Home WiFi woes
 

Can anyone suggest any clever fixes here? I can get 100Mbps or more from my home internet set up (4G modem/router with EE and an external antenna) but I’m having difficulties getting much of it into the corner of the room where my tv is. As you can see from the picture, in the same corner of the room, the tv gets 6.6Mbps while the iPad achieves 83. (When I ran the same test with the iPad elsewhere in the room I was getting over 100Mpbps).

I know that the iPad is on my router’s 5GHz band and the TV is on the 2.4GHz band. The TV can’t use 5GHz (apparently no Samsung TVs made before 2018 can). I have repeated the experiment with the Roku Express from the spare bedroom with similar results - it’s a little better because I can move it round a bit. But it seems it, too, is restricted to the 2.4GHz band.

I have been into the router admin pages and experimented with forcing it to use different channels; it is now set to channel 6 which was the best by far.

I can’t move the router because it is attached to an external antenna which has to be suckered to an upstairs bedroom window in order for us to get any decent 4G signal at all.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m out of options, short of doing serious, intrusive DIY to bring a network cable through the ceiling and into the living room. Although I am curious whether one of the more upmarket streaming products will work on 5GHz. The Roku website doesn’t seem to want to confirm whether their enhanced 4K products will do this.

Help!

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1633073985

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

Mesh system perhaps? but seems an expensive solution

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

Get some powerline wifi adapters, set them all to the same ssid and encryption as your main router, and it'll do a mesh kind of thing on the (very) cheap.


I've done the same with some TPLink ones, you need a standard powerline plugging into the router (via a LAN port) then just pop others in weak spots. Works a treat.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

A second for power line adaptors.

My VM SH3 and Netgear nighthawk X6 router are both on a shelf above my airing cupboard, I run a cable into my dad's room into a power line adaptor I have a second one behind the TV which goes into a switch.

Every device in my home that can be hard-wired is.

My brother In-law is about to run Cat8 to various rooms.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

If I bought 2 power line adapters and put one by the router and one by the tv could I connect to both via Ethernet? Hardwiring the TV is a very attractive proposition as it is a bit flaky at remembering WiFi networks.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

are you on one ring main or 2?

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

Yes.


Once you have connected one to your router you can add anywhere on the mains socket. (Provided your wiring is up to it).


We have one by the TV as well as a couple of wifi points, the last one was added when we got some outside furniture to boost the range outside (and is just on the other side of the back wall). Anywhere where you need a better connection than wifi, or just better wifi, has powerline adapters.


I have these which do a good job - though ended up with a v4 and a v5, the latter seems to need fewer reboots.

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-netw...ne/tl-wpa4220/

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

Coolio … I’m looking at the kit version of that, with one master and two extenders - if I’m going for this I might as well try to deal with the shoddy reception in one of our other rooms while I’m at it.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

If you do buy a TP-Link buy one that has 2 or more Ethernet ports.


The one upstairs connects to my router and a TiVo box, the one downstairs connects to an 8 port switch the other goes to a lead in which I can connect a laptop so I can connect directly to the router.

---------- Post added at 16:58 ---------- Previous post was at 16:56 ----------

IIRC you can buy multiple units and avoid cables.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

There are 3 socket rings covering most of our house, and 2 more fed from a secondary consumer unit (though the secondary unit is fed from the main one).

In the main part of the house we have separate rings for upstairs, downstairs hall/lounge, and kitchen. The dining room and a further bedroom each have their own ring, fed from the secondary consumer unit in the extension.

Well, you did ask … :D

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

I bought the 9020 version which is up to 2gig

---------- Post added at 17:02 ---------- Previous post was at 17:01 ----------


Check the model before you buy, as some may not work on your set up

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

It seems quite difficult to get the higher spec extenders as add ons - they only seem interested in selling starter kits, which is kind of annoying. For future proofing I’d rather have a gigabit setup with dual band WiFi but while I can easily buy a TP-Link AV1000 starter kit, I don’t seem to be able to buy additional single WPA-7517 units.

I’m not too worried about extending into the rooms covered by the secondary consumer unit because if I can even put one of these in the space next to the dining room (which has sockets on the primary consumer unit) then the WiFi extension signal will be more than adequate. I’m not too worried about the rest of it because I’m finding most contributors on places like Amazon don’t seem to understand what terms like ‘ring’ or ‘circuit’ actually mean, and are tying themselves in knots when trying to explain what works and what doesn’t.

A setup like this would be pretty useless if it could only work between sockets on the same ring - if you only have one socket ring in your house the chances are it’s small enough not to have any WiFi black spots in the first place. The usefulness of these is pretty much predicated on them being able to feed off a router located downstairs on one socket ring and provide service to an extender in the far corner of an upstairs bedroom.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

You can get a Tenda Mesh system for only a little more than a pair of powerline adapters

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

Perhaps, but I have a strong suspicion that the root of my problems is WiFi interference from my neighbours - my recommendation that they all get 4g broadband because BT still haven’t fibred us up has been a bit too successful and there have recently been lots of additional routers appearing in the immediate locality, closely followed by multiple Rokus and Chromecasts. While WiFi extension is a nice-to-have, what I suspect I need in order to bomb-proof my smart TV is a wired Ethernet link between it and the router. Powerlines appear to be a better option than actually drilling through my daughters’ bedroom floor to get an Ethernet cable into the lounge.

Re: Home WiFi woes
 

you should coerced them into Starlink hahahaha