Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

It depends which model you buy. As it happens I have one waiting for me at Currys -
TP-LINK - RE200 WiFi Range Extender - AC 750, Dual-band cost is £22.99. There are better ones but this is for 4G in my caravan so there is no point getting better. I will be using it wired instead of using the router WiFi. Long story why.

At home I stick to 5GHz as 2.4GHz is virtually unusable - there is a very strong source of non-WiFi interference which I've not been able to identify. I see neighbours 2.4GHz signals but have no idea if they can use them or not. I have a wired WiFi extender there too.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

presumably you talking about for mobile phones only you don't say?

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Yes, just checked.
My router is using 5GHz
my extender using 2.4GHz

I'm not sure whether I can change the router to 2.4GHz, but I'd prefer to leave it alone after the problems I've had.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Who me? No. Why would you think that? There is no phone line here so I use a 4G router to access the internet using the cellphone 4G network. It can then provide ethernet or WiFi connections for phones, tablets, phones or anything else that needs an internet connection.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Aha! The very man.

I have been considering ditching Virgin Media due to their terrible customer service and moving to Three's Home Broadband service, which I assume is similar to what you are using.

Apparently, the speeds available, whilst not as fast as VM fibre, are faster than ADSL connections and the prices comparable to the latter.

From the reviews I have seen, it is sadly lacking in reliability and poor connection, but I'd be interested to know how you feel about yours.

Of course, you may be with a different supplier, but it is the type of connection I might be interested in and only mention Three as that is the one I use for my smartphone and, in that instance, I have found it excellent.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Here at the caravan I am a long way from any cell tower so I use an external antenna. I was using EE but had to maintain the contract throughout the year and data was limited. I found that I could get unlimited data for £20 a month through Superdrug and could suspend the service without penalty over winter and restart it when I wanted to.

That uses the Three network and the nearest Three cell tower is just over 2.5 miles away and the other side of a wooded hill. The simple antenna I was using with EE didn't cut the mustard so I put these up...



The mast the original antenna was on looked decidedly dodgy in the recent gales which is why I moved them to the short straight mast in the picture. The move is why I need the WiFi extender as the router had to be put in a Keter storage box outside the van and the WiFi is a bit weak from there.

Even so it can give results like this

That may well be restricted by the rather poor WiFi signal inside the van from the box outside it. One device had to be moved to work at all.

I'm happy with it here - in truth I have no alternative anyway of course but in an urban setting you may paradoxically be less lucky - a cell has a limited capacity and in a town although there are more and closer cells there are a lot more people using them. On the plus side you may get away with either no or certainly a lot simpler antenna.

This test which I just ran is rather odd with the upstream double a rather lack lustre (slowest I've seen with the new antennas) downstream

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Wow! The first thing that struck me was the upload speeds.

For me, and as far as I know, just about everyone else, the upload speed is a fraction of the download speed.

Anyway, the end outcome, if anything like yours, would be certainly sufficient for my purposes. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling what sort of connection I would actually achieve. It's a shame that it isn't possible to 'try before buy'!

I understand that taking my mobile phone around the house will give some indication of what sort of signal could be achieved and I tried this. Unfortunately, there was very little showing up throughout the house, so I'd almost certainly need an external antenna.

An advantage, however, would be that there'd be no need for the installation of a phone line as would be needed for a conventional connection.

Thanks a lot for the information, anyway.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

Talking of speed tests.

My desktop computers use a wired connection but I often use my laptop while sitting in the lounge so I thought I would test the difference in speed between the 2.4Mhz and 5Mhz wifi connections. The difference wasn't as great as I expected.

First the 5Ghz band.



then the 2.4Ghz



I am not displeased with these figures as they go through a wifi router and two switches before they get to the WAN router. (I pay for a 100/40Mbps connection)

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

It occurs to me that I also read somewhere recently that the same 'House WiFi' will work much better when 5G becomes available to more people. The speeds would be much faster than the reports I have seen about the present 4G system.

Unfortunately, 5G is only available at present in a few limited locations and, of course, each 5G transmitter has a much shorter effective range than 4G. That is certainly the case where I am anyway.

On the other hand, they are expanding their networks all the time, so perhaps later it's something worth examining.

Re: House WiFi - a Fact I wasn't aware of!

4G can rival ADSL but apart from the higher upstream speeds can't rival even FTTC let alone a full fibre connection. I notice that they are putting in ducting for FTTP back home but I expect it will be considerably more than I pay for an 80/20 FTTC connection that delivers about 60/18 and I have no justification for anything faster than that. I run a web server from home which rules out using 4G there otherwise I'd probably give that a try as I could just take the router and sim home from here.