Internet booster

Simon1963

Member
Messages
819
Because there seems little point in planning any travel this year my wife has got a full time job starting in a few weeks. She will be working from home and we’ve decided to convert our fully insulated garden room into an office. Only problem is the WiFi is a bit patchy so my question is does anyone use one of those WiFi boosters and if so what can you recommend.
 

Gazcw

Member
Messages
7,757
I have Tenda Nova Mesh. 3 extenders but you can have more. The triple pack is £140 from Currys. I have one hardwired to my router, I turned off router wireless and then put one at each end of the house. Never have an issue with 2 teenagers streaming on TV, ipad and phone at the same time and me and the missus on zoom etc plus all the other WiFi gadgets. Fibre to house helps obviously.
 

Ewan

Member
Messages
6,801
We opted to run a physical cable to ours (about 80 meters from the main house). Cheap and easy, and 100% reliable. Just ran it along the back of the side beds of the walled garden, so all tucked away, safe and out of sight, then into the building by drilling a little hole.
 

DrDavid

New Member
Messages
22
We have used 3 different types of wi fi extender in the past:
  • hard wired cable. Good but prone to rodent damage
  • piggy backing on the electrical ring main. Good, as long as you don’t try to plug either adaptor into a spur off the ring - it just won’t work
  • mesh system. Very good, both in terms of “signal quality” and range. No long, trailing cables and so easy to set up. Just a slight increase in the domestic electromagnetic smog (not sure you even need to worry about such things!). Now my favourite method by a long way.
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,731
We opted to run a physical cable to ours (about 80 meters from the main house). Cheap and easy, and 100% reliable. Just ran it along the back of the side beds of the walled garden, so all tucked away, safe and out of sight, then into the building by drilling a little hole.

Always my preferred. Cat 6 exterior cable. Ours has been down the wall of the house and along the base of the wall for 9 years now. No damage, no rodent damage either!

C
 

monkeybrain1234

New Member
Messages
13
Got one of these recently works well when it's got a soild connection from router.


Placement is super important to ensure connection is good. Personally what I would do is have a cat 6 cable going to the new room, then put one of these wifi extenders on the end. Solid connection and you will have basically another wireless area. So many devices can be connected in her office, computer, ipad, phones etc
 

DrDavid

New Member
Messages
22
Always my preferred. Cat 6 exterior cable. Ours has been down the wall of the house and along the base of the wall for 9 years now. No damage, no rodent damage either!

C
We live right out in the sticks. Our rats and mice must be stupider, hungrier or just more numerous than yours.
 

Lavazza

Member
Messages
1,060
We had our whole house and barn (across courtyard) professionally networked (Ubiquiti) so we have wifi in every room, hardwired.

Cost just over £1k.

No cables showing. Worth every penny.

Some of our walls are getting on for 2 feet thick (C16th house).

Works a treat.
 

tokyomb

Member
Messages
265
For a time we used a mains plug based (TP-Link Powerline) arrangement. Our line of sight broadband comes from a mast the other side of the valley and the only place with line of sight was the outside privy - so that is where our network starts. The Powerline arrangement worked, but did not like the fact that the different buildings were on different consumer units, and also had problems with running two separate powerline networks (Line of Sight network to our internal router and then another network to get the internal access points connected up - due to another old house with thick walls).

I replaced the outside Powerline network with steel armoured Cat6 cable (which will definitely be rodent proof), and am in the process of replacing the internal Powerline network with a cabled network.

If you are running outdoor cable, I would recommend using steel-armoured cable even if you are running the cable in conduit underground - that removes the risk of rodent damage at either end. Somewhat more expensive - but hopefully means the job only ever needs doing once.
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,731
Got one of these recently works well when it's got a soild connection from router.


Placement is super important to ensure connection is good. Personally what I would do is have a cat 6 cable going to the new room, then put one of these wifi extenders on the end. Solid connection and you will have basically another wireless area. So many devices can be connected in her office, computer, ipad, phones etc

Umm, you're doubling up there. Having a quick read of that it's an extender, which not really what you need to if you've got Cat 6 running in parallel. An access point would do what you describe. Plug your Cat6 into a nice little switch, then you can plug wired devices into that and a WAP into it as well. All's super.

Although a mesh would be better so you didn't have to keep changing networks on your mobile devices.

Caveat: I've not read the TP-link manual, it might well have a standalone WAP mode ;)

C
 

sionie1

Member
Messages
1,316
I've been searching these threads to see if anyone is using 5g to power their wifi at home. I can get speeds of up to 350 using a 5g EE account and a Huawei CPE Pro2 router vs 8.5 on a good day from BT over copper ( often as low as 2.8). I want to get better coverage over the house now, using some sort of MESH, however am really getting bogged down in what I can and can't do. I don't want to spend days on an app configuring anything, ideally plug and play ( don't mind mooching around the house to find the best spots for the equipment though). Has anyone done anything similar or any advice on what kit would suit a 3 bed that doesn't require a degree to set up and use? I've been looking at the Asus AX1800 mini (twin pack) as a starting point. Any builds or recommendations out there please?