Home Network, rubbish wifi

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I have recently moved in to a new house, i'm unfortunately stuck in a talktalk contract otherwise I would have jumped over to Virgin fibre optic by now... anyway...

The main BT line is upstairs which is where I have my router / phone line connected. This unfortunately means that therefore the wifi is pretty **** when i'm working from the conservatory.

I have got a couple of powerline adapters which seem to be working pretty well, but I could really do with extending the wifi signal / strength. The router is a Dlink DSL-2680.

Any advice would be great, cheers.

 

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1. You need to set up an access point, this is a wifi router that is connected to the main network by Ethernet / Powerline.

2. The other alternative would be a wireless repeater, this is a wireless solution that receives and re-transmits using wifi, but it would need to be within range of the old wifi and the conservatory, hence option 1 would probably work better

What I did in my house was run cat5 through roof-space, then hook it to the new access point.

I bought an Asus AC68U, its ok but some of my old wifi devices seem to struggle with connecting. Not got to the bottom of that yet.

 

I use this in my place, can't fault it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WPA4220KIT-Powerline-Extender-Ethernet/dp/B00DHB2T44

SR

 

Can also get powerline adapters with built in wifi access points now, means buying new ones but saves an extra box.

 

Have you done any troubleshooting before deciding to get an access point?

There are many different steps you can take to ensure you are maximising the range of your current AP in terms of wireless strength.

1. What channel are you running on for wireless? Log into the router and find out, if its set to auto its likely you could be overlapping with a neighbour.
Related to this point would be how densely populated are the surrounding areas? Can you see alot of wireless networks when searching?

If you have alot of wireless networks in close proximity all running on similar wireless channels on the same frequency you are going to get alot of degraded signal. The tick is to use a clean channel that others are not running. Most end users will never tune their wireless networks, hence there's a good chance if you've not tuned yours everyone is running on the same channel causing signal degradation.

2. Check the channels others are using by using SSIDer or some other app that sniffs the wireless signals in the area using the wireless nic on your laptop or PC.

Based on the information given back, adjust your channel to something thats clean (there are only 3 clean channels) that are not used or have minimal usage..

Have a scan of this:

How to Find the Best WiFi Channel For Your WiFi Network

If the above fails, or you live in the middle of nowhere your best bet is to buy an AP.

 

I tried that and I switched to channel 13 which wasn't being used in the area, I can see a lot of different wifi networks as it's a pretty normal housing estate that I live in.

Although the signal is slightly better now than what it was when set to auto, it's still pretty weak. I've bought myself a 20 metre cat6 shielded cable, I am going to wire it through the loft or possibly through the floorboards, i've got a car port which is fully covered by the rain so I will install an ethernet port out here, or I may just run it through to my garage which is next to the car port where I have an 8 port hub and I could then get an AP attached which will feed the garage and most of downstairs pretty well including the garden for when the sun comes back out again.

for those of you that may wonder why I bought a 'shielded' cable, it was only £1 more than the unshielded and I thought that if I am going to be running it through the floorboards alongside electrical cabling, then there is less chance of losing any signal due to EMI.