wi fi extender thats plug and play?

[Kev1744]

hi all

ive just joined vodafone and got the fibre broadband.

the speeds im getting are great when im sat within feet of the router but not so great in the rest of the house.

the house is a fairly small house but has solid brick internal walls which i think is blocking the signal. after speaking to vodafone they can only suggest i upgrade my plan to include boosters, however i would rather just buy my own. can anyone recommend ones that work and are plug and play?

ideally  i want it so it mimics the router as well so no need to change connections as i move from room to room.

cheers kev

[Cynric]

@Kev1744 Which Vodafone broadband product have you got? How many wireless devices are you connecting and how big is the property? There are quite a number of well known brands that are probably suitable. It's also worth searching the forum as this kind of question has been asked before.

[Kev1744]

hi thanks for quick reply.

there will probably be about 4 or 5 devices ( mainly its for my wireless security cameras to work) the house is a small 2 bed place...distance from router at front of house to back of house is about 40 foot.

i have searched the forum...problem is lots of replies dont name the actual product ...and im easily confused 🙂

i did speak with vodafone and they surprised me by saying their routers were only guaranteed to give a good signal between 6 and 8 meters 

[Cynric]

@Kev1744  Hmm the help desk can sometimes resemble a chocolate teapot.

Two things then; if your walls soak-up the WiFi signal like mine do you may have fun getting the signal to the furthest location, and, some 2.4 GHz devices can be a right pain to connect (you may even have seen this already). In my house I used PowerLine devices from TP-Link, but please note that other respected contributors are not a fan of PowerLine like I am and their objections are valid.

[Kev1744]

ok, just ordered a tp powerline av600...ill see how it works ! 🙂

[Kev1744]

hmm so using the tp link system was not the success i hoped for....download speeds plummeted using the tp link. ah well back to the drawing board.

[Cynric]

@Kev1744 Sorry to hear that. The SV600 does have a maximum speed of 300Mbps plus it can be impacted by the quality of the house wiring.

[Kev1744]

loli would have been more than happy to have got anywhere near that speed...instead it dropped to 4mbps....from 70.

[Cynric]

@Kev1744  Four!!! Oh that is rubbish. I get between 300 and 500 in my over the wire powerline to my study, I don't bother with WiFi because of the interference. As I'm only on a DSL line at 60/16 it's more than enough for the internet, but it's great for anything indoors.

[Cynric]

@Kev1744  I've had a very quick search of the forum. It's notable that there are more than one thread containing issues with Netgear and TP-Link WiFi extenders. It could be just because they are popular brands or they don't like the THG3000 router.

By the way, did you see this https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Other-broadband-queries/Do-I-Need-1-Wifi-Extender-Or-2/m-p/2744003 ?