Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Hi, I hope the wise people out there can help?

I currently have the Superhub and 30mb connection. I run a Mac and the kids have 3 PC between them. All good.

I am working a lot from home these days and have created an office in the garden, approx 20 or so metres away from the super hub and Broadband connection. I will be running another iMac in the office. Currently, I get no signal in the office at all and I know I need to upgrade this.

Can you please advise which is the best route? Can I still use the superhub effectively even just as a modem? I want to get the best wireless router for the money £120-£130, it would also be handy to add my printer on the network too (although this isnt imperative)

Should I/ would I need to hard wire the new router somewhere nearer the office (obviusly dont want to spoil the connection in the house).

I'd love your input please . . .
THANKS in advance

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

You'll want to add a new wireless access point in or near the office.

Wireless range is limited by law, not by how much the router costs. A more expensive router won't have enough range, nomatter how much you pay for it.

A decent add-on AP costs £20 or less.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Depending on how you supply power to your office homeplugs could be an option.

http://www.ebuyer.com/263575-tp-link...ck-tl-pa211kit

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Assuming the garden office is on the same electrical circuit as the rest of the house, you could try a homeplug wireless extender. One end gets connected to the router and plugs into the mains. The other end plugs into the main in the office, and provides a wireless signal there. I'm not sure what actual speeds you will get, but the ones I have do provide a solid signal.

Edit: what ^ he said, except the ones I linked to provide a wireless signal as well.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Great advice all! Thank you.
Sadly, the office is on a different circuit, although it is kind of connected.

Re the new AP . . . I am a total novice (I'm sure you may have guessed!) but how do I go about sorting this? Is this something I can do myself - i.e. run an ethernet extension? (although I was hoping for a wireless solution) or an extension of the broadband 'input'. Will this need to be done by Virgin?
Thanks again.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

An ethernet cable would be the best and cheapest solution, but you could do it wirelessly if you really hated cables that much. It'd be slower and harder to set up than a plain ethernet cable.

You would have to do it yourself. Virgin don't support more than one connection per property - and charge you around £100 to move the connection point.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

About a tenner for a ready-made 30m cable. Run it down the garden somewhere where you're least likely to hit it when you're digging. For additional safety and longer life you could run it in something like a length of garden hose terminated each end above ground level and out of the weather.

It'll give you a *much* faster and more reliable connection. That's certainly the way I'd choose.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Agreed. Assuming there is already some sort of provision for the mains cabling to the office you may be able to run the ethernet through or at least near to that.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

I'm thinking Ethernet then! Off to Maplins then . . .

Thanks guys. Appreciate your help

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

THIS might come in handy, or something like it?:)

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Can I just point out that Homeplugs do not have to be on the same circuit? My shed is on an entirely different spur to the main house ring main and I get excellent performance with my AV200 Mini Devolo's.

Re: Wireless upgrade - can you help please?
 

Even better, and probably cheaper than garden hose. Good find.