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Thread: Wifi Boosters

  1. #1
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    Default Wifi Boosters

    I am looking for some advice on wifi boosters, with my old phone I used to be able to get wifi connection in my shed, in fact the whole yard was covered.
    But with my new phone I can only get a signal in the shed door way approx 8m from the router.
    What can I do to increase the range.

    Ratty 05/2004 -05/07/2010 COOPER 01/08/1998-31/01/2012

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  3. #2
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    Several options.
    Purchase a more powerful basestation
    Connect a WIFI extension station to the main WIFI base station using an ethernet cable.
    There are also WIFI to WIFI extenders but they won't necessarily give the same signal strength/speed at the end of the line.

    Our NBN connection - WIFI base station (NBNWIFI) is at the front of our house (50m long block) but this WIFI signal strength only reaches about half way down the length of the house. I tried a more powerful basestation but still nothing at all in the back family room let alone shed out the back. Apparently this has something to do with the iron roof and the pitch of the roof itself.

    I connected a WIFI extension station via an 15m long Ethernet cable to the NBNWIFI and that covered us to the rooms at the back of the house but not out to the shed at the back of the block. So I added a second WIFI extension station via another (25m long) ethernet cable and located that second extension at the very back of the house - problem solved.

    When I say I "ran an ethernet cable" - I had already installed an 7 SOCKET ethernet network through out the house back in 2000 so all I had to do was connect the main basestation to an ethernet switch and then plug in WIFI extensions stations in wherever I had an ethernet socket.

  4. #3
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    Nov 2011
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    Port Sephens NSW Southside
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    WM460
    If you have an old ADSL modem you could mount it in the house close to your workshop & connect it to your main system with a cat5 cable & use it as a repeater.
    A mate from work done this until he got the new Telstra smart modem. For setup check Google & Youtube. I'll be doing this in 2 weeks when I move out of Sydney.

    JohnQ

  5. #4
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    The all-in-one devices supplied by broadband suppliers tend to be junk.

    Remember that wifi is not like sound - it doesn't go around corners - it has to go straight through anything between the radio and the receiver. General recommendation is not more than a couple of plasterboard walls, although most of us get away with more than that for our low demand needs.

    If you're prepared to run a bit of ethernet cable, then a UniFi UAP Access point will transform your network.

    'Lite' version is adequate for most homes
    I have the 'Pro' because it has a few more radios and odds and sods. It's waterproof too so it could go under an eave or similar.

    Easy to install, easy to set up, and a whole lot better than the tat your ISP gave you.

    Other option is one of the mesh networks, but they can be a lot of money for not much more than easy/automatic network optimisation which is often neither auto nor optimal.

  6. #5
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    I have one of these in my house, about 10 metres from the modem.
    Very happy with it, tried a more expensive one; couldn't get it to wrok.
    This one so simple to setup. I have it plugged into a power point with a usb adapter.

    Xiaomi WIFI Repeater 2 Amplifier Extender 2 Universal Repitidor Wi Fi Extender 300Mbps 802.11n Wireless WIFI Extende Signal|xiaomi wifi repeater|wifi extenderxiaomi wifi - AliExpress

    Got it a couple of years ago, under $10 then.
    Last edited by verawood; 4th May 2020 at 07:57 PM. Reason: change distance

  7. #6
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    If you're prepared to run a bit of ethernet cable, then a UniFi UAP Access point will transform your network.

    'Lite' version is adequate for most homes
    I have the 'Pro' because it has a few more radios and odds and sods. It's waterproof too so it could go under an eave or similar.

    Easy to install, easy to set up, and a whole lot better than the tat your ISP gave you.
    I have two Unifi Ubiquity Lites at my place. My son has a Pro and it does his whole house which is about 50% bigger than our house. For some reason at our place the Pro was not significantly better than the Lite for Tx distance at the back of our house. Our son reckons the damp in our bathroom walls near the back of the house screws with the Tx . Nice products though.

