Boosting Wifi

[canalsiderenovation]

Finally we got our BT line connected. We suffer generally with poor Wifi and non existent mobile coverage due to our location but I'm pleased to report we have 4 devices connected so which is enabling us to work and watch Netflix! I've not tried the wifi coffee machine or ovens yet on the basis I can't think why I'd need wifi on them!

 

The bedroom/dressing room is the furthest away point and we have no wifi at all. I did take advice and get Cat5/6 whatever it was put in the dressing room (where we may eventually have a TV), in the living room and at the opposite end of the house in a guess bedroom ( the latter two of which are fine on WiFi and closer to the router).

 

So, what can I buy that will give me wifi in the bedroom to plug into this socket/Ethernet? Any particular brands or equipment I should focus on?

 

I think @AliG had some kind of booster and @PeterW I'm sure I read you have similar?

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by canalsiderenovation

[ProDave]

It looks like you don't have the ethernet socket connected yet, just a tv aerial socket and a blank.  Assuming the cable is there you need the ethernet socket connecting there, and at the other end the cable fitted with an RJ45 plug and plugged into one of the ethernet sockets on the router.

 

Someone else will have to advise what to plug into it.  We used an old reconfigured BT router (in the static caravan) but it was not a seamless reconnection when you moved from one zine to another.

 

 

[AliG]

A few of us have Ubiquiti systems, but it sounds like you just need a single extra access point so this may be overkill.

 

What you want is a wireless access point. You will plug this into the ethernet socket in the dressing room and then the socket should be connected to your wifi router at the other end.

 

If you think you will never use more than a 100Mbps internet connection then something like this would suffice, despite having a max wifi speed of 450 Mbps it only has a 100Mbps ethernet connection.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WA901N-Wireless-Injector-Ethernet/dp/B087MSF7BR/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=wireless+access+point&qid=1609864374&s=computers&sr=1-3

 

This one supports gigabit ethernet and AC wifi so will be more future proof for £40

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-WA1201-AC1200-MU-MIMO-Wireless/dp/B084BGKJZT/ref=sr_1_16?dchild=1&keywords=wireless+access+point&qid=1609864374&s=computers&sr=1-16

 

A Ubiquiti access point starts at around £70. I do think their pricing has become a little high recently as it has not fallen as much as other people have fallen. They are however flat and can be wall or ceiling mounted so are less intrusive.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-Networks-UAP-AC-LITE-Access-Point/dp/B016K4GQVG/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=wireless+access+point+ubiquiti&qid=1609864852&s=computers&sr=1-4

 

If your router does not have enough ports to connect everything you will need an ethernet switch, something like this -

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07PYSNSDD/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07PYSNSDD&pd_rd_w=dsWVI&pf_rd_p=1055d8b2-c10c-4d7d-b50d-96300553e15d&pd_rd_wg=Iubbn&pf_rd_r=1C6GN7PYKR5MNJY0VSKQ&pd_rd_r=967a89c9-1c5b-4216-bdc6-804545f01f51&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFBTDlURFFDNVlYRUgmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA5NDg1MzQxSVdCUFc0NDNQTVk3JmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAxNDU0MDk2SlNDRzJMSkc4VEomd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWwmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

 

You can set up the access point with the same SSID (network name) and password as your main router and things should pretty seamlessly move between them.

 

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by AliG

[Declan52]

I just installed a ubiquity lite in my house and it has been way better than I could have imagined. Just needs an Ethernet cable to connect into your router or network switch and you set it up in mins with an app on your phone. Once setup you login to your router and turn it's WiFi ability of. If you keep the WiFi SSID and password the same everything just keeps working away. 

My house is 2500 sqft bungalow and with it positioned in the middle of the first floor my whole house is covered. 

[Onoff]

I too used a second BT Home Hub as a wireless extender. It's not plug and play mind with some setting up. 

 

Though I don't like BG stuff, (British General.....British my ar$e) would one of these do:

 

https://www.screwfix.com/p/british-general-900-series-13a-2-gang-sp-switched-wi-fi-extender-socket-2-1a-1-outlet-usb-charger-white/8865V?

 

Instructions below. Just replace a double socket arounf halfway between your router and dead zone.

