Re-Doing my home network

mattyjim123

mattyjim123

mattyjim123

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5 Sep 2012
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254
Hi guys, hope you've had a good Christmas!

My current home network is unreliable, unstable and just generally causing problems here there and everywhere (WiFi dropouts, router seemingly freezing etc)

A little bit of background to the current layout: It's a standard, poorly built 70's box shaped house with a conservatory and a garden. I'd say its roughly 50 feet from the front door to the back of the conservatory, and about 30 feet wide. 2 story.

At the moment we have ADSL (because we're in a village and naturally one of the last ones to get fibre... Supposed to be coming in ~18 months). The line comes in in the hallway, and is split for the phone in the hallway, and and extension cable for the router, up the stairs and in my bedroom. If the router is in the hallway, we get terrible WiFi signal to the back of the house both upstairs and downstairs. Having the router in my room makes the positioning more central, but decreases signal strength and stability overall downstairs. It also decreases stability for our Sonos system in the kitchen (Two Play:5 speakers). However, having it in my room also means that I can have a direct ethernet link to my desktop PC. The router is a Netgear DGND3700.

What I would like is some suggestions as to how I can streamline and make my network more stable and allow for strong WiFi signal throughout.

Powerline adapters? A more powerful router? Extenders? Perhaps some powered antenna's with a new router?

I dunno, hopefully you can (try) and understand my (crappy) explanation and offer up some options for me!

Thanks a bunch! :)
 
Put the router on the prime socket for maximum bandwidth, and run cables to switches and wireless repeaters elsewhere in the house. Some routers can also be set up as repeaters.
 
You cannot beat Cat5e/6 cabling for reliability and speed. Anything else is more luck than judgement as to whether or how well it will work. You can get external grade cable if it's easier to go out through the wall tack to the outside and then re-enter in another room. You can always chain switches together if you want to reduce cabling clutter - ie run one cable from A to B and then another from B to C rather than run two from A.
Powerline does work but the speed you get is like wifi...suck it and see. If you're on less than 20Mbps broadband, it's likely to be more than that so you can create islands of wired cabling linked by powerline. I'd probably rate powerline as more consistent than Wifi as new wifi networks keep turning up and everyone shouting loader than everyone else.
Multiple wifi points can distribute signal round a property but you need a wired infrastructure to hang them off. Wireless extensions of wireless tend to be a pain in the backside in my experience. Especially as you can have good signal to the local access point so it looks good but you can't see the signal has dropped between the repeaters.

I'd go wired for preference and powerline links as second choice.
 
Thanks for the replies chaps,

Probably wont be able to route ethernet round the house unfortunately, powerline adaptors is a good shout though.

Are there any powerline adaptors that can also transmit WiFi signals as part of the same wireless network. For example, say I have a powerline adaptor (without WiFi) at my router, and then one by the TV in the living room, one by the Sonos in the kitchen both with WiFi, and I can then move around the house with my phone/laptop jumping onto the strongest access point. If so, can you recommend a decent set that wont break the bank?

Cheers guys.
 
I forget the models and... will admit, I'm not sure of the setup for mixing wifi and powerline but there are definitely powerline adapters that are basically just a wifi repeater/access point with a plug.
 
Some of the models have a built in wifi point in one end of a pair. I think TP Link do some. You should be able to just set the SSID and encryption key the same as your existing wifi network and your devices will roam about to whichever has the strongest signal in a moronic fashion (ie won't always change when they should and might when they shouldn't). On some wifi cards you can set a roaming sensitivity so they abandon a sinking ship faster and move to a stronger signal.
Are TP-Link "decent"? Almost certainly not...but they're good enough for most users and they're pretty cheap. Wouldn't have a problem recommending them.
 
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