What is the issue?

mel123

So probably on the third provider now. Very busy Dublin area (practically beside a college). Old house so concrete walls. Can watch netflix fine without any interruptions in the kitchen and sitting room - router is in the kitchen and kitchen and sitting room are back to back.
Go away from this zone (talking 4 meters) to the bedroom or go upstairs and not a chance of being able to watch smart tv/ipad etc. When using phone on wifi, its quite slow.
Did a test and get 5.1 Mbps per second download (crap). Rang provider, sorry nothing we can do yeah go find someone else. Got a mesh system didnt make any difference. Tried extenders, no joy.
Im guessing its the house and signals not extending beyond a certain distance?

Can anyone advise me how i can sort this issue, what else can i do? Do i have any options?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

ED E

If the building is of a certain vintage you may have 2ft thick solid walls where a more modern building will have 10" thick hollow walls. This is a major difference in terms of signal attenuation. You need to use cabling to get you from space to space.

This is your problem and not the providers so changing won't really help. Investing a few bob in your LAN should though.

A) Try decent powerline adapters. AV1200 or greater. These will use the mains wiring already in the walls to bring the connection where you need it. You might need to get 3 wifi + 1 standard to cover sitting room + 2 upstairs points.

If the electrical wiring in the building is poor then A) above won't work well and you'll need to pay a sparks/handyman to run some CAT6 around the building and then buy a few access points to put on the far ends.

mel123

ED E wrote: »

If the building is of a certain vintage you may have 2ft thick solid walls where a more modern building will have 10" thick hollow walls. This is a major difference in terms of signal attenuation. You need to use cabling to get you from space to space.

This is your problem and not the providers so changing won't really help. Investing a few bob in your LAN should though.

A) Try decent powerline adapters. AV1200 or greater. These will use the mains wiring already in the walls to bring the connection where you need it. You might need to get 3 wifi + 1 standard to cover sitting room + 2 upstairs points.

If the electrical wiring in the building is poor then A) above won't work well and you'll need to pay a sparks/handyman to run some CAT6 around the building and then buy a few access points to put on the far ends.

Thank you very much for the reply. Ill go with option A first at least, its an old house but all modernised. Is there any specific ones you would recommend or just go to Amazon and they all do the same job?

babelfish1990

mel123 wrote: »

So probably on the third provider now. Very busy Dublin area (practically beside a college). Old house so concrete walls. Can watch netflix fine without any interruptions in the kitchen and sitting room - router is in the kitchen and kitchen and sitting room are back to back.
Go away from this zone (talking 4 meters) to the bedroom or go upstairs and not a chance of being able to watch smart tv/ipad etc. When using phone on wifi, its quite slow.
Did a test and get 5.1 Mbps per second download (crap). Rang provider, sorry nothing we can do yeah go find someone else. Got a mesh system didnt make any difference. Tried extenders, no joy.
Im guessing its the house and signals not extending beyond a certain distance?

Can anyone advise me how i can sort this issue, what else can i do? Do i have any options?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

It sounds like your house is the problem, not your provider. Concrete walls, Dry-lining A++ Double Glazing, under-floor heating all kill WiFi. If your modem/router is in the new extension, it may be separated from the main house by an old external wall with dry-lining on it? The foil vapour barrier kills WiFi. I'm not a big fan of power-line extenders - they can be very unreliable in extensions, as the wiring is often separated from the main house on a different fuseboard or busbar. They also can break down when someone plugs another device into a double socket, or uses an extension lead. Worst of all, they create separate zones, and some devices don't hand over seamlessly as you go from one zone to the next. Phones/tablets tend to cling onto the lower power WiFi rather than break the connection to get a stronger signal.

I have never seen a house that couldn't solve their WiFi problems with a Mesh system. I would suggest you have another go at getting your Mesh system working. Make sure to switch off the WiFi in your existing modem/router. If your router is in the extension, try to position one Mesh device near the router, and another in the nearest part of the main house that you can pick up the WiFi from the first node. If possible, shoot the WiFi up the stair-well to get to the next floor, and place an additional node on the first floor. Repeat this if you have a 2nd floor. Worst case, you might need to use some Cabling to join a couple of nodes, but you shouldn't need to wire the whole house.

Gurra

Would be slow to recommend option A.
Have had nothing but trouble with powerline adapters. Have yet to come across an installation where they keep working reliably for more than a few weeks or on a good day maybe a month or two without a cold reset (unplug/replug). That includes devices from TP-Link, Devolo, Netgear, Eir, etc, across several different houses and without having them on extension leads. Don't know whether this is due to these being cheap and cheerful consumer devices or if the technology itself is flawed.