WIFI boosters / extenders

Trying to get Wifi our summerhouse. Its about 30m away from the the router but onviously there are walls etc between them. There is also a Netgear wifi extender in the house about 20m from the summerhouse but we still can’t pick up either the main router or extender.

Other than running a long ethernet cable to the summerhouse, what would be the next best solution? The main router is on the ground floor at the back of the house. Summerhouse is at the front of the house.

Does it have a power supply already?  If so, powerline extender might be easiest

I recently asked similar question and went with TP Deco mesh system, it works well. Really easy set up and serves our summer house well.

Extenders are IMO totally crap. They just amplify an already weak signal.

Go either plain powerline or a mesh system like Frank suggests. I have TP deco as well with one unit in the wooden garage covering the garden.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/mesh-wi-fi-school-me/

Arstechnica had a couple of great articles on this; this is the best I could find: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/point-to-point-wi-fi-bridging-between-buildings-the-cheap-and-easy-way/

I got good coverage outside with one of these.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WAVLINK-Wireless-Outdoor-Repeater-Dual-Band/dp/B07SBMKHHJ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HhPRID8xtWVyLjkmQLCkFKQOjEv4FW6PD9lsjOTw_9_hMXDH_lqxfE8gEi1IGLHy8xiDnfMSI5pG8_X5LbPTJi7oYsYDW6A_EUPufnED9L2LFAab6gSJHl0BqHtuclKJHhryV6kvtkrwymCsQsMJ75irZ1VBYtqLtDFe7UFoSYPGgGxoH6eT9KoUS76_Q0TU1Pvxu80kdrEZWuw3hkZ97kjEqprvtW-dpBPv3adRG1Y.Y0onz1AoxBJdm-pl8ObqvETQOk9UCqIwVK_zDlSyEHc&dib_tag=se&keywords=outdoor+wifi+extender&qid=1716799269&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1

Run ethernet from your router and stick this outside. Power over ethernet.

Very robust, been there about 3 years now.

Lots to read up about then. I like the idea of an outdoor extender but if its only a little more to get the TP mesh thing i might go down that route. Theres just so many to choose from and dont want to have loads of extra things with flashing lights on worktops.

This is the one I went for. My summer house is probably 15m away from the nearest mesh station so I can’t guarantee that yours will work at 30m

TP Deco

Quick semi-hijack.

I have fibre going to a box under my desk – https://photos.app.goo.gl/BLg1jXKRD39maezZ7
This is linked to a router on my windowsill – https://photos.app.goo.gl/KrWTmdWp9HowwuGV8
The router has wired connection to 3 laptops on my desk next to the window sill and a Netgear box on the floor – https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y4QXwb8rVDgQsvDFA
In the (detached) garage I think there is another Netgear box which provides a 2nd network int he garage but is weak and flaky.

Wifi in the house is fine but I would like to be able to reliably have video Teams and Zoom calls from the garage sometime.

1) Do I replace the Netgear boxes with TP Deco?
2) Do I replace the Router and the Netgear boxes with TP Deco?
3) Other suggestions?

@WorldClassAccident

You can run the Decos in either Access Point (AP) mode or Router mode.

In AP mode you would keep your existing router but you would turn off it’s wireless function. You would then connect one of the decos to the router via ethernet. The rest of the decos can be connected either wirelessly or via ethernet in any combination – it’s very flexible. Some can be wirelessly connected and some can be ethernet’d up – think of a wireless bridge between two units with the rest connected via ethernet (maybe if you had a tricky gap you couldn’t run any cable). The decos now act purely as wireless clients that your devices connect to with the existing router acting as the the main hub so to speak. You can also connect devices via the deco’s ethernet ports if you desire.

In router mode you would get rid of your current router and then one of the deco’s becomes the ‘main’ unit which becomes the router of your network. You then connect up the rest of the decos in the same manner as before.

I choose to run my decos in AP mode which allows me to keep the BT home hub as the router.  This stops BT thinking that the router is down and potentially throttling speeds. Don’t know if that would actually happen but it also allows BT to run any diagnostics check on my service if we ever have any issues. Something they wouldn’t be able to do if we weren’t using their router.

