Newbie question on wireless routers

specialk1215 · 18-08-2009, 16:49

Forgive me if I am posting this in the wrong spot but I am brand new to these forums.

I am moving house next week, and am trying to decide on which router to go with in my new house. The house is a typical tall Victorian terrace house (ie:old, thick brick walls) with 3 floors, and a self-contained office at the end of the garden. I work from home and will need great range so I am definitely interested in an N-Technology router. I *may* want VPN technology in the future, but other than that, I am lost... I am rather technically inept - so I was hoping you clever folks could give me some good advice. I don't know what I need, or what is important. Service and ease of use will obviously be key.

I should add that, in a perfect world, given my lack of technical expertise, I was hoping to get whichever broadband provider I choose (BT or Virgin) to provide their router vs installing my own... as this helps a lot on the support side of things. (ie: I only have one point of contact vs. two or more if something goes wrong). Any ideas on whether BT Broadband (Home Hub) or Virgin Broadband is the better bet? I believe Virgin supplies the Netgear RangeMax and BT offers their own brand.

I have spent way too many hours trying to figure this all out on my own and am getting more and more confused. Help!

Matth · 18-08-2009, 22:46

Might need to go powerline/homeplug instead, sounds like the classic "difficult" location for Wifi.

For Wifi, you really want to match up the extras, so if you take the suppliers router option and it supports a certain branded feature for range extension, you want adapters which support the same feature - in some cases, if they use the same chipset, they mat support the same feature but call it by another name.