Advice on Wired home network.

[Droolinggimp]

Hi.

Currently having issues with Wifi with some of the kids equipment. So I am going to go with wired connections.

Situation as it stands right now. Virgin media M250 (with Volt addon)

Virgin Media modem/router (no issues with it, works well) is situated in the living room. TV, PC, Xbox X are all connected with ethernet cable to router via a network switch box thing (netgear one, has 1 input and 4 outputs) All this is in the same room as modem/router.

Upstairs using WiFi I have 3 Tvs and 2 Xboxs. These are all taking time to connect/dropping/slow.

What is the best way to get all the upstairs stuff connected? disregard all wiring and installation, its just the way to connect it all I am needing.

Am I right in thinking just to get a larger ethernet network switch box, use one of the routers ports to connect to it and run 5 cables from network box to the stuff upstairs. (one of the routers ports is used to connect to my pc directly and another to the 4 port network box for the tv and dowstairs xbox.

 

[Armageus]

Run 1 cable from the Router upstairs, then connect a new Switch to it for all the upstairs devices

Ideally it's probably also worth running another cable upstairs, installing a dedicated Wifi AP (e.g. Unifi) in a central location, and turning the Virgin Wifi off.

So you end up with something like this

 

[Droolinggimp]

Run 1 cable from the Router upstairs, then connect a new Switch to it for all the upstairs devices

Ideally it's probably also worth running another cable upstairs, installing a dedicated Wifi AP (e.g. Unifi) in a central location, and turning the Virgin Wifi off.

So you end up with something like this

Thank you for that. Pretty simple it seems.

 

[alex24]

Or just run a cable from router to upstairs for a new AP in a good location and continue to use WiFi. Although you can never have enough physical cable drops in my experience...

Unclear if moving to a new AP upstairs and turning off WiFi on Virgin will actually not reduce the WiFi performance in locations nearer to the router, though.

Virgin will provide 'WiFi boosters' I believe if you ask. Can't vouch for them being any good but may be the easiest fix. Until you can run some cables and plan maybe better AP deployment if still needed.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I wired all my major devices at home, and put an additional WiFi access point upstairs but just for mobiles.

Took 2 days, not even full days, cost of everything including tools and 8 port unmanaged switch was about £120 and I've never looked back.

Honestly just do it.

 

[Droolinggimp]

I wired all my major devices at home, and put an additional WiFi access point upstairs but just for mobiles.

Took 2 days, not even full days, cost of everything including tools and 8 port unmanaged switch was about £120 and I've never looked back.

Honestly just do it.

thing is, our mobiles have good wifi upstairs, the only place it drops is when having a poo in the toilet , but thats fixed by literally holding the phone closer to the bathroom wall when sat down.... go figure.

I noticed a hole in the living room wall where previous sky cables were run through, same with our bedroom above. the downstairs hole is next to the router, I guess I can make the hole a little bigger to fit the ethernet cable through and run it outside into our bedroom and have the network switch box in our room. Easy to run cables from there into the boys rooms.

 

[Major774]

You need to looking into a mesh WiFi kit. The TP Link kits have been very good to me and simple to set up.

I am looking after 3 kits: S4, XE75 and XE75 Pro.

My PC can hit Virgin Media’s 1GB download speed with the XE75 Pro kit.

 

[bledd]

I wouldn't bother with WiFi mesh. Only use WiFi for mobiles, laptops and things like smart speakers. Wire up everything you can.

Put 4 ports to your main living room TV area, 4 to your office, then two to every other position that has a device.

24 port patch panel.