We can’t get wi-fi in all parts of our house (and I’m uncertain of the health issues of wi-fi).

I’ve admitted defeat, I ran Cat5 cables all round the house during recent building work, with the idea that when the dust had settled, I’d work out how to terminate all the connections.

6 months on after initially admitting I’ll never get round to it, then asking round if anyone wants to take on the job locally, I’m looking at the system where you send it round the house by plugging in your mains electric system, then plugging in your pc to the socket via the ethernet (wikipedia calls it powerline communications I think). There seems a wide range of people selling systems, so I’m confused. example linky.

Anyone got any recommendations. I’d like to have our existing wi-fi turned off as much as possible, then turned on if required (for health reasons). I’d like to be able to plug in our old pc in one room permanently, then have the option to plug the laptop in the kitchen/lounge if required, without using wifi. If pushed i’d be able to turn on the wifi and link into phones/ds/wii if we get them.

Any recommendations? Is it faster than wifi? reliable? complicated?

I use this (as well as wireless). I use a combination of some of these.

Netgear

Also recommended them to a freind who has an office at the bottom of his (long) garden, works very well.

You just plug one in by your router and plug the ethernet cable into it. Then just plug another one in where ever you want a connection, I find it much more reliable than wireless. I have my desktop, Abox and blue ray player pluged into them.

I just bought two of the Netgear adaptors to replace an unreliable wireless link; it was ridiculously easy to set up compared to farting about with wireless SSIDs and whatnot and has been far better then the wireless ever was – much faster and more consistent. The wireless was okay-ish most of the time but would have periods when it just went down the toilet; this is fine all the time. I wish I’d done it ages ago!

i use devolo 200
find them very good. couldn’t be arsed with setting up wifi stuff. just plug it in and go.

Wifi health issues: they affect your health using the same mechanisms as Power balance bracelets (i.e. placebo effect).
Cat5: If it’s installed why can’t you use it? Or do you mean you’ve got the cabling but not the faceplates/sockets?

sas – yes, I’ve put in cables, faceplates still to sort (currently not idea ow to do it and clearly no good at organising my time to find out.)

There is spagetti coming out of walls all over the house.

I am now waiting to find someone who says “come on mate, lets spend a weekend sorting it out, you can pay me back by…..”

Your kidding on right??

Does Broadband sent via mains not get broadcast everywhere anyway?
Early systems had security issues for this very reason.

Most providers need your router on all the time as the exchange will register a fault and reduce the connection speed.

The cat 5 crimpers cost about 7 quid. The first one you make is footery, after that each one gets better.

PS STW clubbed together and have ordered you a Faraday cage and some Physics lessons.

As above, spend ten minutes working out how to crimp the connections (it’s dead easy) and then just do it. The ether over mains adaptors are not that cheap.

As far as health issues go, broadband router wireless output is typically low, about 34mW and it’s extremely short burst, it’s no outputting anything virtually all the time. Mobile phones can vary between 1 and 100mW but the real high power devices are the mobile phone masts and there’s not much you can do about those. Out of all the reasearch acrried out against wireless devices, no study has ever managed to create any direct link between the wireless signals and health problems. (Although I think there’s one study that suggests that inductance fields can sometimes increase allergy sensitivity, but that’s different from wireless signals anyway)

We can’t get wi-fi in all parts of our house (and I’m uncertain of the health issues of wi-fi).

If you are bothered by wi-fi don’t go to McDonalds, Starbucks, Coasta…

Or just add a booster, and or another router placed somewhere else.

Having used quite a few broadband providers over the last few years I’ve never had problems with our wifi router being on a timer so it’s only on when we’re likely to be using it. We’ve had one or two cheap and nasty routers that didn’t like being turned on and off all the time, but that has always been a problem with the crappy free routers rather than the broadband service itself.

The powerline things are well known for spraying interfence left right and centre – better hope you don’t live next to a radio geek…

As for health issues – I assume you don’t have a mobile? Or a blue tooth headset? etc etc…

We bought the 200mps Ebuyer own brand ones….fantastic, not a single problem since. I could never get Windows wireless to work reliably on my desktop machines, despite trying several different adapters and routers, fresh installs blah blah…. It would work for a couple of months, then for no reason stop. Since using the powerline adapters, no problems. Cost c.£100…probably best money I have spent for a long while.

I have three Solwise HomePlug AV adapters and they work really well.

http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-av-index.htm

No problems with interference and they work fine with media streaming to my DLNA eabled TV.

I must say though that if you have installed UTP (hopefully Cat 5e or Cat 6 so you can run Gigabit Ethernet) then I would just terminate that – it is not very difficult after a bit of practice.

Old part of house has Cat5 & new part Cat5e. If any of you lot want to come to West Cumbria with your crimpers and some socet outlets then please feel free to name your price.

The £100 ebuyer solution looks attractive given the time asd uncertaintly it will take to go Cat5. Will the cat 5 be quicker? no radio folk near by/

I’ve got some spare Comtrend powerline adapters that I have not got around to selling – PM me (email in profile) and I’ll give you the details. They worked faultlessly for me for 4 years.

Just crimp them down. It takes a couple of minutes per cable, if youve already installed them why would you not?

We can’t get wi-fi in all parts of our house (and I’m uncertain of the health issues of wi-fi).

If you are bothered by wi-fi don’t go to McDonalds, Starbucks, Coasta…

Although to be fair, getting bombarded by wireless signals would be the least of his health worries in any of those places.

Just added email to profile – haven’t got the hang of this new forum yet!