Extending wireless network

tom_e

tom_e

tom_e

Man of Honour
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
31,882
Location
Shropshire
We've just moved house and now my room is the loft conversion meaning I'm a long way from the Virgin superhub down in the living room.
This is giving me about a tenth of what the actual connection is capable of, I bought some homeplugs but due to the way the place is wired they won't work and I don't really want to be trying to run Ethernet up here as it'll be a lot of work and we rent so the less holes and things I have to make the better.
The only other option I can think of is to get a wireless access point set up on the middle floor but most of the ones that aren't crazy money seem to get bad reviews around them dropping the connection so if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
 
I got an ex Virgin Media Dlink DIR 615 off ebay for not much money. I installed DD-WRT firmware and now use it as a wireless bridge to get my TV and bluray player onto the internet. But it can just as easily be used as a wireless repeater.
 
For a tenner it looks worth a shot, any idea what sort of power adaptor they take as the ones of the bay don't come with them.

edit: Never mind found one with an adapter :)
 
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Yeah, mine came with the power adapter. You lose 50% of the speed when it's used as a repeater-bridge, but mine still connects to my main router at 72Mb/sec.
 
I've found wireless repeaters to be very poor and unreliable. What I did was to connect my router to a Homeplug and then nearer to where I needed the connection used another Homeplug and connected to a Access Point, get fantastic speeds and connection is as solid as a rock!
 
The Dir-615 is good but not that good. I found that it couldn't quite cover my property so I've supplemented it with a buffalo HP(high power) which covers not only the house but the garden too.

The buffalos can be flashed with dd-wrt too but I've got tomato on mine
 
Cheers for the advice, I can't see it struggling too much as it will be placed in the room that is directly above the SH downstairs and directly below my room upstairs so it doesn't have to push a signal any great distance to be honest.
If it doesn't work I can always stick it on the MM and it'll of cost me next to nothing to try it and if it does work it's significantly cheaper than the £60 of the wireless homeplugs :D
 
Got my DIR and got DD WRT installed on it and got it working only issue now is it really does slice my 20mb internet connection in half, is there anyway I can set it up to get it to run at full speed?
Both that and the superhub can connect at N speeds and all my wireless kit is G so surely there's a way to get them connecting with N therefore me being limited to half N speeds rather than half G speeds which I seem to be at the moment.
 
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