WiFi in Garden Room

flossymcfly

We are getting a garden room installed this week which will be a bit of a retreat for our teenage son and somewhere to take his friends without his siblings annoying him. 

There will be electrics so he can take his playstation and television out there, but we are struggling with the WiFi access. We have broadband with Virgin Media and they have recommended a WiFi booster which they seem to think will be sufficient. For info, we usually get over 200mbps in the house and the garden room will be about 25m away from the router.

Has anyone been in this position and can advise whether this will work? Failing that, can anyone suggest anything else to get WiFi out there?

TIA  

FlorayG

A wi-fi booster will do it - you need to plug it into the socket with the best line of sight to the garden room. Mine reaches all the way to the end of my garden and in fact I've been able to access it from my car parked on the street

FreeBear

When the trench is dug, lay in some conduit 50-100mm away from the power cable. It only needs to be 20mm pipe. Thread a length of rope through this conduit, and should WiFi prove to be inadequate, you can pull some CAT5/6 cable through the conduit.

moneysaver1978

I am with FreeBear, seeing as you are doing everything new, it is a great opportunity to lay down a conduit

cymruchris

I'll third the putting in of a cat 6 cable. Even with boosters, wifi can sometimes be hit and miss as they can be affected by environmental factors. For browsing it wouldn't appear much of a difference, but for a gamer - every split nano second counts

rob7475

I'd agree with running a network cable in if possible. Wifi drop off over that distance will be noticeable if he's using it for gaming, streaming etc. If you run a network cable, you can install a small network switch in the garden room so his game console etc will benefit from a gigabit connection back to your Virgin media router. You can also then install an wireless access point to give wifi access for phones, tablets etc.

I've used Eero devices for years and for the price, they are very good.

TheNellster

I used a powerline adapter with a built in wifi repeater

Albermarle

As there will be a mains electricity connection to the home, then a powerline adaptor at each end should work pretty well. As should Wifi if the booster is at the back of the house/as near to the garden room as possible.

However for fast gaming a direct cable ( as suggested ) might be necessary.

saajan_12

If doing new, then definitely run the cable. It won't add a ton to the cost and will massively improve the result. 

If it was existing, then I'd say either a plug in wifi booster or a 2nd router half way (depending on whether that's still indoors) could provide good enough results without getting work done. 

ButterCheese

Another vote for laying ethernet cable.  We have the Virgin Media hub and it is shocking.  Examples:

We get up to 350mb/sec through the wire but wifi speed tests upstairs regularly drop to 25mb/sec, despite being only a few feet away upstairs.

We have a TP-links range extender in the kitchen.  Very often, the upstairs TV gets a faster connection to the TP-Links extender than it does to the main router, despite the extender being further way and behind a wall. 

You can't go wrong with an ethernet cable

onomatopoeia99

As others have alreadt said, if you're going to be running mains electric out there in a trench, get them to run cat5e or cat 6 at the same time.  It's the best solution in terms of network connectivity and stability, but may cost more (still absolute peanuts compared to a garden room) and you might need to learn a tiny amount of practical IT and buy a krone tool so you can terminate it in RJ45 sockets.