I really reccomend getting these decos. Been bullet proof. I do have them all backhauled via ethernet though so ymmv if you had to have them connected wirelessly.

Captaintomo – Thanks.

The AP mode seems like a solution= providing it can get from my office window sill into the garage to reach the 2nd Decos.

Router with ethernet to the base Decos.
Decos, or router I guess, via ethernet to the 3 computers in the office where it lives.
Decos down in the garage.

from memory you can buy  an ‘outside’ Deco which would improve the chances/signal if you had a space to mount it on the outside of that wall.

I run 6 decos here, one of which is connected to my workshop/office. But that’s on an ethernet cable between two decos. I also ran power line before we had the decos and it was useless.

Agree with above on reliability of Decos. We run ours in router mode as I didn’t see the point of having another ‘hop’ to the ISP router. Can see why you’d do it that way tho esp if you wanted to let ISP run tests on ‘their’ router.

Before I chuck £200 at this, why will ‘Deco mesh’ thingies work better than other wifi extenders that are a whole heap cheaper?

Better quality electrons, just a stronger signal…?

Been reading up on this. What exactly is “Mesh”?

How does it differ from wifi range extenders?

This is the article I pointed our broadband whatsapp group at whenever the question was asked:

https://uk.pcmag.com/how-to/117310/wi-fi-range-extender-vs-mesh-network-whats-the-difference

Pertinent text re extenders.

“However, this also means you still have slow Wi-Fi at multiple points in your house. Repeating the entire Wi-Fi signal is inefficient—that extender merely listens to every packet and rebroadcasts it. There’s no internal logic that sends packets to the right path. Plus, having to manually switch back and forth between networks as you move around is a huge hassle.

More importantly, though, range extenders can often slow things down. Wireless is “half duplex,” which means a wireless device can’t send and receive information at the same time—every device on the same channel has to take turns talking. Range extenders exacerbate this inefficiency, says Crane, since they have to repeat every single thing they “hear” like someone following you around all day, repeating everything you say before someone else can talk.”

That bit about half duplex reminds me of arguments of ‘why token ring was better than ethernet’ about 25 years ago. A classic case of better engineering meeting market saturation/cheap chipsets. The ‘betamax’ effect. Anyway as you were 🙂

My wifi is currently fast enough though. 140Mbps download and just over 30Mbps upload.

Depends what you’re paying for I guess. If you are paying for full gig fibre and only getting 140 down then I would say that isn’t good enough.

BT fibre is the only option here. 140Mbps is plenty for our needs.

Just did an experiment to find any dead spots around the house/garden. Can pick up either our BT router or the extension everywhere except for inside the summerhouse. Outside it is fine. So maybe there is something i can do with that?

I thought the extension was a netgear but its a TP link AC750. Nothing special but works perfectly for the TV that kept dropping from the BT router. No standard TV signal here so we have a BT TV box wired to the TP link thing.

I have the same situation as you. I tried various wifi repeat extenders which were rubbish but a TP link Powerline has been rock solid. If you have electricity to the summer house this may be the easiest option. I’ve been running this for four years now.

It will allow hardwiring a laptop in and give you wifi in the summer house and garden.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WPA4220KIT-Powerline-Broadband-Configuration-UK/dp/B01LXOZ4EN/ref=sr_1_3?crid=R2ENSO66Q6G5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.BA6tQrX4LlqJ0esJpYVGAR2S0Jn-Nv1qyi4hUDWtguwl0bLT00SSrXVGgOLooovL-KaSuyDvZUzH1ularbnqyP5LnFKGStHiOT7N2_S67q0mergX-ILuUXrXd7ehEVaan-ghBW0OryXwHo9O6e6rXLuXl41VCFkPPQViG_7C3yTcEF9A7kUggYZeoyypx7tXlVhVrm8dtW-2acywbCG5aVffQNfOzkdTYdRAZpQkpjc.5JaKJ9vt4zuJ9YSXy-KXFFpc_el1vR4BHQ6EemZEdmc&dib_tag=se&keywords=powerline+wifi+extender&qid=1716912607&sprefix=powerline%2Caps%2C115&sr=8-3