wifi range extenders

Does anyone have any experience with the various range extenders that you can get for wifi?

My kids are 2 floors above the router and get a crap coverage at times. They are going mad at me when they are gaming....I'm hard-wired into the superhub so no problems

We did use a homeplug set-up once, but one 'melted' and we changed to wifi after that.

I am considering either Homeplugs again, but paying for a decent set like Devolo or getting a Wifi extender of some sort.

I am with virgin media on a superhub if that will make any difference to people's experince.

Been using homeplugs for myself family a friends for a while now.

Much better than wifi, particularly for gaming as wifi will suffer from interference in addition to being inherently half duplex at the mo.

Sounds like you just had bad luck with your last set!

I still prefer cat5 (+) cabled (for gigabit connections), but did mean running cables to all the bedrooms (before there was even computers in all of them) from the 'comms centre' under the stairs when I first moved in 11 year ago, and plastered them up the lounge wall, when we all move to one purpose designed computer room later this year, again I'll run decent cat5 (its less than 10m from the 'comms centre') and have a gigabit switch (or maybe one with WAP too )

Heh, no chance that I'm going to take a cat5 cable up 2 floors worth of work! Would be best option I agree, but not for me!!

I personally use wifi (Draft N speeds) with 2 other laptops on, and one torrenting regularly, and my gaming doesn't really suffer. I'm 1 floor up and at the other end of the house to my router.

First option is to make sure you have the latest firmware, as stupid as it sounds, I used to pick up 56mb/70something in my room (further away from the router), after the updating I now get a solid 150mb signal, so it may help.

After that, try changing the channel on the wireless, interference is a common thing nowadays, most of the channels have cross over as well (i.e. channel 3 will crossover with channel 2 and 4) so (assuming you're on 2.4ghz) channels 1 and 11 are usually best, but try a few channels inbetween and see if the signal improves.

A good way to test is to go to dos(start->run->cmd) and do ping -t xx.xx.xx.xx where the IP is your routers IP address (for me its ping -t 192.168.2.1) ctrl+C will cancel that, but ideally you should be looking for 1ms responses almost all the time, if its higher or theres packetloss, then it could be interference. 2 Floors is a long way, but you should be able to get a useable signal up there.

If you're definately set on a wireless repeater, they are fairly simple to install, but aren't super fast. I'd recommend a bit of testing and fiddling to see if you can't sort it out before buying new gear.

Hmm thanks, I'm leaning towards the homeplugs again, as when they worked we had very fast speeds, but I will try pining the router and fiddle a bit and see first.

I'd definitely put homeplugs in, wifi will always be hit or miss over longer distances or through solid walls or in areas where there are many other wifi points. There are just so many factors which affect it.

I've put quite a few in for people and not had any failures so far, I guess you were just unlucky.

Another +1 for homeplugs here

They just work (tm)
They are fast
They don't seem to care about power cuts
Someone else moving in next door and using the same wireless channel doesn't affect you
Turning on the micowave doesn't upset them

Couple of caveats
Don't plug them into a gangway
Make sure they have enough airflow as they do run hot, I've never had one actually melt but I have replaced two burnt out one's
Keep within the same model/brand, they don't seem to play nice, when I got mine I got a total of 8 and have three still unopened, so if one blows or I need another I have them on hand incase they stop making that particular one
I've never used the inbuilt security tools, so can't vouch what they do to things if they are used

A noob question to confirm something

If you have 1 homeplug into the router, how many homeplugs will that router/homeplug feed? Is it up to 4?

Got to this thread late, apologies for that Swith.

Now, to business, as the resident VM tech employee (dont all swear at me at once thanks) I have crucial information about the superhub, henceforth known as the shub.

Its crap

ok, now we have that out of the way, the info given so far is correct about the shub, auto channel sucks, so here is the quick fix

log into the shub 192.168.0.1, admin/changeme, click on advanced settings, then wireless settings on the top left, change the channel to 11 and the 802.11 mode to 145Mbps, click apply

Thats sorted the extremely poor wireless to a certain extent, but the shub was designed by a muppet, and it wasnt one of the clever ones. The wireless antenna is in the middle of the circuit board facing down the way, this is not clever.

Solution : Get a wireless router, turn the hub into modem mode,. attach router to 1st ethernet port (next to coax) and use a proper router.

Disclaimer : The opinions in the post above are strictly the opinions of the poster and every other tech worth a damn in VM, and not necessarily the opinions of VM themselves even though they have now admitted that the testing on the hub wasnt thorough and are currently in talks with different manufacturers regarding a new hub

Dareos said:

Got to this thread late, apologies for that Swith.

Now, to business, as the resident VM tech employee (dont all swear at me at once thanks) I have crucial information about the superhub, henceforth known as the shub.

Its crap

ok, now we have that out of the way, the info given so far is correct about the shub, auto channel sucks, so here is the quick fix

log into the shub 192.168.0.1, admin/changeme, click on advanced settings, then wireless settings on the top left, change the channel to 11 and the 802.11 mode to 145Mbps, click apply

Click to expand...

This explains alot!! I've been running on Channel 11 for about 2 years, suddenly started getting alot of interference on it, especially late at night (I assume others are torrenting), moved to channel 6 and all good now lol

Dareos said:

Got to this thread late, apologies for that Swith.

Now, to business, as the resident VM tech employee (dont all swear at me at once thanks) I have crucial information about the superhub, henceforth known as the shub.

Its crap

ok, now we have that out of the way, the info given so far is correct about the shub, auto channel sucks, so here is the quick fix

log into the shub 192.168.0.1, admin/changeme, click on advanced settings, then wireless settings on the top left, change the channel to 11 and the 802.11 mode to 145Mbps, click apply

Thats sorted the extremely poor wireless to a certain extent, but the shub was designed by a muppet, and it wasnt one of the clever ones. The wireless antenna is in the middle of the circuit board facing down the way, this is not clever.

Solution : Get a wireless router, turn the hub into modem mode,. attach router to 1st ethernet port (next to coax) and use a proper router.

Disclaimer : The opinions in the post above are strictly the opinions of the poster and every other tech worth a damn in VM, and not necessarily the opinions of VM themselves even though they have now admitted that the testing on the hub wasnt thorough and are currently in talks with different manufacturers regarding a new hub

Click to expand...

Cheers Dareos will change those settings and dig out my other router and see.

I think it's 32 homeplugs on one loop that is supported, but I could be wrong, it's probably specific to the homeplugs you get

So its only the wireless that is crap? Ours I had to reset EVERY day when the internet connection dropped, had to be swapped back to a normal modem (a black one that looks surprising like the superhub) after 8 months of faffing by VM support, now only needs restting every month or so (30mb service)

(as I've said before, we use all 4 wired ports for pc's, only wireless devices are, wii, ds's, iphones, itouch, ipad, sony media player, apart from the media player, wireless connection speed not so critical on those)

Wireless isn't crap tbh, I just depends what you use. I've used wireless for about 5 years now without any long term issues. Had to change channels a couple of times, but nothing too bad. Just for the record too, (as far as I'm aware) both the homeplugs and wireless are half duplex. You'd need two separate wires for the full duplex, I assume electrical plugs are just a circuit, so its like the old style Ethernet with vampire taps, just much faster

Wireless is also half duplex. And yea, depends what your after, for web browsing etc wireless is fine, opening a multi megabyte file from some network share wireless is not fine.

Wireless on the hub is crap, didnt mean wireless in general

Changed the hub settings as advised and so far my eldest hasn't complained...yet.

Prolly will buy homeplugs when I can afford them though to guarantee a good connecton.