Powerline or wifi extender

[DaveLees]

I need to get a better wifi signal in my living room (router is in different room).

Is it better to get a wifi extender or powerline with wifi? The bit of research that I've done would suggest that a powerline with wifi would be the better option.

Can anyone recommend either an extender, or powerline with wifi?

Thanks

Dave

 

[camelspyyder]

Used to use TP-Link powerline extenders for wired connection to SKY box.

 

However they never it made to 24 month guarantee period still in working order. Generally packed up at about 18 months of 24 hours operation.

 

Can you not move the router to the part of the house where it's most needed?  I have done this in previous houses.

Edited 26 February, 2017 by camelspyyder

[Aspman]

I use the powerline stuff because it means I can plug in multiple devices and not have to fart about with WIFI settings or buying dongles.

 

I've got TP-link stuff and it's well over the 2yr warranty and still working.

 

But... they are prone to crashing randomly maybe once or twice a week. It just needs switched off and on to restart but it is a bit of a pain.

[DaveLees]

The phone line into the house comes in the dining room, hence the router is in there. I'm trying to avoid having wires trailing around into the living room so I'm hoping to go for the wifi extender/powerline with wifi option. I don't have a sky box so that's not an issue.

 

[jonoj]

I use a BT hotspot https://www.shop.bt.com/mini-sites/connected-home/home-hotspots - I find that i get the best of both worlds, a hotspot (mine covering the upstairs of my house) and these have two LAN ports on there as well for wired connections. I have a NAS drive and a PC that I use VOIP on in the wired connections rather than using WIFI and just use WIFI for handsets or internet only applications. 

 

I would always use wired/powerline over WIFI for VOIP/streaming/gaming but it depends on what you are using it for. BT also do a whole home WIFI set https://www.shop.bt.com/learnmore/bt-branded-products-and-services/bt-whole-home-wi-fi/ that could fit your needs

[SWBoy]

I've tried many different power line extenders from several manufacturers including TP-Link and Netgear and found none of them offer anything approaching the speed they suggest, and all have required regular power off resets.

 

So a few years ago I switched to a Netgear WiFi repeater and that's been 100% trouble free.

 

So my 2p worth would be to ignore power line extenders and go the WiFi repeater route.

[biomulv]

Due to my ageing wiring, I found decent WiFi to achieve higher throughput than power line adapters.

 

Maybe just try a decent router?

 

 

[BillyJim]

3 hours ago, SWBoy said:

I've tried many different power line extenders from several manufacturers including TP-Link and Netgear and found none of them offer anything approaching the speed they suggest, and all have required regular power off resets.

 

So a few years ago I switched to a Netgear WiFi repeater and that's been 100% trouble free.

 

So my 2p worth would be to ignore power line extenders and go the WiFi repeater route.

+1

I've had a similar more recent experience. Router is in an upstairs bedroom used as a computer room cum home office while "entertainment" devices are downstairs. These internet enabled devices have become faster and so data transfer rates become more critical. The power line adaptors just don't seem to keep up. Having just replaced one set of power line adaptors for a faster set I was still plagued with "buffering" both on my iPad (internet) and Apple TV (using a NAS). I removed the power line adaptors and installed a Linksys RE6500 wifi extender. Remote access to both internet and NAS has subsequently been perfect without even a hint of buffering.

[Aspman]

The powerline numbering is a bit disingenuous.

 

The numbers they use are not strictly point to point. If you get 500Mb kit that 500Mb is shared between all devices on the network so if you have 3 or more devices all working at once the available bandwidth drops quite dramatically. I only have one or two devices working at once ever so I've never really run into problems. Also my internet is 12Mb so even though I'm only using 200Mb powerline kit it's more than enough to cope with whatever the ISP can supply.

 

If you can it is sometimes worth replacing the ISP supplied router with something a bit better. I ditched the old Plusnet router for a mid-range TPlink MIMO router and that improved the signal strength as well.

[CWARD]

I have the TP-Link power adapters too. The ones I have have wi-fi built into them too as well as double network ports. The ports are used for supplying the receiver amp, x-box and media player which tend to need a more stable connection within the living room.

I also use one in the garage so that I can watch You Tube videos on my iPad guiding me through a procedure on my bike that I'm not familiar with. The wife has a TV with an Amazon Fire Stick in it within the garage so she watch her shows whilst using the treadmill. These have all been faultless using the power adapters and I also now run a Chromecast from it too so that I can stream my music from the NAS inside the house to the garage.  

 

The kit I got was branded as Maplins but is actually TP-Link and worked out cheaper than buying the TP-link equivalent 

 

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/maplin-tp-link-500mbps-powerline-wifi-triple-kit-with-passthrough-socket-a77uf

[wonkyewok]

On 02/26/2017 at 10:42, Aspman said:

I use the powerline stuff because it means I can plug in multiple devices and not have to fart about with WIFI settings or buying dongles.

 

I've got TP-link stuff and it's well over the 2yr warranty and still working.

 

But... they are prone to crashing randomly maybe once or twice a week. It just needs switched off and on to restart but it is a bit of a pain.

I've had exactly the same experience with tp- link powerline kit. in the end i found that mounting the router higher up in the downstairs room improved performance enough in the rest of the house that i switched back to Wi-Fi.

[Kenrw8]

I have 1 single and 2x 4 Ethernet Netgear powerline working flawless on my mains and been in use for over three years 24/7 and recommend them.

Edited 5 March, 2017 by Kenrw8

[Kenrw8]

By the way powerliness claim 200 or 500 Mega bits that is 100 or 250 down and 100 or 250 up that is each.

 

As 8bits is a Byte then 100 or 250  Mbits /8 is 12.5 or 31.25 Mbyte down and 12.5 or 31.25 Mbyte up. So a 200 powerline is the same speed as a100 Ethernet connection but with losses.

 

They quote the total speed of down and up.

 

A one gigabit line would give total 125 (2x 62.5) Mbyte line less losses.

 

Edited 5 March, 2017 by Kenrw8