Does anyone use one?

Do they work?

I leave in an old house with solid walls one of the laptop works fine when im working in another room but the other one struggles to keep hold of the connection.

We are not in a position that the router can be moved due to the incoming phone line so looking at booster repeater.

All opinions will be gratefully accepted.

Cheers folks

You can set up another router to act as an access point and extend the rand of your main router. - Someone more techie than me will be able to give more details.

Also these homeplug things seem to work ok, but need to make sure there is only one "ring mains" - may be a problem in a big old house.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=homeplug+networking&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=14381737796&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=854111974802082999&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_63mz8yb8dy_b

I had the same issue so bought a drum of cat5 cable and some ports and wired a home LAN. Much more stable than WiFi, and the connection speeds seem to be quicker.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

I set up a repeater for the same reason, I had a spare linksys router that I used but I had to flash it with third party software from the net. It took a bit of messing about but all works fine now.

Best bet would be to look in pc world and see which model they say will work for you and them buy it online cheaper.

i have a SiteCom repeater - Simple Setup, never failed, 10 year warranty, it just works.

Al.

I'd save yourself some hassle of converting an old router and just get a repeater (they work), or those home plug things if you must. I prefer repeater personally though as its just easier for setups and generally faster (£ for £).

I am using a used (from ebay) apple airport express as I have the same problem with Stone walls etc. Works fine for me and I can also stream itunes wirelessly to it and my stereo now too. Theres normaly loads of them on ebay. I paid £40 I think.

in your house are you using Wireless N equipment? It would have to be N on both router and laptop to benefit of course or it will switch to the older G standard.

N is noticeably better at transmitting a signal through walls. Most new routers are B, G and N capable. However its only around now that wireless N laptops are the norm, most only have the older B and G standards. You can get a USB N adaptor for very little money but it wouldnt be guarenteed to fix it.

Homeplugs also work. Again thats more money. I also find them to be slow, they seem to have alot of incompatibility issues with certain devices (iOS seems to throw constant hissy fits with all 3 brands I've come into contact with).

Giant ethernet cables, messy, not wireless, reliable though. Also the fastest option around. Ethernet is usually 100 megabits per second so will be faster than the internet supplying it. Some devices are even capable of 1000 megabits/1gigabit. For comparision assuming 0% packet loss wireless G has an effective throughput of 56 megabits and N 150, however 0% packet loss generally requires perfectly aligned antenna with direct line of sight with a distance of about a metre or 2. At 50% packet loss you could expect G to give a throughput of 28 and N 75. Non aligned antenna results in increased packet loss, distance increases packet loss, interference increases packet loss, walls and other objects "absorb" the signal and increase packet loss. G is effected by walls more than N but N is still effected. Ethernet cabling for comparison is not effected by antenna or walls, less susceptible to interference and on bog standard hardware capable of hitting 100 meters of cable without any repeater hardware, for most purposes you can always assume <1% loss, homeplugs have vastly increased interference over ethernet but are still not as bad as wifi, they just generally seem to be slow.

The fact you say 1 laptop is fine and the other struggles leads me to think one is N capable and the other is not. Ask a friend or 2 if they have a USB adaptor capable of N which you can borrow, try it on the laptop that struggles. If thats problem solved then thats what you need to buy.

I have some home plugs too. One for the Xbox and one for my blu ray player. They work fine or me - can stream BBC Iplayer etc to them fine and the box seems happy.. They are TP-LINK from amazon

The fact you say 1 laptop is fine and the other struggles leads me to think one is N capable and the other is not. Ask a friend or 2 if they have a USB adaptor capable of N which you can borrow, try it on the laptop that struggles. If thats problem solved then thats what you need to buy.

Sounds like a good idea.

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