Moving House - WiFi Recomendation

GuruJockStrap · 13 Feb 2021 at 13:28

Will hopefully be moving house in March and will be needing a WiFi solution.

Currently, I have the luxury of my PC being situated in a room directly above where our router is. So for the last 8 years, I've had the reliability of a wired connection.

New house will see the router situated in the ground floor room at the from of the house but the PC located upstairs at the back of the house. So running a wired connection is going to be tricky to begin and to be honest, won't be a priority when we move in.

So I'm looking at WiFi options. I like my online gaming and the pings I currently experience, so wouldn't want that to get worse.

It's looks like I should be able to squeeze a PCI-E card inside my case, so are these regarded as better options than USB ones?

Are there any recomended models that are regarding as best?

bremen1874 · 13 Feb 2021 at 15:17

For the PC, the location of the antennas matters more than whether it's USB or PCIe. Being able to have the antennas in clear air can make a big difference.

Personally, I'd be looking at a set of Powerline adapters (AV1300 or better) as the next best option to a hard-wired connection.

GuruJockStrap · 13 Feb 2021 at 16:15

How are Powerline adapters?

The house we're hopefully moving to is about 9 years old, so household electrics and wiring should be decent I would think.

Heating is served by an electrical air source heat pump, which probably draws a lot of power, so not sure what impact that would have if on the same circuit/ring as the powerline adapters?

bremen1874 · 13 Feb 2021 at 16:29

Wouldn't the heating be on dedicated circuits?

Powerline adapters are a bit luck of the draw with how well they'll work. As long as you buy them from somewhere with a sympathetic returns policy there's no great risk.

You'd need to manage expectations as well. Divide the rated speed by three to get somewhere near what they'll manage when working well. Like all networking, the speeds quoted are the PHY rates, not actual throughput. With Powerline and wireless, there are some significant overheads to be taken in to account.