I finally have WiFi in my bedroom

[kburton97]

I think this might belong in networking but I'm not sure so I'll just shove it here and hope for the best 

 

So, for the past year or so when I've been away from home for school I've had really bad WiFi in my bedroom. The problem is that from the AP to my bed is through 3 solid brick walls diagonally and upwards. Hopefully my very crude drawing in Paint will make this easier to understand. 

The problem is, because the house was built over 100 years ago, there isn't any wired networking in the house. And, because of the fabulous way our wiring works in the UK, the powerline adaptors I have in the house only work in one socket in my room, which just so happens to be behind my wardrobe.

About an hour ago, I thought to my self enough is enough. I dug out an AP I had laying around from when my Aunt moved offices and set to work installing it. It was at that point I realised that the power cable for it was only 1m long. I thought about extending the 12v adaptor for it but that seemed like too much effort. So I googled to see if i could get a power over Ethernet adaptor. But then I remembered that I spent all of my money at McDonalds so that was out of the question. 

I did another google to see if i could make my own POE adaptor, and it turns out they are quite simple. Just use the 4 leftover wires in a Cat 5 cable for power. I sabotaged a cheap Chinese 12v adaptor that I had laying around from one of my other failed projects, attached each end to a piece of Cat5 (It just so happens that I keep a 305m reel of Cat5 in my bedroom, don't even ask why). Since I had a long enough bit of Cat5, I decided to put the AP in a better place, above my door so that it is more in the centre of the house, so I could get better WiFi in my office as well. (I have also attached a crude drawing of this).

I have also attached a photo of what it looks like in the end. It's not pretty but it does the job. I didn't have any white heat shrink so black had to do, and the bright green lights on the AP were annoying so I thought I would be clever and use white electrical tape to cover it, but apparently Poundland don't know what colour white is.

 

With the new AP, my internet speed goes up from around 0.7mbps to a blistering fast 11.26mbps. We can get faster internet but I get 200mbps internet at college so if I need to download or upload anything big, I just do it there.

[Okjoek]

I get where you're coming from. I wish I had a prefabricated house. I've got ethernet cables running all around the house. Been thinking of getting a switch for my room personally.

[paddy-stone]

Good job, the only thing I am wondering is why didn't you continue the run of cat5 to further into your room, then you could've had wired network to your PC and also wireless via that AP?

[kburton97]

4 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Good job, the only thing I am wondering is why didn't you continue the run of cat5 to further into your room, then you could've had wired network to your PC and also wireless via that AP?

The powerline adaptor that I have only has one ethernet and I really don't fancy having any more cables coming out of the AP. I have a switch in a box downstairs somewhere so when I find that, I will do a better job of the wired. But my main priority for now is having the WiFi. And, to be honest, when the internet is this bad, there's no difference between the wired and WiFi.

[paddy-stone]

4 minutes ago, kburton97 said:

The powerline adaptor that I have only has one ethernet and I really don't fancy having any more cables coming out of the AP. I have a switch in a box downstairs somewhere so when I find that, I will do a better job of the wired. But my main priority for now is having the WiFi. And, to be honest, when the internet is this bad, there's no difference between the wired and WiFi.

Ahh I see, lol... just noticed that it was draytek vigor and thought "OMG you're only using it for wifi?".

Personally, if my internet was that bad I'd want to squeeze out every drop I could... I used to have bad-ish wifi (about 7 Mbit/s), but luckily we got upgraded to FTTC last year and I get around 65-70Mbit/s now day and night. I hope to see the day we get upgraded to Gigabit, but as we live out in the countryside, doubt that will happen within my lifetime... best I can hope for is fibre to the node which might see us get around 300Mbit/s if they get approval and costing goes well enough for them to roll it out in my area... here's hoping

[kburton97]

3 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Ahh I see, lol... just noticed that it was draytek vigor and thought "OMG you're only using it for wifi?".

Personally, if my internet was that bad I'd want to squeeze out every drop I could... I used to have bad-ish wifi (about 7 Mbit/s), but luckily we got upgraded to FTTC last year and I get around 65-70Mbit/s now day and night. I hope to see the day we get upgraded to Gigabit, but as we live out in the countryside, doubt that will happen within my lifetime... best I can hope for is fibre to the node which might see us get around 300Mbit/s if they get approval and costing goes well enough for them to roll it out in my area... here's hoping

We used to be with Virgin Media here but we got rid of them because we didn't watch the TV much. We then decided to just go with TalkTalk because they were pretty much giving it away. At home, we just upgraded to 'fibre' with talktalk so we get 30mbps, but I can't really complain because when our contract ended I was talking to them and just kept asking for more and more stuff so I ended up getting unlimited 'fibre' broadband, TV, mobile and anytime calls to anyone for half the price we were paying. TalkTalk must really want customers 

[paddy-stone]

I wish we could get cable here

[kburton97]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

I wish we could get cable here

The only good side to living in a somewhat urban area is that you get somewhat decent internet speeds. My actual house is in a reasonable sized town near Durham but get's absolutely nothing in terms of fast internet. Unless you count 4G, I get around 100mbps laying in bed, as long as I hold my phone at a certain angle a certain distance away from the window.