran regular copper to the middle of the house where the router was supposed to be so the BT guy said it was far better to leave the router where the cable comes in.  

There is a CAT6 cable nearby as that was supposed to run to the TV from the router.  Can we use that cable that runs back to the supposed hub, to run the internet over there and then spur off that? 

I've no idea what I'm talking about.  Our electrician does a good job but speaks in tongues.  We've been here nearly a year, I should probably do something about it.  

"TLDR your waffle, Doozer":
1) Can I plug something in the garden room that extends our wifi?  

2) How do we set up the network in my
house when the cooper cable run to where the hub is supposed to be will reduce the quality of broadband we're receiving?  Can we use a nearby CAT6?

Haven't seen all the suggestions but this works good for us.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BT-seamless-connection-everywhere-complete/dp/B01NBMMVG7/ref=asc_df_B01NBMMVG7/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=232043227663&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=83859283281465228&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006552&hvtargid=pla-451290293197&th=1

Mainly got it to improve signal in extended part of the house and after trying the amazon echo, google wifi equivalent and a TP link version this is far the best solution I found.

With one disc placed in the kitchen I can get full signal at the back of a 100 foot garden.