I’m wanting to set up a wired network in the house. We have sky and using the sagem router that get supplied by sky. But need to have 6 wired connections. Was looking at a switch as powerlines would be expensive. Any other suggestions?

How close are the clients to the router? All they all close to each other or all over the house?

You could powerline a hub/switch and then run ethernet from there if they’re all close to each other.

If they’re all over the place then powerlines will be your best bet.

Why not go wireless? With the right kit you could get good speeds

Could improving (wireless) router really make much difference (genuine question)? When my other half works from home she insists on dragging a 10m ethernet cable up the stairs because she says she loses connection over wireless when hosting Webex (video conferencing)… Makes me mad. Would happily buy a new router to solve that annoyance.

You’re Internet connection is always likely to be slower that the wireless unless it is spectacularly poor wireless. However she may have problems with people in your house also doing things on wireless such as printing. Easy solution is to by a seperate wireless access point just for her so she has direct access to your internet connection without sharing it with th rest of the house

4 of the clients (tv, pc, onlive console and ps3) are 3m away from router. But the switch would mean only routing one cable from router. The other client is in room upstairs but the wireless connection is bad up there. It drops regularly.

You could do several things.

If you wanted to go wireless get a decent router with 802.11n. The ones free from your ISP are next to useless. Have two SSIDs (wireless signals) and apply QoS (quality of service) to the SSIDs, wife has good service everyone else not so good.Unless you have a pretty big house with thick walls that should be OK.

OK its a little technical but that’s what I do so the kids dont screw my internet connection as I work from home. Also you have the advantage of being able to bring new devices in and move existing kit around more easily.

Also if you think you have poor signal you can have a little check with “Inssider” just to see what your signal is like and alsso if there are other people on the same channel.

If it is only one floor away then it really shouldn’t drop regularly. You might want to try using ‘n’ type wireless if you aren’t already, the range is much better. Also check that there isn’t someone else nearby on the same channel (try running inssider to see who Is on what channel). A new wireless box may just solve it though as some computer/wireless combos just don’t seem to work even though they should

Edit: pingu type fast

If you wanted to go wireless get a decent router with 802.11n. The ones free from your ISP are next to useless. Have two SSIDs (wireless signals) and apply QoS (quality of service) to the SSIDs, wife has good service everyone else not so good.Unless you have a pretty big house with thick walls that should be OK.

Could you recommend a decent router that would allow this? Many thanks.

I have one of these:

The O2 Wireless Box II (available to new O2 customers from 2008) is a rebadged Thomson SpeedTouch TG585v7, and supports Interface type 802.11b/g. It supports 13 channels (Europe Region). It supports WEP and WPA-PSK encryption.[1]

So I guess a decent, current router would improve things?

I got a Draytek router after my sky one packed in. Much much better. Has the features mentioned above plus interface is actually ok to use. They are expensive though, I got it cheap thru work.

Simple 1 wire to a switch downstairs.
Take a small drill and make a hole to the room upstairs which you push the wire through.

Job done.

You could extend this using a second wifi box upstairs plugged into the Lan as a bridged connection upstairs.

Wireless is great in open spaces but in old houses it still struggles. Also any heavyweight file transfer is still not as good.

Double Post

Thats what I was planning mike 🙂

+1 for Draytek routers – we use them for all our home based workers and also for our VPN endpoint here in the office. They are really easy to configure and just seem to work.

I’m also a big fan of powerline setups for small home networks and would agree that a pair of adapters plus a small switch or additional wireless AP would meet the requirements of the OP – I’ve got exactly that setup for a couple of home users who live in rambling old properties with a shared internet connection.

They’re not neccessarily an expensive option either – growth in the home AV market means some are now coming in at under £40 a pair – see here:

http://www.misco.co.uk/Product/164418/D-Link-PowerLine-Homeplug-AV-Network-Starter-Kit

Crankman – FWIW, I had the same router as above supplied by my home ISP and it was completely pants, suffering from a load of connection dropouts etc. Binned it for a Draytek in pretty short order.

EDIT – most recent router I bought was this one – great bit of kit. Easy to set up, supports wireless QoS and the USB connection enables it to be connected to a USB hard drive in order to act as a NAS.

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2710.html

There are a good few Linksys routers last time I looked anything really from the eSeries. I run a Cisco 800 series but that’s a few hundred. I cant really recommend anything as I use all Cisco stuff and its simply generally not economical for the home but Linksys is from Cisco so should be good.