Looking to resolve a couple dead spots around my house.
are the smaller outlet mounted units enough or should I just spend the $100-150 for a big multi antenna unit?
i have no tips - never was sure if range extenders were worth chit…but, interested in your results. wouldn’t mind wifi’zing my backyard and garage.
I bought a wifi repeater to get more coverage in my back yard. When it worked it was amazing. I installed it in my shed which is close enough to my house that it gets decent wifi signal. With the repeater going I got great signal on the back side of my yard where we’re constantly playing yard games and I wanted to be able to control my wifi stereo from my phone. It was perfect.
The issue I had was the repeater and my router never played nice together. Anywhere between 5-12 hours after turning on the repeater the wifi would lock up. It would still connect but you’d have no access. The only fix at that point was reboot my main router. I tried firmware updates on both, even going so far as installed DD-WRT on the main router and I could never get it to consistently work, which was odd considering the repeater and router were even the same brand (TP-Link). The speaker I use for outdoors is actually Spotify enabled so I’m able to control it from my phone even on the cell network so now I just turn off wifi when I’m in the back yard. Had that not worked I probably would have just picked up a different repeater since it was doing what I wanted when it worked.
^ That’s the one I have. I can’t really recommend it though just based on it’s flakey performance with my router.
I’m waiting to see how Googles new Wifi setup performs
I am far from computer savy, but do any of you lose speed going from the modem to the wifi router?
We live in a rural area, we have a plan of 10mbps DL speed, but we lose about 8 going to the router.
Speed test shows it’s around 2.5 coming from the router and 10 directly connected to the modem.
sq ft your trying to cover?
bakes, no.
my current router does a pretty good job covering the house itself as it is a pretty open floor plan so there usually isn’t more than a couple of walls between the router and any point in the living area. my biggest issue is in my attached garage where the furthest corners are probably about 100’ from the router with a few interior and a couple exterior walls inbetween.
i figure if i put a range extender right about where the house and garage meet i might be able to solve the problem. my office is the last room before the garage and everything does fine there. i’ve considered relocating the router to the office but then i think i’d just have the same problem at the other end of the house.
I would not bother with range extenders or repeaters, get a nice AP to that corner of the house. Ruckus makes magical APs.
you mean run a ethernet cable from the main router over to the corner and setup an access point that way?
the only issue ive had like this is if you have a modem that has a built in router - and you’re trying to use an external router as well…they interfere with eachtoher.
When I upgraded my modem to go to 50mbps, i didn’t know it came with a router internally, so i used my external one i previously had hooked up…was reading about 20mbps, called, troubleshooted, threw it out - and it reads 48ish now
I work for Linksys, so take it with a grain of salt. I’ve had good luck with a range extender in my house, and we just had the Tolly group prove we are a lot faster VS “whole home wifi” type solutions.
We do not have a modem like that.
I have a pole barn 100’ or so away that is powered off the main panel feeding my house. With the steel siding/roof and another structure in between, I would barely detect the house WiFi. I used the LinkSys Ethernet over Powerline adapters, connected it up and it works great. It has WiFi capability - one end is connected with CAT6 to the main WiFi gateway and the other side is WiFi. Maybe not the best solution, but works for my pole barn perfect and was very easy to setup.
So it runs through the electric wiring then?
Do you guys make the powerline networking kit that includes the Wifi piece? If so, that’d be my recommendation.
Yep - uses the power cables. The one below is from NetGear, but there are a handful of manufactures:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgear-powerline-500-802-11n-wireless-access-point/8941593.p?id=1218956063692&skuId=8941593
slo, if you have multiple dead spots in your house, i don’t think powerline is a economical solution. In a scenario where you have one major dead spot, and no easy way to run ethernet, that is a great fix.
If you have multiple dead spots within your home, in varying angles from your current router, without spending $$$ you can try to centralize your current router.
What model is your current?
How big is your house that you need extenders? Just get a newer, better router?
I just bought an EA9500 from @Geehee’s people at Linksys (not literally, don’t PM him for free WiFi) and placed dead center in my house it covers my entire property. Detached garage and all. My house is all brick too. :tup: