UKC

I have tried googling and I am left confused.

I am in need of some sort of WiFi booster, I have moved to a new home which has a number of blackspots.

Can someone experienced recommend a solution please, there is a dizzying array on the market.

WiFi is used for work, general internet/social media stuff, calls as mobile signal is poor, Spotify etc. Not a gamer if that affects things.

Many Thanks

You can either get a repeater that duplicates your Wi-Fi SSID and password and piggy backs off your main router or go down the access point connected via a hard wired Ethernet or via your mains supply. The latter being the easiest and most stable to install. I’ve got some TP-link ones and they work perfectly.

Thanks, it has to be WiFi for work data security (please don't ask why, I don't know).

I already have a mains plug in extender for the TV box, would adding a second confuse the signal? 

It shouldn't do, I have 2 WiFi extenders (Tp Link). They both have the same SSID and password as the main router, the phones/laptop etc just link to the strongest signal.

Edit: These are powerline extenders that use the house wiring. They work fine, but should be plugged into the same ring main for best performance.

Thanks, I did wonder about different rings. I expect my locations wil be on different Ring mains. 

Moderna or Pfizer? Think they boost different networks, so it will depend on your provider

Are you really that desperate that you have to be connected in every cubic millimeter of your home? Sad bastard!

I find they work fine on different circuits (though in France, so not ring mains.) But they absolutely refuse to talk across phases of a 3-phase supply 

IIRC ideally they should be on the same ring main, but do work on different ones.

He's asking about wifey boosters, you silly thing!... Personally, I'd recommend some Sanatogen and an album by that nice Daniel O'Donnell.

No but I do need to work.

Grow up. 

Thank you, you have made my day.

You missed white wine from your list.

Screwfix do some which are part of a double socket housing. Performance is faultless in a static location, only failing is when I am walking round the house on a WhatsApp call and move out of the router's sphere of influence it takes 10 seconds or so to handover to the extender. 

Very interesting, thanks, I will look them up

we have a similar issue and had an extender originally (i think, i'm no expert) that you had to manually select to connect to. So you wifi options would either show the main network (ex plusnet) or the extension (plusnet_ext).

it didn't work that well so we changed to a netgear wifi booster range extender (AC1900) which once linked with your main wifi router you can connect to automatically. that seems to have sorted the blackspot issue for us.

i'm also aware that some providers seem to offer guarantee of wifi in all rooms and if not, they will provide a booster. I've not done this myself/no actual experience but potentially another option

If you're on Virgin, they are doing Wifi Pods. You just plug them in, no config required. They create a mesh with the hub, so they will chat amongst themselves and work out the coverage.

They have increased the coverage in the house and cleared up a notspot. So cant complain, as I was looking at wifi6 mesh routers, which are a lot more expensive. They have an ethernet port on them as well, but I've not tested that.

I've just bought some WiFi mesh devices (tp link deco M5) as opposed to the plugin mains extender I had. More expensive but my tech savvy colleague said it would work better. I'd complained to him of issues, particularly when moving between the router and the extender...it was like my phone would get confused about which one to connect to and most apps would just hang. He reckoned a WiFi mesh was the answer.

We have the same problem in our house. As an IT professional, the best solution is Mesh WiFi. You can buy as many mesh wifi nodes as you need, spacing them out over the house so each is close enough to another to remain within wifi contact. They each radiate the same wifi network for all your devices to connect to, and the primary mesh node plugs into your Broadband router to connect back to the Internet (you can turn the wifi off on your Broadband router as you won't need it).

We have the older Velop system (had it about 6 years now, no problems), and 4 nodes covers our entire house. If I was buying new today I'd probably buy the Asus ZenWifi or TP-Link Deco as they are feature rich and most future proofed. Depending on what other gadgets and digital services you use, you might want to consider the Google Nest and Amazon Eero options, as they integrate nicely with other products by the same vendor (home automation, Alexa, etc). Downside is pricing.. you're looking at £200-400 depending on specific product and number of nodes you're likely to need.

