Looking to extend the wifi signal in our house so I can pick up iPlayer etc in the garage without the endless buffering I experienced this morning. Figure it’ll be useful for those dull trainer sessions over the winter.

Anyhow, before I potentially waste a huge chunk of time trying to make this work, is it possible to use a spare DSL router to achieve this?

Primary router will be cable (we’re on VM)

Depends in the router. Some will allow you to set the wireless to be an access point or a repeater but usually it is a bit of a fiddle and doesn’t always work as the device really wants to be a router rather than anything else. Check the manual for your router but I wouldn’t hold out much hope. You will have a lot less pain just buying a wireless access point that can also be configured as a repeater

Depends on the router, but probably not.

You can buy a bigger aerial for your existing router which sometimes works, or get a wireless extender for about twenty quid off amazon.

aah, you’re on virgin. You’ll have one of those netgear routers then?
New aerial not an option.

Extender. twenty quid.

Ive been using a Belkin Wireless G Range Extender/Access Point, Model F5D7130uk for four or five years now to do the same thing.

What about a set of home plug adapters?

Yeah it’s a Netgear, WGR614 or something. The DSL is an DG834 Netgear from an old Sky connection, sounds as though I’m better off buying a dedicated extender/repeater then for the sake of £20-£30.

Woody, already using homeplugs for the upstairs connection and they’ve been very reliable. Any issues with adding another onto the circuit, I was under the (possibly false) impression they only worked in pairs?

Cheers anyway folks, you’ve probably saved me an afternoon of banging my head against a wall.

Try changing the channel that you are broadcasting on. Sky default will be the same for everyones (6 i think) so changing it might just get you a much better signal – try 11. I did it a few weeks ago as there were more and more sky networks showing up. Might save you having to buy anything else.

It’s a piece of piss to do – if you need details just post…..

Cheers Sniff, seen that setting before somewhere so I’ll give that a go first.

Connection is sometimes fine but mostly flakey, the garage being separate from the house probably isn’t helping.

I’ve got 4 homeplugs on the go – one of which does wifi in the loft

work fine together (are the same brand though)

Adding more drops the overall speed afaik, but unless you’ve got a lot of them, the speed will still be greater than your broadband connection. You can use plugs of mixed brands as far as I know, as long as they conform to the home plug standard. 3 is fine, you need 2 as a minimum obviously, but any number up from that is OK.

Cool, thinking about it I may just take the one off the desktop and switch it back to wifi. I only went down the homeplug route due to the lag spikes I was getting with online gaming (Windows Zero Config), but hardly play these days.

Few options anyway, cheers again 🙂

if you get a router that can run dd-wrt, you can use it as a range extender, and if your needs change, use it for something else too (wireless bridge, router, hub, whatever)

The router might take dd-wrt, depending on the version : http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

Or get an external USB WiFi adaptor and run it at the end of a long USB cable connected to your PC/Laptop in the garage. Might get a better signal with the adaptor placed somewhere else in the garage.

Oh and you can get outdoors USB wifi adaptors

http://www.solwise.co.uk/wireless-usb-rocket-b-g.htm

I tried a wireless repeater/extender and it was rubbish. Ended up buying some novatech homeplugs and they have been flawless.

dd-wrt looks interesting, router and version are listed

Will take a look at this too, ta!