I’d like to extend my WiFi into the garage for streaming stuff when I’m on the turbo trainer and looking up how to fix stuff properly when I’m halfway through a cack handed bike fixing job!

Garage is separated by a concrete external wall, I can occasionally get 1 bar signal from the router in the house so wondered if the cheaper option of a WiFi repeater might work? or are the powerline things worth the extra?

any recommendations?

The Powerline things are dead simple to install and set up. If you set the SSID and password the same as your existing WiFi router it’ll be transparent too.

Lots of threads on this already. Powerline to Ethernet is £25, powerline to range extender £75. I did Ethernet version (TP LINK from PC World is brand I bought) as I already had an airport express to convert the ethernet into wifi. The Pwerline to Ethernet assumes you have a device which can take the cable, if you want wifi in garage then I would suggest the Powerline to wifi as it removes issue with signal being affected by the wall even with a range extender.

Ive tried a wifi repeater access point in our barn, and it was shit.

Now the barn is flooded with powerline adapters with integrated wifi repeaters and they are good. i would say great, but I have a 200Mbps set and they can be a little bit cranky for the xbox media extender for TV streaming. I will upgrade to 500Mbp+ next time.

I got one of these

http://www.maplin.co.uk/tp-link-200mbps-av200-wireless-n150-powerline-extender-starter-kit-636018

just remembered I’ve got a newish bt home hub sitting doing nothing since i swapped to plusnet.

could I use Ethernet powerline adaptors and connect the homehub to an adaptor in the garage for the WiFi?

I wouldnt trust a home hub to be adapted to work as an extender. It’s got a pretty tight firmware on it.

Just been through similar, Tried the Netgear WN3000rp range extender which worked ok to a point.
But, the house is fully wired up with Cat5e cable and I’d got an spare wireless “N” router to play with.
I effectively ended up with a WiFi access point running over the household ethernet cable connecting back to the main router.

In a nutshell…

Main router:
Check DHCP range & note a suiteable unused IP address not in the DHCP range. ( ie static address)
Note WiFi SSID & password details.
Note WiFi channel number

Secondary router:
Reset to factory defaults.
Change it’s IP address to the number you noted earlier ( poss may have to also enter gateway & subnet)
Disable DHCP
Change SSID & password details to exact same as main router
Move WiFi channel to as far away from main router WiFi channel as poss ( eg if main router uses channel 1, on the secondary router, use channel 13).

( you can use a free app called Inssider on a tablet / WiFi enabled pc to check for WiFi overlap / other interfering devices ).

Not sure if the above would be possible with the BT box, but the Talktalk supplied Huawei HG532 and HG533 work well like this ( actually, they work brilliantly – far far better than a range extender of any kind.

Chris

Used to use a dlink wireless range extender and it was poor. Replaced it by a pair (soon to be more) of Cisco wap321s and they are truly brilliant across a courtyard and through a stone wall that is hugely thick. You could probably use the wap121 instead of the 321 as it is much cheaper. I needed a specific feature of the 321 unfortunately.

I got one of these….”Netgear WN3000RP Universal Wi-Fi Range Extender”

Was previously only getting 1 bar signal in kitchen, WiFi is now great in kitchen plus an additional 20 metres range into garden.

Netgear extender here. Works great. Very impressed. @nd hand off eBay was about $40. Our router is in the front bedroom and the range now extends to the back bedrooms and rear of garden. No dropouts and able to stream HQ youtube and buffers pretty swiftly.

In response to ed yes you can mate I’ve just done the same with the homehub, no problems.

Use the instructions sns has put up.

Personal preference but I use separate ssid as devices wont automatically swap to the device with the strongest signal (i think)just so you know where you’re connected to.

I’d use a powerline and then a new wifi access point.

As previously mentioned, make sure only the one plugged into the internet has DHCP enabled and make sure the SSIDs are the same and they’re on different wifi channels.

I’ve found wireless range extenders to be pretty hit and miss. They use a protocol called WDS which seems plagued by interoperability issues. I tried one to set up wifi in my mother’s holiday cottages, and whilst it worked fine for me, a decent proportion of guests (mainly with more recent Apple devices it seems) simply couldn’t connect to it. Other people I’ve spoken to have confirmed that this is a fairly common experience for WDS.

Also, because they use the same SSID and channel, it’s quite hard to diagnose problems as you can’t easily tell which device you’ve connected to.

I’ve found powerline ethernet to work pretty reliably. BT home hub probably can be made to act as an access point, but it’d be neater and not much more expensive to just to get an integrated powerline wifi AP.

If you set the SSID and password the same as your existing WiFi router it’ll be transparent too.

