Wifi Booster

Author
Discussion

RosscoPCole

Original Poster:

3,535 posts

189 months

Friday 11th April
quotequote all
Our Virgin broadband is fabulous in the house, but is awful in the garage and summer house. Being a home broadband luddite is there a good booster I can buy for these places?
Please educate me with what I need to do.

Doofus

30,804 posts

188 months

Friday 11th April
quotequote all
I've just bought a TP-Link RE705X to replace a Netgear thing with a broken antenna that was never much good.

The TP-Link was a bit of a pain to set up, but now I know the method, it'd be really easy next time. Coverage is excellent, and seamless, in garage and garden.

I have 500mb down and up, and Wifi 6. YMMV.

Mack11

157 posts

75 months

Friday 11th April
quotequote all
A mesh system like Doofus has suggested is what you want, I have a Tenda one which is getting on a bit now, it has however been solid and extends to my garden office 50ft away.

Doofus

30,804 posts

188 months

Friday 11th April
quotequote all
I didn't know I had a mesh system. I've often wondered what one is...

Griffith4ever

5,565 posts

50 months

Saturday 12th April
quotequote all
we need a sticky for this question - boosting wifi - its comes up at least weekly.

.:ian:.

2,534 posts

218 months

Saturday 12th April
quotequote all
Really the best answer depends on some factors.
Do you have power in these two remote endpoints.
Can you run network cable to them from wherever the main router is.
If so you can get either a mesh system with 2 or 3 nodes and stick a node in one or both of these out buildings. Or you can add a cheap router with dhcp disabled and the same ssid acting as an extender.

If you have power but no way to get wired network, you can get ethernet over mains extenders

Like https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WPA4221-KIT-Po...

This will give you WiFi in the outbuilding. I've found these do work, but never giving anywhere close to the advertised speeds.

If the outbuildings are close to the house, adding a mesh system with nodes as close to the outbuildings as possible may extend wifi to them, but its going to be hard to judge how well it will work.

Each mesh node needs to be as close to the main node attached to the router as possible, if you place a node somewhere that does not get a good connection to another node it won't work.

Baldchap

9,151 posts

107 months

Saturday 12th April
quotequote all
Additionally, if you have power in the remote building and performance is important, building to building wireless bridges and the like are also available. I have one that's currently running at 876Mbps.

beambeam1

1,500 posts

58 months

Thursday 17th April
quotequote all
.:ian:. said:
If you have power but no way to get wired network, you can get ethernet over mains extenders

Like https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WPA4221-KIT-Po...

This will give you WiFi in the outbuilding. I've found these do work, but never giving anywhere close to the advertised speeds.
You're not kidding. Bought one of these this week and the speed is drastically slower than the router itself even though I've only plugged the extender 10-12ft away in the next room. Might well be going back to Amazon if I can't improve on this...

Edit: Rebooted the router and had a decent improvement but when it comes to the far end of the garden or in my garage (which is closer) the signal is almost non-existent. Going to have to look at the bridge idea instead I think!

Edited by beambeam1 on Friday 18th April 00:35

Griffith4ever

5,565 posts

50 months

Friday 18th April
quotequote all
beambeam1 said:
You're not kidding. Bought one of these this week and the speed is drastically slower than the router itself even though I've only plugged the extender 10-12ft away in the next room. Might well be going back to Amazon if I can't improve on this...

Edit: Rebooted the router and had a decent improvement but when it comes to the far end of the garden or in my garage (which is closer) the signal is almost non-existent. Going to have to look at the bridge idea instead I think!

Edited by beambeam1 on Friday 18th April 00:35
Anything powerline based is hit and miss, and they never achieve anything like their claimed speeds in real use. Some people like them as they work in their environment and are fast enough for their needs.

Seach for my posts in threads like this and you'l see the TP link and KuWifi wifi CPEs I use with great success for a wireless bridge over 300m through trees.

Little update - I use one of these on one end

TP-LINK CPE210 WLAN access point (£45 each on Amazon)

And a Kuwifi one on the other end - only reason for this is that the Kuwifi one has a 12v power input so I can run it off a car battery and solar, otherwise I'd just have a pair of the TPLinks.

Its been stuck on a high pole, outside, for many years, in all weather, and never needed so much as a restart (the TPlink) - well, that's a lie actually - it did once reset itself to factory defaults after an electrical storm.

Edited by Griffith4ever on Friday 18th April 09:46