WiFi boosters really any good?

xXxsephirothxXx

xXxsephirothxXx

xXxsephirothxXx

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Hello people,
I'm looking for a way to boost my Internet speeds & these wifi boosters are the only way I can think of that might work. I can't use home plugs cus the up & down stairs wiring are on two different circuits. I also don't have the option of drilling holes through the ceiling to feed ethernet cable to my desktop.

So these wifi boosters really up to the job? I'm currently only using home group modem & by home hub.

Cheers
 
Do you suffer from low WiFi signal in the first place? They only boost the wireless coverage across your home, not increase your internet speed.
 
Yer signal loss is pretty bad in my house for some reason & I have tried some cheap home plugs but I just could not get them to pair up together. I'm pretty sure that its down to the wiring in the house but I could be wrong & I don't really want to splash out £40+ just in case it's money down the drain.

Is there a way of increasing speed as well signal strength seeing as wifi boosters don't increase speed?
 
Few questions if you want some real help..

If you are simply not achieving your sync'd internet speeds due to poor WiFi signal, then you will probably need to either try home plugs, or, get a new WiFi adapter and/or router.

1.) Which ISP and broadband package are you on currently?

2.) Post your router stats i.e. downstream/upstream rate, SNR, attenuation, etc (Google how to login your router if unsure)

3.) Post a speed test (www.speedtest.net)

4.) If you don't mind what's your postcode? I'll check if you have any better packages available (i.e. FTTC, VM, etc)

5.) What make/model WiFi network adapter are you using? Check in Window's network & sharing centre if unsure then go into adapter settings.
 
Do the home plugs pair up when in the same room?

Wi-Fi boosters do work, though max throughput is effectively halved (and latency to your router doubled) due to the extra hop. You'll need to try and place the booster roughly half way between your client and your current router, so that it is retransmitting a strong signal. If you get the homeplugs working you should be able to get better performance by putting the booster into AP mode and getting it as close to your room as the homeplugs and your internal wiring allow, the room directly under yours would be a good choice.
 
Zarf can I just reconfirm? Are you saying that by hooking a repeater up to your router you will effectively get half throughput? Even say on my desktop PC via Ethernet?

I ask this because just now I noticed my desktop internet connection is significantly slower with the repeater on (60mbit down to 20mbit).

But when I turn the repeater off, it goes back up to 60mbit.

(This is the speed measured from the Ethernet port). What gives?
 
We have a separate garage with rooms above. To get WiFi over there I used TP-Link homeplugs + a TP-Link access point. I'd never heard of TP-Link before but they've performed fine over 2 years and were cheap.

To pair them I used two sockets in the hallway and just walked from one to the other. I think it did take 3 attempts though, probably mostly due to me being stupid. There was a 10 or 20 second timeout so they basically have to be in the same room to pair.

I doubt that your upstairs/downstairs are on more separate circuits than our garage. Apparently it's even possible for powerline networking to bleed to neighbours, hence one reason for the pairing requirement.


EDIT: I have to say though that I've never actually benchmarked the performance, but there's nothing noticeably wrong with it.

I also learnt more recently that the plugs don't have to be in pairs, so you can buy extras and just add them as needed. I'm thinking about doing so for some non-WiFi network printers.
 
Last edited:
Cavallino said:
Zarf can I just reconfirm? Are you saying that by hooking a repeater up to your router you will effectively get half throughput? Even say on my desktop PC via Ethernet?

I ask this because just now I noticed my desktop internet connection is significantly slower with the repeater on (60mbit down to 20mbit).

But when I turn the repeater off, it goes back up to 60mbit.

(This is the speed measured from the Ethernet port). What gives?
Click to expand...

That sounds a bit odd. If you are wired directly into your main router the repeater shouldn't effect internet bandwidth at all.
All I can think of is that there are wireless clients connecting to the repeater and resuming big downloads. It might also be that your router has an underpowered processor and can't handle high speed routing/NAT as well as bridging a lot of Wireless LAN traffic. See if you can stick DD-WRT on there, then you'll be able to see all sorts of stats and bandwidth charts.
 
False alarm, it was the speedtest site I was using that wasn't giving me the greatest throughput, tested on another site and all is fine.
 
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