Network/WiFi woes!

[Turvey]

Any computer/network whizzkids on here? Got a problem I could do with trying to sort.

 

Our house had an extension built on around 30 years ago, so old external wall is now an inside wall. Our twin boys have a room each upstairs in the extension.

 

Our router is in what used to be an office but is now a bedroom, downstairs in the old part of the house.

 

The WiFi around the downstairs is reasonable good but it is absolutely rubbish in the boys rooms. 

 

I have got some of those plugin ethernet extenders which work pretty well (20mps) if they are plugged in to any of the old part of the house but rubbish (0.5mps) when plugged in to any of the new part! 

 

Without spending a fortune in rewiring the house or running cables everywhere etc does anyone have an idea on how to improve the internet experience upstairs? 

 

I toyed with the idea of moving the main BT socket from where it is to the kitchen (directly below boys rooms) but then the rest of the house will have rubbish reception! 

[Stoney871]

Which IP are you with?
BT do booster discs, Sky do a wifi booster module.
Can't vouch for other providers.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk

[Turvey]

Ah, I've seen the ads for the BT ones now you say it. We're with Plusnet, haven't seen if they do something similar but I will investigate. Cheers.

[jace1969]

We had the similar problem with my router being down stairs and now living upstairs as carer for dad who can't get down (i have now moved the router upstairs.)

We are with virgin and super hub 3 and it's been A1 for years and still is upto 350mbps and can get that or more even Wi-Fi its 300+ but i had 1 big problem,the one wall must have something in it as trying to get Wi-Fi from front room into back room was very bad i mean 1 bar even if i had a signal so what i did was run a second router/hub (not a fan of the plug in as tried a few) i had to run 1 wire very long but when done was amazing as i had just the same signal,all i know it was a Netgear one but its years ago and had Wi-Fi signal with 4 spare ports.

Just to say i run all off Wi-Fi now as moved the main router and got rid of the netgear one but good luck and i just thought i would add this as i had the same problem,when i had the time i just moved it as never downstairs now.

[Turvey]

Thank you for your input guys.

@jace1969 actually we used to have a cable from the router to one of the upstairs bedrooms which I had plugged into an old router set up as a WiFi hotspot type of thing and it worked perfectly! But then we did up the office/bedroom and I removed the cable as it looked untidy in that room and the dining room where it threaded itself up to the bedroom..... I hate seeing cables everywhere! Wish I had kept it now 🙄

 

Thinking about it it's possible that I could run a cable from behind the BT box up to the attic and install a router up there 🤔

 

Or what about a WiFi repeater? The signal in the dinning room is pretty good and that's directly below the boys rooms. I've got no experience with them but the TP-link AC1200 seems to get a good writeup on amazon.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Extender-Broadband-Ethernet-RE305/dp/B01N4I3YOB

[jace1969]

I did try both but forget which one but think it's the repeater, it will only repeat the signal what it can get so you have to find a good room downstairs where its very good then plug the repeater in then the clone one upstairs, it says not through extension leads which means a lot of used plugs which was another problem for me.are you using 2.4 or 5GHZ on the router.

If all fails I would get onto the provider as ask them the question as they might come up with a better idea and cheaper way for you like something free etc.