 

pa_1866053.pdf

[canalsiderenovation]

29 minutes ago, AliG said:

A Ubiquiti access point starts at around £70. I do think their pricing has become a little high recently as it has not fallen as much as other people have fallen. They are however flat and can be wall or ceiling mounted so are less intrusive.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-Networks-UAP-AC-LITE-Access-Point/dp/B016K4GQVG/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=wireless+access+point+ubiquiti&qid=1609864852&s=computers&sr=1-4

 

I think I'd rather go for the Ubiquiti for less than £70 if it's a decent piece of kit as we have a real dead zone this end of the house and we can wall mount it too. We have two other Ethernet sockets so it may be we have it in a more central place (living room) if it reaches to the bedroom as well. So I presume we put the circle bit into the Ethernet socket and then the socket connect the other end to the router. Plenty of sockets spaces on our router as we only have the Three mobile booster at the moment.

 

I can get it from Amazon and get it before Thursday as this is when the spark returns to sort out the Ethernet and outstanding stuff.

 

[Temp]

Are you with BT? BT advertise some sort of wifi guarantee don't they? Think they give you a free widget of some sort if wifi won't reach to all rooms? 

 

Otherwise there are loads of WiFi "Access Points" around as other have mentioned. I quite like those from Draytek but they are more expensive.

 

Once connected up you might have to log in and change the wifi channel so its different to the one in your router. The router will probably be on channel 1. I recommend channel 6 for the access port unless the neighbours are already using it.

[Declan52]

Install a WiFi analyser app on your phone and plug it in and try it in various positions in your house to find the sweet spot.

It comes with it's own power pack so needs plugged in somewhere. You will then have an Ethernet  cable from your router to the power pack and another Ethernet cable from the power pack to the unit. The first cable could be 500mm but the next one could be 50m or more. I bought a 20m cable and just moved the unit round the roof to find it's sweet spot. Drilled the hole and pulled the cable to it's position. My switch is in my attic so I had easy access to the first floor ceiling.

 

[Mr Punter]

The Ubiquiti APs are powered via the ethernet cable and supplied with a POE injector, which you can either plug in near the access point or near the router.

[canalsiderenovation]

8 minutes ago, Temp said:

Are you with BT? BT advertise some sort of wifi guarantee don't they? Think they give you a free widget of some sort if wifi won't reach to all rooms? 

 

Otherwise there are loads of WiFi "Access Points" around as other have mentioned. I quite like those from Draytek but they are more expensive.

 

Once connected up you might have to log in and change the wifi channel so its different to the one in your router. The router will probably be on channel 1. I recommend channel 6 for the access port unless the neighbours are already using it.

 

Indeed BT have this package but they charge a small fortune for it and I don't want to be stuck with BT. We only went with them as it was free for connecting our line as oppose to the £70 others wanted and they promised us a minihub whilst we were waiting to be connected and we got a reasonable fibre deal but I won't be staying with them long term.

 

Let's hope the Ubiquiti is good I've ordered it from Amazon.

[Gav_P]

I’ve said it else where in another thread, but I can’t say enough positive things about getting a TP-link Deco mesh system. Full coverage all over the house and garden. Easy to set up from the app with a step by step guide. 
 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deco-M4-Seamless-Coverage-Replacement/dp/B07NH1J543/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Mesh+Network&qid=1609868676&sr=8-3

[AliG]

41 minutes ago, canalsiderenovation said:

I think I'd rather go for the Ubiquiti for less than £70 if it's a decent piece of kit as we have a real dead zone this end of the house and we can wall mount it too. We have two other Ethernet sockets so it may be we have it in a more central place (living room) if it reaches to the bedroom as well. So I presume we put the circle bit into the Ethernet socket and then the socket connect the other end to the router. Plenty of sockets spaces on our router as we only have the Three mobile booster at the moment.

 

As @Mr Punter said if you want to put the Ubiquiti somewhere else where there isn't a socket then you can use PoE(Power over ethernet). The disc has an ethernet socket on the back and a mounting ring that you place on the wall or ceiling.

 

Where you position them depends very much on your tolerance for the internet slowing down. In my experience every wall that the signal passes through will reduce your speed materially (20%+) and after passing through two and certainly three walls connections become increasingly patchy. So it very much depends on where you want to have the signal available, where the walls are in the house etc. Some devices are much more flaky at connecting than others, TVs in particular often have very poor WiFi connections.

