Extending your virgin media wifi signal

[Danny Mc]

How to expand your virgin media WiFi network

OK so i noticed that over the last few days their was little to no help for me when looking online for a solution to growing my WiFi signal in my house with a virgin media super-hub 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

Being from the UK not a lot of people are online sharing their solutions to what they found worked for them so i want to share what i know.

 

So the Virgin Media super-hub is actually the same as any other old router and if you want to extend your WiFi signal their is a cheap and effective fix.

 

Their are several devices that can do different things for you.

 

Device 1: £25 (max) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004UBU8IE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

This device does a couple of things that will most likely accommodate your every need, the mode i used when setting it up seems to be the best solution for my problem witch was extending my WiFi connection to a new part of my house. I routed an Ethernet cable through the outside of my house and then back in through a window. The Ethernet cable comes from my virgin media super-hub right into the back of this device. It will convert your Ethernet connection into a WiFi connection by default. You will have to login to their settings menu and set your username / password for your WiFi connection in that part of the house. You can name it the same thing and use the same password to have your device just switch between them as one network.

 

Another way you can use this is by just plugging it into the wall and by going through the guide that comes in the box set it to basically grab your WiFi network and then repeat it just so that you can get a better connection in different parts of your residence. This is a less reliable connection and speeds vary a lot more using this method especially ping to certain servers especially if you are a gamer you don't want to be using it this way, use the first method at least if not just a hard wire into the back of your PC.

 

I would only recommend using the second method to people who have a crappy connection upstairs maybe and want to just hide this away in a closet somewhere and don't want to go through the trouble of routing a cable through your house.

 

 

DONT GET SCAMMED BY THE EXPENSIVE THINGS

 

A lot of the suggestions online for what i should of bought for my problem with not knowing how the super-hub acted and how virgin felt about me having more than one WiFi signal in my residence were very very high priced. Some of the products included these two wall plugs where one had an Ethernet connection from the hub to itself and then it used the power lines to deliver connection to the other plug and the plug then gave out a WiFi signal. The problem i found with these, not only are they upward of £80 on Amazon the connection reliability for them is not 100% and it is not a very big range it extends by. Ping suffers with this method a bit too for you gamers again. The only people i can imagine wanting to use this is people who just don't want ugly wires running through their living space but id still be hesitant to recommend these.

 

Sorry for rambling a bit I'm a bit stoned and only just got this stuff to work and wanted to get a topic on the internet to help people googling this in the future. Thanks if you read it all the way to the end and i hope this helps. @ me if you need any help.

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to Guides and Tutorials-

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just going to point out that this is not specific to Virgin Media. It's just adding an access point to the network. 

10 minutes ago, Danny Mc said:

You can name it the same thing and use the same password to have your device just switch between them as one network.

Technically, yes. However, devices generally aren't that great at swapping between access points on their own. They'll tend to hang on to the one they connect to first, rather than switching based on signal strength. When using multiple access points that can be configured to handle zero-handoff, then seamless roaming between access points works better. 

 

I'd personally recommend going for a single strong access point to cover the whole area if possible and just disable the WiFi on the router.