This is not necessarily true – some devices swap between access points better than others.
I had a powerline wireless extender set up right and it was 50/50 whether the phone/iPad would maintain a signal without manually changing it when moving around the house. I changed to an Apple Airport Extreme and Airport Express as the extender and it is truly seamless.

I’ve found wireless range extenders to be pretty hit and miss. They use a protocol called WDS which seems plagued by interoperability issues. I tried one to set up wifi in my mother’s holiday cottages, and whilst it worked fine for me, a decent proportion of guests (mainly with more recent Apple devices it seems) simply couldn’t connect to it. Other people I’ve spoken to have confirmed that this is a fairly common experience for WDS.

Snap!

I’ve tried to extend the range of my mothers router to her holiday cottage so that her guest can get better access to the BTwifi/fon. It does work but not for everyone and also it seems best if you connect to the wifi and leave for 5 mins before trying to access the internet and go through the fon log in.

They use a protocol called WDS which seems plagued by interoperability issues.

With the Cisco boxes I was using they explicitly state that all of the boxes have to be of the same make and type for it to work in the specific case of the boxes i was using. I tend not to mix manufacturers with this stuff these days as it just isn’t worth the hassle

We just installed a linksys RE1000 just to get the length of our (not that long, but also with concrete walls to get through) house. At £50 for extended wifi it’s a cheap option.

Easy enough set up – if the disc had worked for us it would’ve been a moment’s work, it didn’t but the manual approach was easy enough for IT hamfisted me. However I’d say its signal is a little inconsistent. It drops in and out even close to the extender. And you obviously have to install it at a point where you get a passable signal from the router so that limits how far it extends your existing range.

If you are going to go down the Powerline route, just make sure your garage is on the same ring main as the house where the router is. If it is, this is a good product from NETGEAR – XAVNB2001.

If you fancy the Range Extender then look at either the WN3000RP or WN3500RP, again fron NETGEAR. Remember though, that it only extends the signal, it does not boost it. If you are only getting 1 bar in the garage, and you plug the extender into a plug in the garage, it will simply extend that 1 bar. You would be better to plug it into a plug within the house, close to the garage where you get good signal.

Snap!

I’ve tried to extend the range of my mothers router to her holiday cottage so that her guest can get better access to the BTwifi/fon.

🙂

I actually now have a rock solid connection by using an extra box as a client to the first network i.e.:

AP1 <– wifi –> AP2(client) <–wire–> AP3 <– wifi –> guests

AP2 is a TP-Link box running OpenWRT – I don’t know if there are any off-the-shelf APs that will act as a client to another network.

AP1 <– wifi –> AP2(client) <–wire–> AP3 <– wifi –> guests

An Airport Extreme/Express system would allow you to create a separate guest network with a single click plus you can add multiple Airport Express units for massive coverage if required.

This is not necessarily true – some devices swap between access points better than others.
I had a powerline wireless extender set up right and it was 50/50 whether the phone/iPad would maintain a signal without manually changing it when moving around the house. I changed to an Apple Airport Extreme and Airport Express as the extender and it is truly seamless.

The theory is it would be transparent, from your experience you have mentioned it worked with decent wireless kit.

These powerline range extenders, how do they work? Do I wire in the router at one socket, then have the wifi signal coming from the powerline box at the other socket?

These powerline range extenders, how do they work? Do I wire in the router at one socket, then have the wifi signal coming from the powerline box at the other socket?

Yep, the electrical wiring will carry the network signal to the range extender which it will repeat over wifi from its location.

Yep, the electrical wiring will carry the network signal to the range extender which it will repeat over wifi from its location.

Cheers. I want to move the router to our loft room, so it sounds like the powerline would be a good way of getting a decent signal on the ground floor?

Can’t recommend TPLINK WPA281s highly enough – 200mbps powerline with built in wifi AP. You can string as many together as you like and super simple to set up.

I would forget the “starter” kit and just buy at least two of these though.

from your experience you have mentioned it worked with decent matching wireless kit.

FT. I think that is the key.

An Airport Extreme/Express system would allow you to create a separate guest network with a single click plus you can add multiple Airport Express units for massive coverage if required.

So how do the additional units do the range extending? If it’s by WDS, then I’m not interested.

You can set a BT HomeHub 1, 1.5 or 2 as a slave. Then use home-plugs or an ethernet cable to get set up a second network.

It worked really well when I did it and I’m keeping my set up spare for when I build a new garage or shed.

Information here.

So how do the additional units do the range extending? If it’s by WDS, then I’m not interested.

No they don’t use WDS on the > v1 airport extremes. There’s a
pretty good explantion here