Edited January 5, 2021 by AliG

[Gav_P]

32 minutes ago, AliG said:

 

As @Mr Punter said if you want to put the Ubiquiti somewhere else where there isn't a socket then you can use PoE(Power over ethernet). The disc has an ethernet socket on the back and a mounting ring that you place on the wall or ceiling.

 

Where you position them depends very much on your tolerance for the internet slowing down. In my experience every wall that the signal passes through will reduce your speed materially (20%+) and after passing through two and certainly three walls connections become increasingly patchy. So it very much depends on where you want to have the signal available, where the walls are in the house etc. Some devices are much more flaky at connecting than others, TVs in particular often have very poor WiFi connections.

That’s exactly why I am so pro the mesh system. I don’t have any reduction in speed anywhere. That with 90cm stone walls and at the bottom of the garden. 
Just need one unit by the router (supplied by your ISP) and place the others by a power socket elsewhere in the house. 

[canalsiderenovation]

12 minutes ago, Gav_P said:

That’s exactly why I am so pro the mesh system. I don’t have any reduction in speed anywhere. That with 90cm stone walls and at the bottom of the garden. 
Just need one unit by the router (supplied by your ISP) and place the others by a power socket elsewhere in the house. 

 

What sort of mesh system do you recommend, just curious for price comparison I can always try this sort of system and the Ubiquiti and see what is best.

[Gav_P]

11 minutes ago, canalsiderenovation said:

 

What sort of mesh system do you recommend, just curious for price comparison I can always try this sort of system and the Ubiquiti and see what is best.

I wasn’t convinced it would work when I first decided to go for it. (I previously had 2 BT home hubs and they were struggling). So I decided on the cheapest available at the time, which was the TP-Link Deco M4. 3 units for £99.99 delivered the next day. 
 

For me it was a cheap punt that worked out really well. If it doesn’t work for you, just return it to Amazon... they do seem to have a brilliant returns service. 
 

Both my wife and I work from home (lots of video conferencing) and when my daughter was online with school, we had no performance issue with the connection. 
 

I only have 36mbps maximum where I live, but now using the Deco mesh I have that speed everywhere. 
 

If you are likely to have higher performance broadband (higher than 100mbps) then you would want a higher grade system like the M5 (I think) which also has smaller disc shaped units which are easier to hide.

 

Also it’s seem less if you are moving around the house, no dropping out and reconnecting to a different hub, which happens with WiFi extenders I believe.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Gav_P
Typo

[AliG]

23 minutes ago, Gav_P said:

That’s exactly why I am so pro the mesh system. I don’t have any reduction in speed anywhere. That with 90cm stone walls and at the bottom of the garden. 
Just need one unit by the router (supplied by your ISP) and place the others by a power socket elsewhere in the house. 

I have no experience with this system and reviews seem very positive. In my experience with other mesh systems they slow down the throughput of the network as a certain portion of bandwidth is used to create the network. However, perhaps if the mesh devices have a much much faster throughput capability than your internet speed then this would not happen.

 

As for the speed being the same everywhere that is just not physically possible, if the nearest access point is on the other side of a wall hen the speed will be slower than in the same room as the access point. It might well be good everywhere, I have good WiFi speed everywhere but I still have places where I get 280Mbps which is my connection speed and other places where I get 180Mbps which is very fast but not as fast because there is not direct line of sight to the access point.

 

 

[AliG]

4 minutes ago, Gav_P said:

I only have 36mbps maximum where I live, but now using the Deco mesh I have that speed everywhere. 

 

This probably explains things. When I had less than 100Mbps then I saw pretty much the same speed everywhere in the house. As it got faster then I saw more slowdown.

 

@canalsiderenovation has not said what his incoming internet speed is and this does make a difference, if it is more modest then the hits you see to the speed are less.

[canalsiderenovation]

2 minutes ago, AliG said:

@canalsiderenovation has not said what his incoming internet speed is and this does make a difference, if it is more modest then the hits you see to the speed are less

 

I'm a her!

 

I've ordered the TP mesh system (1-2 bedrooms) and the Ubiquiti and will see which is better.

 

Just ran a speed test.

 

[AliG]

1 minute ago, canalsiderenovation said:

I'm a her!

