Wired or wireless

dark-knight · 7 Dec 2015 at 20:56

I'm currently with Virgin media with my internet, the router is installed in my man cave which is in the upstairs spare bedroom. Running with the superhub (2) I think. Wireless upstairs is great but down stairs is woefully slow.

We're getting the garage converted to a TV / games room for the children and am wanting to do away with both BT phone and SKY, I've had nothing but hassle from them now for months and switching everything over to VM. I plan to get VM TiVo in both the living room and also the games room.

I'm worried that my sons XBOX, XBOX 1, TiVo boxes and the new wifi tv will struggle to connect to the Internet as the router is upstairs. I understand slightly about Cat6 cabling but in the games room there will be the above hardware plus in the future a gaming PC for my son.

I'd like to improve wifi signal/strength as well as possibly having the games consoles / PC hard wired. Can a single cat6 cable be split into say 4 wall mountable sockets or would I need a cable for each.

Power plugs could be an option however, the electrical sockets are wired on different ring mains through the fuse box, those upstairs and those down.

Advice would be appreciated.

~Mark

nutcase · 7 Dec 2015 at 21:02

Wired is better than wifi wherever possible. Cable for each socket, cat5e is fine. If you really can only run one cable, then a switch in the games room can be used to split.

dark-knight · 7 Dec 2015 at 21:27

nutcase_1uk said:
Wired is better than wifi wherever possible. Cable for each socket, cat5e is fine. If you really can only run one cable, then a switch in the games room can be used to split.

So, could I run two cat cables from my Super hub or put this into modem mode and buy a much better router. Run one cable to the living room and the other to the games room. Then buy another router/switch and connect this to the new cat cable in the games room.

Assuming the new router/switch in the games room would have multiple Ethernet points to connect to and thus improving the wifi as well downstairs from this router.

nutcase · 8 Dec 2015 at 08:30

You only need one router, and they sometimes come with a switch incorporated. Any further switches just need to be regular switches.

If you think combined network traffic from the devices in the games room would exceed 1gigabit then running separate cables to one central switch would be better. Probably not required though.

Avalon · 8 Dec 2015 at 13:49

Whatever you do with the router buy some Cat5e, one end to your existing super hub (or new router), then run it into the garage, plug a gigabit switch into the games room end and then add an access point. If you want to improve everything then look at setting up access points that will support seamless handover like the Ubiquiti Unifi range, they startat £55 a go for 2.4 based versions.

Gambisk · 8 Dec 2015 at 13:59

Definitely get a separate router and run the virgin hub in modem mode. I found that even with a single connection it ended up working much smoother than using the build in virgin router.

dark-knight · 9 Dec 2015 at 10:21

Gambisk said:
Definitely get a separate router and run the virgin hub in modem mode. I found that even with a single connection it ended up working much smoother than using the build in virgin router.

So I could buy this router https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-dsl-ac68u-dual-band-wireless-ac1900-gigabit-adsl-vdsl-modem-router-nw-077-as.html

Put my VM in modem mode. Run 2 x Cat 5e cables external from the new router down through to the garage/games room and the other to the living room. Have a switch in the garage/games room for multiple PC, Xbox etc and still have a speedy connection. Could the above router give better wifi signal then through out the house ?.

Thanks for being patient I'm useless at this sort of thing.

the-evaluator · 9 Dec 2015 at 10:26

That's an ADSL/VDSL router. You'd need something like this -> https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ual-band-usb3.0-gigabit-router-nw-072-as.html

The rest of your plan sounds good though.

It's hard to say for definite if that router will improve the wifi range as that's quite heavily dependent on the structure of your house but generally speaking I would expect the wifi range to be better with the Asus than the Superhub.

dark-knight · 9 Dec 2015 at 11:57

the-evaluator said:
That's an ADSL/VDSL router. You'd need something like this -> https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus...ual-band-usb3.0-gigabit-router-nw-072-as.html

The rest of your plan sounds good though.

It's hard to say for definite if that router will improve the wifi range as that's quite heavily dependent on the structure of your house but generally speaking I would expect the wifi range to be better with the Asus than the Superhub.

For the price of them could I run two, one as my primary and the other one as my secondary (slave). This would give max wifi coverage too around the house.

the-evaluator · 9 Dec 2015 at 12:48

You could run two but you'll just complicate things massively by having multiple routers. Roaming between them will be problematic and if you wanted to access something attached to one router (say a shared drive on a PC) from one attached to the other (say a media player) you'll be in a world of pain. It's a bad idea.

I'd suggest you buy 1 router and have it next to the SuperHub. Run the ethernet cables down to the living room and play room and plug them into a switch. You've then got multiple ethernet ports in each location.

For wireless have a look at the Ubiquiti units - https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-lite/ for example. If you had one of them in the play room and one either in the lounge or by the SuperHub you'd have great wireless coverage, seamless roaming and none of the fun and games of having multiple routers.

To be honest you could get away with using a cheaper router as ideally if you went for the Ubiquiti wireless access points you would need to disable the wifi on the router and let the Ubiquiti units take care of it all.