Wifi signal booster?

knip

knip

knip

Soldato
Joined
28 Jun 2006
Posts
11,102
Location
Somewhere in Bristol
So its my brothers birthday this week, and he's currently living at home with the parents.

They have virgin cabled BB which speed wise for the most part is fine. However my parents live in a fairly decent sized 4 bed house, and when my brother is in his bedroom, he can't get on the internet on either his phone or his new laptop, nor can his missus get on on her ipad because the signal is too weak. The virgin hub is at the opposite end of the house.

My parents don't want to move the router, it would mean moving lots of wires about for one thing, so I was wondering if there was something I could get him for his birthday that could relay the signal to another part of the house maybe so he can pick it up, or something that could boost the signal.

My parents won't want me fiddling about with their hub, but won't mind something else that plugs in, so he can get the internet in his room

Any ideas much appreciated, and I really can't afford to break the bank at the moment either :)

(mums done all the things recommended by virgin to boost the signal by the way)
 
Do they have the superdud which is known for its poor wifi?

You could either put the router in modem mode and add a good router such as the RT-N56U.

Alternatively you could fit powerline adapters with a wireless AP in his room.
 
-=Vect0r=- said:
Do they have the superdud which is known for its poor wifi?

You could either put the router in modem mode and add a good router such as the RT-N56U.

Alternatively you could fit powerline adapters with a wireless AP in his room.
Click to expand...

Can I have it in plain english, sorry I understand nothing about this sort of thing :)

Like some links to stuff which I could buy him. Anything around the say £50 budget.
 
Virgins own "superhub" has a pretty poor wifi signal strengh. The best thing to do is put it in modem mode where it basically just connects the broadband and does nothing else and then let a decent new wireless router do the rest of the work.

something like this for example http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-024-TP&groupid=46&catid=1596&subcat=

or this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-112-LS&groupid=46&catid=1596&subcat=

The only other thing that can be done is to use powerline adaptors to carry the signal down to the other end of the house and give you a network socket but thats not really going to help with wifi unless you buy a wifi access point too, which isn't going to come in under £50
 
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And how would the two get linked together?

Plus is "putting it in modem mode" easy to do?

And how about things like the access code for using the wifi in the house (like when I go there, and put the code on the hub in) will that all need changing?
 
The superhub will become just a modem, the new router will take over.

Putting the superhub in modem mode is dead easy, its even on the first page when you go into the superhub setup.

The new router will handle access codes, when you install all the computers will have to be connected to it with a new key. Its not hard, it just takes a hour or so to go round all the devices that connect to it.
 
Hi knip,

Is it possible to run a cable from the Virgin Media hub to roughly where the wireless needs to be? As that would be the cheapest option, as you could just wire in an access point closer to where the dead spot is. Depends on whether you can/are allowed to run a network cable there :)
 
It would need to go through like 3 rooms to get to the middle of the house, so in theory yes, just not sure about how happy my parents would be with a bunch of wires running about. :)
 
google , Huawei Wi-Fi Repeater there about £25 at the rain forest
that or something like it will help and you wont need to change anything at the parents house
 
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