 

Apologies, need to remember that.

 

I am struggling not to order the Virginmedia 1Gbps internet, I am very sensitive to the speed of the internet. A few years ago when staying with the inlaws in the US, I could tell there was something wrong with their internet, it just didn't feel right. Once I investigated I found it only worked for 58seconds every minute. Before I left I had purchased a new cable modem, installed it and called up their provider to get it connected.

 

The Mesh system may well work fine with your speeds, it is worth looking at the speed your modem is connecting at to see if you are losing speed over your wifi connection already. A few years ago when we had Sky WiFi we dropped almost half the speed we were paying for within feet of the router.

5 minutes ago, canalsiderenovation said:

I've ordered the TP mesh system (1-2 bedrooms) and the Ubiquiti and will see which is better.

Seems like a reasonable plan.

 

[canalsiderenovation]

Just now, AliG said:

Apologies, need to remember that.

 

I am struggling not to order the Virginmedia 1Gbps internet, I am very sensitive to the speed of the internet. A few years ago when staying with the inlaws in the US, I could tell there was something wrong with their internet, it just didn't feel right. Once I investigated I found it only worked for 58seconds every minute. Before I left I had purchased a new cable modem, installed it and called up their provider to get it connected.

 

The Mesh system may well work fine with your speeds, it is worth looking at the speed your modem is connecting at to see if you are losing speed over your wifi connection already. A few years ago when we had Sky WiFi we dropped almost half the speed we were paying for within feet of the router.

Seems like a reasonable plan.

 

 

We can't get Virgin here ?

 

Our WiFi has never been particularly good here and we have had the somewhat basic plug in Netgear boosters before we had the building work done with almost no effect. Fingers crossed one of these work better.

[Buzz]

Hi @canalsiderenovationyour speeds look very similar to mine , over the years I have tried ,with varying degrees of success , different ways of getting a stable signal throughout the house .since covid and having 4 people working or learning at home my old tplink system kept dropping in and out causing more stress at an already stressful time , so got 3 of the bt Black discs on sor and spread them around the house and now get stable signal in all rooms at all times , I don't think they were one of the cheapest but the fact I don't have to act as Internet monitor for half my  working day means they are worth every penny. 

[canalsiderenovation]

14 minutes ago, Buzz said:

Hi @canalsiderenovationyour speeds look very similar to mine , over the years I have tried ,with varying degrees of success , different ways of getting a stable signal throughout the house .since covid and having 4 people working or learning at home my old tplink system kept dropping in and out causing more stress at an already stressful time , so got 3 of the bt Black discs on sor and spread them around the house and now get stable signal in all rooms at all times , I don't think they were one of the cheapest but the fact I don't have to act as Internet monitor for half my  working day means they are worth every penny. 

 

We are also both working from home, I would be normally anyway but there are both of us with multiple Skype and MS Teams meetings we can be in different rooms/other side of the bungalow.

 

I've got the TP mesh things ordered and the Ubiquiti so I need to get them both out and see which works best then send the other back to Amazon.

[Gav_P]

On 05/01/2021 at 19:52, canalsiderenovation said:

 

We are also both working from home, I would be normally anyway but there are both of us with multiple Skype and MS Teams meetings we can be in different rooms/other side of the bungalow.

 

I've got the TP mesh things ordered and the Ubiquiti so I need to get them both out and see which works best then send the other back to Amazon.

How did you get on? 

[AliG]

Beat me to asking @Gav_P

 

I was having a think about it and the more I think about it, mesh systems used to probably have a max throughput of 100Mbps so the overhead of the mesh would considerably slow down your WiFi if you had faster internet.

 

Nowadays with some the mesh systems having a theoretical throughput closer to 1000Mbps, they probably have a lot more capacity so they probably don't have the impact they used to on speeds.

[Gav_P]

16 minutes ago, AliG said:

Beat me to asking @Gav_P

 

I was having a think about it and the more I think about it, mesh systems used to probably have a max throughput of 100Mbps so the overhead of the mesh would considerably slow down your WiFi if you had faster internet.

 

Nowadays with some the mesh systems having a theoretical throughput closer to 1000Mbps, they probably have a lot more capacity so they probably don't have the impact they used to on speeds.

Agreed... I guess this is why they are used in commercial settings all the time nowadays.