Cheaper alternatives that are workable but not ideal are the the powerline extenders, or point to point wifi range extenders. If you've lots of wifi devices in the house (phones, tablets, smart tv's etc) or have any gamers living with you that need low-latency throughput, these solutions will likely disappoint. Avoid anything that needs to radiate a second WIFI network, as your devices will be constantly losing connection as they swap between different wifi networks.

Hope you find a solution you're happy with!

Mesh Wifi is the way to go, indeed.

Figure out what your requirements are: kids, TV, work etc.

If your requirements are low, then the extenders will probably do the job for not too much, as long as you can site them in the right place; however they can be a pita and it is yesterday's tech, for what that's worth.

Otherwise if there's not too much going on, awclin's advice is good - some kind of dual band mesh wifi. I have one of these, a TP-Link DECO M5 and now I never have to think about signal quality anywhere in the house.

If you have loads going on, especially TV and work simultaneously, look at a tri-band router:

https://www.howtogeek.com/220509/htg-explains-what-is-a-tri-band-router-and...

Also check out Stupoo's detailed reply in the Bad TV thread:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/bad_tv__wifi-742267

Here’s my experience of extending the WiFi coverage. We live in a concrete walled house so the WiFi signal drops off very fast behind walls. 

Our options were to use a mains based system with wouldn’t work as it’s 3 phase and even if a standard U.K. mains system I couldn’t see how the signal could get between the different ring circuits in the house ( the sales rep assured me it could until I drew a circuit diagram)

Running a LAN cable to a second (repurposed) WiFi unit was chosen and improved the signal in the upper part of the house removing most of the poor coverage spots and giving us a wired connection to the second router for speed.

Mesh system was investigated for the one area of really really bad coverage but not used as there’s no mains supply close by.

Hello Presley,

I'd recommend getting some homeplugs aka powerline adapters and a slave router (any old router). Then what you do is connect the homeplugs to the areas with blackspots (one by the master/main router, and the other in the blackspot area.) Then you sync them up and connect them to the routers at either end i.e connect master/main router to the nearest homeplug via ethernet cable, then at the other end where the black spot is connect the secondary aka slave router to the nearby homeplug with an ethernet cable. So what you've effectively done is connect the internet from one router to the other using a pseudo-wired connection.

Final step is to log into the routers and play around with a few settings (make sure slave router is outside DHCP range of the master router and disable DHCP in the slave router settings). Need a tiny bit of technical knowhow (not much as I learnt it all watching youtube videos).

I can link you to a few videos so if this is something of interest let me know and I'll find some videos for you. First time it'll seem like a faff, but having done it again and again over the years, it's now a 5 min job. If you've never done it before, once you've got the kit, it'll probably take about 15-20 mins following online tutorials i reckon?

in theory homeplugs can still work but you'd be better off trying more expensive devolo magic 2. (in repsonse to the post about using homeplugs over different ring mains). Some reviews on them state then work across two different mains which I found interesting - not tested myself mind you. I recently sorted out our house wiring. What I did was to piggyback off disused phone cables and set up an effective cat 5e cable using phone lines and just punched an ethernet rj45 socket at either end of the cable. Not ideal, but it works and involved no messy wiring!

Agree with your whole post and it is worth reading. Just to reply to the bit I've quoted, I came to the same conclusion having tried the Powerline option. The Powerline was great and a good cheaper alternative but I kept getting issues when walking around the house with dropping one connection and picking up another. Apps on my phone would hang etc., but it did solve the problem of getting WiFi extended to whole house for less money than a mesh.

But, after a couple of years and multiple complaints from all members of the household (apart from the cat who didn't seem bothered) I have just bought the Tp-link Deco M5. 3 units (one has to be hardwired to your existing router, the other two can be distributed about the house) for £139 and it works beautifully, easy to setup with an app for your phone. There's a cheaper 2 unit option if the OP just wants to sort one dead spot.

I have been using the Tenda Nova MW3 around the house, cheap, cheerful and easy as hell to setup. But I do need to get a couple more because there is a deadish spot in the far corner of the house, all the walls are brick so it doesn't like to travel too well

I’ve got one of these TP Link extenders, wish i’d known about them years ago:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/1286627