Home Networking Advice

[Roblar]

So after a month of waiting I finally got my Fibre connected in my new home!

 

I've moved out of my flat where the wi-fi and connection was perfect (with an outage now and again).   The wi-fi router provided by virgin media worked really well and would easily achieve the 200mbps advertised and I actually received 220mbps over the wi-fi connection.  This coverage was enjoyed throughout the entire flat.

 

Moving forward into my new home where the fibre point is in the living room, when testing the speeds, again I get the 220mbps download speed.  I can also get the speed to be at least 150mbps+ downstairs over wi-fi.  Now upstairs my devices and peripherals connect fine (not the greatest signal strength) and actually don't have access to the internet for some reason which I find odd.

 

So in the mean time I've purchased some power line adapters and plugged it directly into the wall sockets at both ends, and my office being the other end I'm getting about 40mbps download speed, which is okay however I'm obviously not getting what I spend on the 200mbps where I needed it most.

 

I have a theory why this might be the case, we installed wood flooring into our upstairs floors and as part of this we got some very good insulation where the surface layer is like a very thin foil material.  I have a feeling that either the flooring is too thick, or that insulating underlay is interfering with the signal.

 

I'm just wondering if you guys have any possible ideas around this problem or how I can easily get the wi-fi signal upstairs.  I have a dual band router (TP-link AC1200 Dual Band N-Router) however I can't for the life of me seem to be able to set it up as a repeater, I've looked for instructions however the interface seems older than the information I've researched and the options just simply don't exist.

 

Please help!!!  

[Gdog]

You would be better using an Ethernet cable to connect the two routers. The power line are not going to go any faster as their using mains wiring which is not ideal.

 

Can you not get some cable tidies and descretely run an Ethernet to upstairs and connect to a router set up as an access point?

[Roblar]

1 minute ago, Gdog said:

You would be better using an Ethernet cable to connect the two routers. The power line are not going to go any faster as their using mains wiring which is not ideal.

 

Can you not get some cable tidies and descretely run an Ethernet to upstairs and connect to a router set up as an access point?

I would absolutely love to run an Ethernet cable however the two rooms are literally the opposite side of the house.  I would probably be looking at like a 75m plus cable haha!  

 

The thought of actually running cables in the walls has occurred to me but I know how expensive that can be.

 

I have been recommended a home mesh Wifi system but as I'm not really familiar with I'm currently researching into it, my only concern is that 200mb will be carried to my office

[Gdog]

17 minutes ago, Roblar said:

I would absolutely love to run an Ethernet cable however the two rooms are literally the opposite side of the house.  I would probably be looking at like a 75m plus cable haha!  

 

The thought of actually running cables in the walls has occurred to me but I know how expensive that can be.

 

I have been recommended a home mesh Wifi system but as I'm not really familiar with I'm currently researching into it, my only concern is that 200mb will be carried to my office

Sorry, I didn't mean running the cable all the way to the computer. Most home routers cannot be configured as a wifi relay but they usually can be configured as an access point. In which case you could run an Ethernet cable from the router downstairs to a router upstairs and configure the upstairs router as an access point. If it is in fact the flooring then this should improve speeds with minimal fuss and cost. You could test it before affixing or drilling any holes too.

[Donut417]

11 hours ago, Roblar said:

I would absolutely love to run an Ethernet cable however the two rooms are literally the opposite side of the house.  I would probably be looking at like a 75m plus cable haha!  

 

The thought of actually running cables in the walls has occurred to me but I know how expensive that can be.

 

I have been recommended a home mesh Wifi system but as I'm not really familiar with I'm currently researching into it, my only concern is that 200mb will be carried to my office

While Power line adapters will cut speed and reliablity can be iffy, Moca adapters might be another choice. Again you will sacrfice some performance. 1) They are only half duplex like WiFi, 2) They tend to add some latency 3) They can be expensive. The Moca 2.0 adapters can do up to 400 Mbps for the regular ones and 800 Mbps for the bonded adapters. 

 

Though you have to have coax both at the modem and at the computer. Not sure how things are done over there. But here in the US there is a good chance Coax was ran to a few rooms in your home. 

[Mdgtman91]

If you don't mind spending a few bucks. Get 2 Unifi Access Points and mesh them. If you are curious about "meshing" there is a Techquicky about it. The Unifi UAP-AC-Lites are like $90 each but this would be the best solution.

 

They are super easy to set up and the mesh network does't degrade the speeds as bad as repeaters and range extenders do. I have rolled this solution out at a few clients offices who have old buildings or no easy way to run cables.

 

Edit: I have 2 meshed and I'm getting 150 down through the meshed AP but that's all I have for download speeds.