Wall Socket Wifi Extender?

Caporegime
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Someone will be along soon to tell you to run a cable, even if it means drilling holes in 56 walls, two ceilings/floors and your first born.
 
Soldato
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Are you referring to wall sockets with an extender built in or a plug in type?
I have used the later (Netgear AC750 speed) and it does as expected for my phone or tablet. I would say the benefit of these are ease of upgrade and range of options. The built-in ones seem to be 2.4GHz only.
Depending on the area you want to extend to mesh system may suit better than these too.
 
Soldato
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Im interested in this as well. What are the security implications with having a wifi extender? What password do you put in. The modem one or do the extenders have their own password and if so how safe are the extenders?
 
Soldato
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Has anyone used of the wall socket wifi extenders? Just wanted to know if they're worth installing?

I have a few TPLink AV500 WiFi extenders (wall socket types).

I've got a big, old house with solid walls, which meant no WiFi in parts of the house. The extenders fixed that issue, with minimum fuss.

Each extender has its own password, about ten digit numeric.
 
Permabanned
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Has anyone used of the wall socket wifi extenders? Just wanted to know if they're worth installing?

I had a set before running cable throughout the house. They worked great.

Someone will be along soon to tell you to run a cable, even if it means drilling holes in 56 walls, two ceilings/floors and your first born.

You could run cable throughout the house, just drill through all your walls. :D
 
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Associate
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I’d personally advise making sure any wifi boosters/extenders you buy are Mesh. Saves changing which WiFi ssid you are connected to and also stops the connection unexpectedly dropping out when you go from one area of the house to another.
 
Soldato
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stops the connection unexpectedly dropping out when you go from one area of the house to another.

I think this is a bit of a myth that any system can do this. Even Cisco and Aruba can’t stop the connection dropping between nodes. You just normally don’t notice it because of buffers and the fact that the time between dropping one radio and picking up the next is in milliseconds. The only thing you do notice it in is if you move between nodes using VOIP or WiFi-Calling.
 
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Soldato
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I have a few TPLink AV500 WiFi extenders (wall socket types).

I've got a big, old house with solid walls, which meant no WiFi in parts of the house. The extenders fixed that issue, with minimum fuss.

Each extender has its own password, about ten digit numeric.

I’ve used a TPLink RE450 to fill in a coverage gap in my 200 year old stone house. Took all of 5 minutes using the TPLink Tether app on my iPhone.

It’s dual 2.4GHz/5GHz band and has a LAN output so you can feed a TV/Games Console/Printer from it.

Not as seamless as Mesh, but ideal if you just want to provide WiFi to static devices without drilling holes and running Cat5/6 all over the place.
 

Pho

Pho

Soldato
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This is only 2.4Ghz not 5Ghz. 2.4Ghz is better for distance and going through walls etc but is much slower (though obviously still better than a patchy/weak 5Ghz signal).

I'd look at an alternative mesh system as well. I know for a cheap and just works option the BT Whole Home mesh ones are meant to be good. If you're on BT already and complain about poor wifi they'll probably send you some for free. The discs work out pretty similar price to these sockets too.
 
Soldato
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Personally I would invest in better hardware than trying to add something that may not solve the problem. Just to clarify, I tried homeplugs and several WiFi nodes, boosters and the like, even had a mesh system.

For myself we have old red engineering brick walls inside the house making WiFi a nightmare, I ended up putting three Ubiquity AP's up, two in the loft and one in the cupboard above the stairs (stairs are in the middle of the house) and now have perfect wifi throughout the property.
 
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I think this is a bit of a myth that any system can do this. Even Cisco and Aruba can’t stop the connection dropping between nodes. You just normally don’t notice it because of buffers and the fact that the time between dropping one radio and picking up the next is in milliseconds. The only thing you do notice it in is if you move between nodes using VOIP or WiFi-Calling.

You’re probably correct in that they all drop when passing node to node.

I have one of the non mesh WiFi boosters and the problem I find is that my router WiFi signal reaches the end of the house but is poor in terms of performance. So sometimes I have to manually move the connection to the booster, a mesh system would remove this issue.
 
Soldato
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I wouldn't touch anything like this, British General are not a networking company for a start.

Really? British General is a trading name of Schneider Electric. They have copper and fibre networking and IoT subsidiaries and are very much a networking company. Just not a brand name that sells in the UK.

Let’s be frank here, it’s a 2.4GHz WiFi N repeater/mesh unit that clones the SSID from a source SSID. It’s never going to need a driver update and it’s only being used in the home so security isn’t a massive issue either. So if it works, what’s the beef? You and I both know the OP should just run a cable and add an access point, but they’re clearly happier spending £30 on this, so where’s the issue apart from brand snobbery?
 
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