Weak wifi signal in 3-storey house

Creamy Goodness

My parents recently got in UPC and they've always had problems with wireless signal in the house. My dad fell for UPC's marketing of fast wireless internet all through the house which is true if your house wasn't built in the late 1890's and have walls that are made up of concrete blocks weighing twice that of a new born :pac:.

I've been left with the task of getting them as close to the 50Mbit speeds all over the house.

1. Main areas of use are the kitchen, living room and bedroom (at the top of the house).
2. The router is in a bedroom up one flight of stairs (was put here as there was cabling already in place and it's kind of a midpoint of the house), signal barely makes it to the kitchen.
3. The bedroom where signal is needed is up another flight of stairs from the router.
4. looking to perhaps place a signal booster between kitchen and router (or even in the kitchen) and perhaps half way between router and bedroom.

What's the best way to boost the signal from the router? I have fairly limited expertise in networks myself. are the apple airport extreme base stations any use? or is there something else that might work.

Cheers.

PogMoThoin

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

My parents recently got in UPC and they've always had problems with wireless signal in the house. My dad fell for UPC's marketing of fast wireless internet all through the house which is true if your house wasn't built in the late 1890's and have walls that are made up of concrete blocks weighing twice that of a new born :pac:.

I've been left with the task of getting them as close to the 50Mbit speeds all over the house.

1. Main areas of use are the kitchen, living room and bedroom (at the top of the house).
2. The router is in a bedroom up one flight of stairs (was put here as there was cabling already in place and it's kind of a midpoint of the house), signal barely makes it to the kitchen.
3. The bedroom where signal is needed is up another flight of stairs from the router.
4. looking to perhaps place a signal booster between kitchen and router (or even in the kitchen) and perhaps half way between router and bedroom.

What's the best way to boost the signal from the router? I have fairly limited expertise in networks myself. are the apple airport extreme base stations any use? or is there something else that might work.

Cheers.

The best option and the only one thats guaranteed to work is to run a cat5 cable to a wireless access point on a channel well away from the first.

cerberus111

Another option is to use something like these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WPA281KIT-Powerline-Extender-Wireless-Starter/dp/B0067GS29W/ref=pd_sim_computers_3

Basically one plugs into a power socket beside your router and also plugs into your router through an ethernet cable. The second one would be plugged into a power socket wherever you want and it will provide you with a wifi signal there. I use them myself with my UPC broadband and it works perfectly. If you needed, you could buy a separate third one and put that in another room. It's relatively easy to do, even for people that wouldn't be networking savvy.