I am buying my wife a garden studio for her hobbies and I need to make sure she has a decent network connection for her laptop, its going to be about 10 meters from the WiFi repeater so the connection is not great and only just maintains connection integrity, I was looking into a Powerline solution but research indicates that adapters on different ring mains can be a problem, the main router is upstairs and the power supply to the studio will be taken off a spur in the garage. What are your experiences and do you have any recommendations as there are a bewildering array of products out there.
I have tried a high gain USB WiFi adapter with little improvement, although it was only an Edimax 3db gain model, I could try a box intended for caravans etc. if push came to shove.
Any help would be gratefully received before I part with precious funds.
the newer kit doesn’t seem to have as much as problem as it once did.
I’ve put a couple in place now where I know they are on different fuses off the main board and not had a problem. 10m isn’t that far for things not to reach though - and if power is being taken for the studio, lump in a RJ45 provision (put in a pair, not just one) 10m external grade RJ45 is about £30 for 100M
I’ve bought 2 different ones in the past couple of years a D-Link and a TPlink, mainly because my sister was staying upstairs in my old house but the router was downstairs and the wifi kept dropping out. Haven’t had any issues using either of them on a laptop, a netbook and a big box desktop, all worked fine. Still have one in my new flat, but tend to stick to wifi as the router is only 10 feet away. The upstairs circuit was on a different ring main, but it all connected fine
Thanks Guys, The router is at the upstairs right front of the house and the studio will be at the left rear of my plot, running cables between them would be a nightmare, being a fairly modern property there is a lot of foil backed insulation around so I need a repeater downstairs in the house as well, I can just hear my wife’s objections if I announce that I am going to drill holes in the lounge wall for some cables, the 2.4 Ghz signal seems to fare better than the 5 Ghz that doesn’t penetrate outside the fabric of the house, so I will try a high gain repeater first, something cheap that I can attach a directional high gain antennae to, its only for general internet access and maybe a bit of music or video streaming, so if I can achieve a reliable 6 Mbs + connection that will do.
I would move the router near a window, then get a this http://www.amazon.com/Hawking-HiGain-Directional-Window-Antenna/dp/B0010Z1V20 and get another for wives side with another bridge or router configured as bridge. I used these for passing out building and POS data on them for a few stores recently and all worked well. You may need to turn them and point more directly but the worked well.
Do you have any other phone points in the house you could move the router to for better coverage ?
Are you due a new WiFi router from your provider ?
I bought a roll of Cat-5e and just buried it next to the power cable when I ran it to my summerhouse and should have about 20m left somewhere unless the builders took a fancy to it.
Let me know if you want it, 1Gb between things is quite handy sometimes.
Before the network cable was in my summerhouse had power but no network, 40m seems too far for wireless so I tried a couple of PC world powerline adapters, they worked once, very slowly then gave up completely so I gave them away
The repeater is downstairs near the Patio doors - repeater and router are both dual band and I use the 5 Ghz band as a gaming link, gives a steady 300 Mbs connection between the two leaving the 2.4 Ghz band for device connection as it has better wall penetration, the whole house is fine internally with a minimum of 54 Mbs available. but a meter outside the wall in the garden directly behind the repeater and it drops to 6 Mbs and 2 Mbs 10 meters away which is not enough for decent media streaming, There is never going to be any requirement for any very high data rate connections so the expense of cable and labour is not justified (I’m too fat and old to do it myself ).
