Best Solution for extending Wi-Fi throughout house with brick walls?

strocky

strocky

strocky

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Joined
9 Jul 2007
Posts
395
Layout
2 Story House (front 4 rooms brick wall 1950's)
Back 4 rooms (modern plasterboard extension)
Mancave (mix of old brick with modern plasterboard inside)

Current Kit
Three 5G Router (currently situated in front of house(
TP Link 1300 AV / TL-PA8010P Extenders (3 off in total - One for each bedroom)
Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LR Access Point (was used to boost wifi from house into mancave)
15 Metres Outdoor Lan cable (running from front of house over roof into mancave at rear garden)
Multiple 1Gigabit Switches + 1 off 2.5Gb switch

Main Clients
3 off - Wifi Tablets (all around house)
4 off - Wifi Phones (all around house)
2 off - Nvidia Shields (pref wired) (one in mancave / one in back bedroom)
1 off - HTPC Server (deffo wired and in mancave)

Coverage required approx 160 Square Meters, would like at least ethernet access in one of the bedrooms

As you can see the above is a hot-potch fix and not terribly reliable, it's also been made semi-redundant because I had access to 2 No. Three 5G Routers so ran one in the mancave wired and one in the house to serve the bedrooms via wifi

However the 2nd 5G router is away at the end of the month so I either need to get the old band back together or open to suggestions for a more cohesive solution
 
If you want a fully reliable option, you will want to wire up each room that struggles to get a signal, then place an access point there. Seeing as you already have a Unifi one, I would be tempted to stick with that so you can manage them all with the Unifi controller.
 
you need to run ethernet wires. Wifi signal becomes uselss after 3 partition wall or 2 brick walls. Think of wireless as the connection between your wireless device and the network, not the connection from your firewall/router to your device. i.e. wifi is 'last few metre' in the room/hall to your device, and you need wired infrastructure to get your network to that point. Use unifi, set up PoE and then you only have to run ethernet . this is the way.
 
Same here. Property is all brick and stone walls, no partition or stud walls. I went from Powerline Adapters, to Mesh, and now finally on wired ceiling mounted PoE APs. Network side is all 2.5Gb with Cat6a. Only way to do it sadly as mentioned above.
 
strocky said:
15 Metres Outdoor Lan cable (running from front of house over roof into mancave at rear garden)
Click to expand...
Just on this, I use an outdoor AP connected via smart mesh back to an upstream AP indoors. Similar distance to your man cave. Backhauls on either 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz and presents the other channel for use. I ran some speed tests and it is more than acceptable for what I need outside. So you might not have to run a cable to your man cave.
 
Powerline is fine if you are happy with probably max 20-25 MB. Physical ethernet obviously the best but probably the most effort unless you did what I did and had some electricians do it externally (3 storey house), they then just drilled into each floor, then on each floor there is a mesh point.
 
I've a 1930s house with internal brick walls and after spending a year trying various routers, powerline, mesh, extenders I gave up getting a clean signal to stream TV etc without hiccups. I spent last week with a big drill and many metres of CAT5e and now every static device is cabled.
Not had a problem since. It is worth the effort.
 
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