Any of you IT bods know of a good value (not too expensive, but also not totally crap) Wi-Fi extender thing.
I was thinking about one of those ones that pass it through your mains electricity. That way I can get Wi-Fi in the shed in case wfh gets really difficult and we end up clearing it out and sticking a makeshift desk there. That and summer working on the laptop, in the garden when it warms up!
I’ve read a load of articles and stuff, but it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me. So real world experience would be much appreciated.
Cheers
GB
Wifi Mesh networks are the way to go. They use a handful of small repeaters to extend coverage. Wifi doesnt go through thick walls well, especially 5ghz. So these repeaters can give a line of sight to other rooms. Shed might be a bit tricky. Depends in where the shed is and how close you can get a repeater. Near a window is better than a wall.
The powerline adapters are ok, but you will be hard push to get much over 50mbps and that’s not much better than good wifi coverage. That might be sufficient but if you’ve got super fast broadband it will suck that you can get anywhere near full speed.
The other option is a really long ethernet patch cable. My house currently has cables all over the place as the wifi just couldn’t cope with all the connections
Well our max Wi-Fi, on fibre, at the mo is about 20-22 mbps in the house. So if the power line ones do 50 then that won’t be an issue. The issue is whether the limits you speak of are a max capacity issue (so no problem for me there) or that they effectively reduce your ‘normal’ mbps by x%.
Don’t really need it badly enough to go dragging cables down the garden. The shed is probably 20-30 odd metres away from the house, so don’t know if the mesh thing would work for that?
I have a Netgear extender at home. plugs in, not much bigger than a plug with two small aerials out the top. Creates a 2nd wifi network with the same name and _A or something. Works well to garage , think it was £35 or so.
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If you have power to the shed go for a powerline adaptor. Just double check you have a network port on your laptop. Some smaller slimline ones dont. Although you can get USB adapters.
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I use an Ethernet power line adapter in the garage; ideal for Zwift on the laptop.
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What’s this? An adaptor that you plug into the power socket in the garage. But then you run an ethernet cable from the adapter to the laptop?
That could work if I’m sat in the shed. But, thinking about it, a Wi-Fi would be preferable so we can pick it up on phones and laptops in the garden as well.
I’ll look at that one @Hammerer ta. Do I need some sort of an adaptor in my laptop as well for that?
Nah it just acts like another router. You set it up by connecting to current router using the WPS button
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Yep looks the same as tgst
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I have Devolo dLAN 500 powerline adapters - a couple of which act as wifi access points so you can build a nice mesh around the property. One is in the Summerhouse aka Pain Cave so I can stream music and video out there, plus one in my Workshop/Shed which allows the video cam attached to it to stream to me anywhere (cam is to keep an eye on the side entrance from the drive). it works pretty well - can recommend Devolo kit (made in Chermany not China) for it’s quality.
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Yeah you need one each end, so from the route to a plug socket where your router is, then one from a plug socket in the garage to your device. It uses the electrical wiring to send the signal
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Ahh. That would’ve caught me out then. If have only bought one! As I guess they’re not as helpful as to come in twos!
Are you talking about the netgear one? I don’t think that’s using the electrical wiring at all. You just put it somewhere in ‘sight’ of your router, and it creates another wireless network to extend the signal - i.e. the connection between the extender and the base router is wireless
I bought a couple of these for our house, £13 TP-Link ones (hello China!) that arrive today. Longer term I’ll go mesh perhaps, but I think for my use cases (TV in bedroom and TV in kitchen, all streaming only) I can live with having 3 different networks in the house for now.
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No, I mean these. They have ethernet at each end and send the signal down the electrical wiring. The ones you mean are WiFi repeaters which extend and boost the Wifi signal.
I have 2 Devolo power line adapters, they are great, get coverage throughout the house and in the basement. Find that I need to unplug them about once per week to do a “reboot” as they slow down over time
I tried Wifi extenders, and they were all crap
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Yes, I find WiFi extenders crap in our house too, with stone walls. Powerline adaptors all the way.
Are Online retailers still dispatching stuff?
Seems so. Amazon have said they are prioritising certain orders not sure what that means. Office and PC kit seems to be suffering the same problem as gym kit in that everywhere is out of stock.