  8. #7
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    We put the router modem and switch in the roof then it has only one barrier the ceiling and not multiple walls to go through and it worked well. When we got NBN for a lot of reasons we moved all the equipment to a new location and are using Ubiquity with no issues.
    CHRIS

  9. #8
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    We run a Internet over Power Line out to the shed and have a old WIFI router for the chromecast and phones etc, the new one the by purchased had a built in wifi router I think,

    We were just lucky that the circuit next to the NBN box is on the same circuit as the shed
    Last edited by notevensquare; 5th May 2020 at 01:52 PM. Reason: fat fingers

  10. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by BobL View Post
    I have two Unifi Ubiquity Lites at my place. My son has a Pro and it does his whole house which is about 50% bigger than our house. For some reason at our place the Pro was not significantly better than the Lite for Tx distance at the back of our house. Our son reckons the damp in our bathroom walls near the back of the house screws with the Tx . Nice products though.
    The pro just has more radios, so can deal with more client connections without performance suffering. Range is the same as the lite. The long range version has a different aerial built in, which is why it can talk further - the electronics etc are all the same as the lite. Which begs the question: why not put that aerial in all the AP's...? 'Cos you wouldn't buy as many AP's I guess!

  11. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by verawood View Post
    I have one of these in my house, about 10 metres from the modem.
    Very happy with it, tried a more expensive one; couldn't get it to wrok.
    This one so simple to setup. I have it plugged into a power point with a usb adapter.

    Xiaomi WIFI Repeater 2 Amplifier Extender 2 Universal Repitidor Wi Fi Extender 300Mbps 802.11n Wireless WIFI Extende Signal|xiaomi wifi repeater|wifi extenderxiaomi wifi - AliExpress

    Got it a couple of years ago, under $10 then.
    The problem with repeaters (which is what this device is) is that it cuts the WiFi bandwidth in half, reducing performance. That may or may not be important to you, but be aware. As most things, no such thing as a free lunch.

  12. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by notevensquare View Post
    We run a Internet over Power Line out to the shed and have a old WIFI router for the chromecast and phones etc, the new one the by purchased had a built in wifi router I think,

    We were just lucky that the circuit next to the NBN box is on the same circuit as the shed
    This is likely your best and cheapest option.

    HomePlug Powerline Alliance was formed to develop standards and technology for enabling devices to communicate with each other, and the Internet, over existing home electrical wiring. This includes Powerline wifi extenders. In effect you are adding additional WiFi access points and interconnecting them using a local area network.

    You do NOT need to have the PowerPoint's on same circuit, as long as :

    1. The devices are using PowerLine Homepage AV2 standard,
    AND
    2. The shed and the house are using the same switchboard (i.e. The circuits share a common bus and are not isolated from each other)

    Just look for Powerline wifi extenders that state they are Av2.

    eg BUY Asus 90IG0260-BZ7100 Online @ MEGABUY Australia

    If your shed has its own separate electrical sub panel, then I'm afraid this won't work.

  13. #12
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    My office (and practice) rooms are situated over the garage, like a granny flat. The modem for NBN is downstairs in the house. I use a powerline extender successfully, where the wifi versions would drop out. The workshop is in the garage, and picks up the signal - through the wooden suspended floor- from the powerline extender above. A separate extender is unnecessary.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek
    Visit www.inthewoodshop.com for tutorials on constructing handtools, handtool reviews, and my trials and tribulations with furniture builds.

  14. #13
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    Although its unlikely that anyone would be using a coms device while running a VFD powered machine - I wonder how VFDs would play with the powerline extenders?

  15. #14
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    I believe the powering extender signals are modulated at high enough frequencies not have any possibility of interfernce. In practice I don't have a clue

  16. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by BobL View Post
    Although its unlikely that anyone would be using a coms device while running a VFD powered machine - I wonder how VFDs would play with the powerline extenders?
    Bob - It is far more likely that the VFD will play havoc with the WiFi signal via radiated noise.

    Any concerns over VFD injecting noise back into the AC wiring can be mitigated to a large extent by using an EMI filter, along with the usual best practices of using shielded cabling, cable ground system etc, but this should not be needed - Powerline Homeplug uses 84 equally spaced subcarriers in the frequency band between 4.5MHz and 21MHz. HomePlug AV2 makes use of additional frequency spectrum (30 to 86 MHz). Cyclic prefix and differential modulation techniques (DBPSK, DQPSK) are used to completely eliminate the need for any equalization. Impulsive noise events are overcome by means of forward error correction and data interleaving. HomePlug payload uses a concatenation of Viterbi and Reed-Solomon FEC. Sensitive frame control data is encoded using turbo product codes. Immediate repeating is used for the signal on paths with better SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) characteristics.

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