Increasing wifi coverage in a large villa

[georgewportugal]

Good morning all

Have a villa I am renting on a long term basis and have installed Zon internet,phone,tv,etc, and they have been very good . However having placed the router in one of the bedrooms downstairs, I have no coverage upstairs at all , apparently due to the amount of construction steel in the floor . I was advised to buy a Range Extender,which i did , but i still have the same problem

I desperately need this sorting very quickly as not being able to do any work whilst upstairs in the main part of villa , take skype calls etc is very frustrating

Any suggestions gratefully received

[TCSltd]

I would try using a powerline extender such as this - • TP-Link PA4010KIT AV500 500 Mbps Powerline Adapter - Twin Pack . You plug one bit in a power socket downstairs, connect a cat5 cable from the router to it. Upstairs you plug the other one and connect another cat5 to a wireless access point giving you wireless coverage in that area.

That should do it

[steve]

I had the same problem in getting a good signal on both floors of my villa. The steel in the flooring acts as a very effective shield against transmission of the signal. I adopted the powerline solution and it works very well. Main router is on the first floor connected to a powerline adapter. The ground floor powerline is connected by ethernet cable to a second router which gives coverage at that level. The second router also has ethernet ports which can be used to hardwire equipment as an alternative to operating on wifi. Configuring the second router was much harder than I thought but it has worked faultlessly for a couple of years now.

[laserblazer]

You don't need a second router, in fact that might be causing the setup difficulties. What you need is a wireless access point, which is designed to provide additional wireless coverage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_access_point

[steve]

I configured my second router to work as an access point or range extender but it was not as easy to do as the magazine article I had read suggested. I used a router as it was a much cheaper option than a range extender.

[logicbob]

Radio Popular has all the bits you need, just go along and and ask them.

http://www.radiopopular.pt/catalogo/pro ... oriaId=321

[steve]

I see that Radio Popular stock powerlines with a wifi output instead of an ethernet output. This would avoid the need for access point. I don't know what the range of these devices is but you could move the plugin from room to room to get a good signal where you needed it.

[RichardHenshall]

I bought TP-Link powerline adapters from Amazon.es which were much cheaper than Radio Popular, despite having to pay a delivery charge. I'm having mixed results with the wireless version (TL-WPA281) which doesn't always cope with VoIP applications on an iPhone.

[georgewportugal]

many thanks for all the replies and advice .I have just made the phonecall to Zon for them to come in the morning and fit a second router on the property on the living room level of the villa