Upgrading network - advice needed

[Diddums x]

Morning all, bit of a long post but please bear with me

I have BT Fibre which runs in to my house through what looks like a Huawei modem (standard BT issue jobbie). This then runs into a Homehub 3, after which all my devices are connected wirelessly, in most cases using whatever cheapo adapter I had lying around, usually one of those tiny USB dongles. This seems to be ok, but is that really the case? I'm trying to eliminate all causes of a slow connection here.

The wireless is slow and unreliable, which I'm lead to believe is a common issue with the Homehub 3 (anyone care to comment on this?).

Unfortunately homeplugs aren't an option as the wiring in my house seems to have been installed by Stevie Wonder.

The distance between my PCs and my router is about 10m with at most one wall inbetween them.

I'm trying to set up a media server which means I need fast, reliable internet.

So what's the best course of action here? Replace the router with something better? Replace the WiFi dongles? If either or both of these are the solution, can anyone recommend anything?

Cheers in advance!

 

[thenewoc]

Ethernet cable for speed and reliability.

To do it properly you need to survey your house and identify a safe and convenient route from the router to a cupboard or bedroom that you don't mind having a small network rack or cabinet. The latter being preferred if you have children who might tamper with cabling as you can get a small network cabinet with a lockable door, even mount it high on the wall. You then need to do the same surveying for each room location you need to run cable from the patch panel at the above location to.

You have PC's but not Smart TV(s), Sky, blu ray player, games consoles or other Ethernet devices that woūld also benefit from being connected to Ehernet sockets?

In short, once you've got sockets where they ought to be you would only use wifi for roamīng devices (phones, tablets and possibly laptops).

 

[APM]

Get BT to re-site your router in your loft,then replace their standard jobbie with an Asus or other quality router,add a switch and run cables from the switch in the loft down through the eaves and fascia boards then down the walls externally and in to whatever rooms you need your connections to go to.

Bit of work but a techy feat to marvel at once it's done.

 

[Diddums x]

Cheers guys.

I've been toying with loads of ideas as this is something that's been bugging me for a long, long time. I have a few issues all over the place so I'd like to rule as many out as possible to just try and establish the most reliable / fastest internet I can have. I'm wanting to tear BT a new one because of my rubbish internet but I can't because it could be on my end. It also doesn't help that I work for them.

With that in mind, I bought a Homehub 5 for £37.50 which gets good reviews across the board. I've also just picked up a pair of Devolo dLAN 650+ homeplugs in the hope that they outperform my cheapo ones that I tried before. The place I bought them from has a 30 day return policy so I'll take them for a spin this weekend and see how they fare. If poorly, I'll return them and look at running ethernet thrugh my ceiling which shouldn't be too hard as my ceiling is full of dichroics so easy access.

Fingers crossed!

 

[Diddums x]

Morning


Just to update this in case anyone can benefit from it, those Devolo plugs are simply awesome. I had other ones before, most notably some Arcnet ones which BT supplied and some or other cheapo brand. The Arcnet ones did the job but interfered with the other ones and when I used the other ones alone, they kept dropping connection - they were awful.

These ones have really made a difference, and compared to Wifi, I've gone from 35mbps on a good day to well over 100mbps on a good day, but seemingly never below 90.

I also picked up my Homehub 5 from the post office today, if I have time I'll install it later and see if it increases the speed even more.

Really happy with these new homeplugs, I would never have thought it'd make such a difference!