Routers- Recommendations?

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
IMO you're best off trying powerline adapters, if not then a more powerful router is your best bet (although moving the router could help).
 

hop

Well-Known Forumite
IMO you're best off trying powerline adapters

If you have multiple fuseboards then a powerline solution may not work. I have 4 fuseboards and have found things like powerline routers often will not work across the different boards.
 

Lucy

Well-Known Forumite
We have a different fuseboard for our garage, and the powerline does work, so sometmes it's worth trying.
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
We also have a separate consumer unit in the shed and it goes through that, but I've seen situations when it doesn't too.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
My question is, what basic, but improved routers are there out there that may improve my signal over longer distances? Cheers.
I have obtained three of these -

7PK8_83BE186C-13D2-4EF9-A36B-04BD3DE93CEA_large.jpg


- they seem to work OK.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I have obtained three of these -

7PK8_83BE186C-13D2-4EF9-A36B-04BD3DE93CEA_large.jpg


- they seem to work OK.
I have obtained three more of these, they are at a different location, so I haven't attempted to synchronise the two sets.

The second set also works fine on a physically much larger wiring set-up.

One is installed in the shed, on the end of a good 150' of cable.

DSC_0153.JPG


There's about three hundred miles of cable between the two sets and they would need to pass through a few transformers, so I doubt there's much chance of them working together...

I do have two more 'spare' ones that I will attempt to sync with the first three.
 

Lucy

Well-Known Forumite
We've successfully run them between our house and garage; which is on a different circuit board. It's also at least 80 metres away.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
There is a board for the shed above, just to the right of the picture. If they both come from the same supply and it's split "on the premises", I don't see why it should make much difference - though, it does seem to sometimes.

It would be interesting to try it in some nearby houses, Though you can't easily be sure that they're on the same phase as you are.

I remember, in the early 1980s, asking "Why can't we just modulate it up the mains cables and avoid all this extra wiring?"

It was carefully, and incomprehensibly, explained to me why this was completely impossible to achieve.
 

proactive

Enjoying a drop of red.
We've run them from the house to the garage and the summerhouse/shedend both if which are about 50m away and on their own boards. At work we have a number of outbuildings all of which have their own boards and connect fine. As you say providing the supply is the same and the split is on-site then they work fine.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
One day, I will try one in the house behind ours. I know that is on the same phase as ours, as it comes off our pole and there's only one phase running to that pole.

A few years after our house was built, the one behind was constructed and my father got a letter from the ESB - it mentioned money for the pole and he was greatly incensed by their apparent demand for an extra payment, having paid them to put the pole up a few years before.

Eventually, he calmed down enough to understand that they were actually giving him half the money back, because there was another house on "his" pole now...
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
The problem that I had with them was that they ran very hot. That was a long time ago, is it still the case with modern ones?
 

Trumpet

Well-Known Forumite
I have obtained three of these -

7PK8_83BE186C-13D2-4EF9-A36B-04BD3DE93CEA_large.jpg


- they seem to work OK.
Just seen this. As a techno thicko do I get this right, if my router is plugged in in my hall could I plug one of these in elsewhere in the house and run a device (firestick for example) off it?
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Just seen this. As a techno thicko do I get this right, if my router is plugged in in my hall could I plug one of these in elsewhere in the house and run a device (firestick for example) off it?
You plug one in next to the router - you can plug the router's power supply into the front of it, so you only need to use one wall socket. You then run an ethernet lead from the router to the 'adapter'.

Then you can plug another (paired) adapter in somewhere else and run an ethernet lead from that to whatever you like. Again, not consuming an extra socket - but not all of these devices are plug-through. Any adapters supplied together will usually already be paired to each other.

You can now get wall sockets which will receive a wireless signal, shove it along the mains to another similar socket and rebroadcast it from there.
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
A lot depends on your internal wiring, my house still has a bacolite fuse box with real wire and it doesn't work very well at all! If it was wired in the last 20 years though you'll be fine.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
A lot depends on your internal wiring, my house still has a bacolite fuse box with real wire and it doesn't work very well at all! If it was wired in the last 20 years though you'll be fine.
The wiring in my house is ancient ( well pre-1980) and I have a 'classic' fusebox, though I have replaced the wire fuses with MCBs.

And all of the ones here are plugged into extension leads, rather than into the wall sockets, as recommended, without any apparent problems.

One day, I will get around to trying one on the end of my 30m extension lead...
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I imagine that the warnings about not plugging them into extensions are mostly down to concerns about an increased skin effect from the stranded leads of extension cables over the solid copper conductors of the 'static' wiring, This won't cause any great issue at 50 Hz, but the adapters operate at much higher frequencies than that, where the skin effect is much more prominent, so they could experience some difficulties, but they do cope OK in my limited experience.

Attenuation of a signal will be greater over the same length of multi-stranded flexible cable than it would be with a single solid conductor.
 
Top