Broadband extension?

Evening all

I recently moved my office from the house into a purpose built office and moved my home hub with it.  My broadband no longer works in the house.  i have spoken to various people about this, including BT and other than putting a new landline in I'm running out of options.

Does anyone have any ideas?  i cant use a plug in modem finder becasue I have a separate consumer unit for the office and a booster pick up plug in thing didn't work.  BT recommended a new router with a bigger reach but couldn't recommend one or provide it themselves.

Any responses polite or other wise would be greatfully appreciated, although hubby loves it becasue I can't spend money online when I'm bored....

Justine

Hi Justine,

just to check that i understand your problem. You are now working in an office attached to or near your house and have moved your ADSL BT Home Hub to your new office and now in your house the WiFi is so poor that you cannot connect to the Internet etc.

You have tried a powerline modem but that did not work. Interestingly on some tests we did a few years ago we had reasonable reception three house away, but it does depend on the wiring and the quality fo the unit you tested.

A few top of the head options:-

1. Ethernet cable from your office to your house and a WiFi Gateway in your house. Cable can be buried in a  plastic pipe or clipped to the outside of a wall if necessary.
2. WiFi repeater between your office and your house to extend the range of the WiFi
3. Try a different powerline device - recommend those with the Giggle chipset (bought up by Broadcom a couple of years ago). I think the Belkin ones use the giggle chipset.

To be honest you need a decent IT bloke (sorry person) from your area to do a site survey and see if it is feasible to extend your WiFi etc. Depending on the age of your house and the properties of the new build you may need external WiFi units or directional antennas etc.

Hope this helps.

Gary

Thanks Gary

Good advice - some of it tried.  I think I can get the wifi to work in the house becasue my ipad can find my service if I sit in a certain place in front room and my laptop also works on the coffee table in same room but with only two bars of signal.

do you know of any good IT people that cover Thirsk/Bedale area? I note you are at Saltaire but that might just be too far!

Justine

Hi Justine,

sorry a little far for me. I do have customers around Harrogate but you are at least another 40 minutes away.

Unfortunately I do not know anyone in your area. Might be worth putting out a request on the forum.

Gary

Hi Justine, How far is your office from the house?

That could be because every third house would probably be on the same mains phase. The two in between would be different phases. Sorry if this is too techie, it's not important to the issue at hand.

On the WiFi channel select channel 11 it has a wider reach (the best signal range) and is the best channel to use in the UK (that's what i've experienced)

You will need to login to the hubs home page using your computer, if you get stuck call up BT braodband and infrom the tech staff that you need to change the WiFi channel and they will talk you though it, it's pretty easy to do!

Hi Brian, not sure that was the reason. In the tests we did we found a reasonable signal in the next door houses, ok two away and usable in the third house away; quality dropping away with distance. For this reason, unless you are using systems that encrypt the data channel we always recommend fitting a filter near the consumer unit.

Hi Usman, not sure why you have found channel 11 as performing any better. Could just be the environments you have tested within. From memory most routers default to channels 1, 6 or 11 so if you are in an area where they are not defaulting to 11 you may see an improved performance. Technically you need to be 4 channels away to see no interference but in practice 3 channels is adequate.

Hi Justine, another thought is that if you have a window in the office that faces your house you may increase the WiFi signal strength in your house by putting the BT hub on the window ledge. There is also antenna technology called MIMO which may help in your situation but would mean buying new wireless equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIMO

Unfortunately the older BT Home Hubs, manufactured by 2-wire from memory, did not have excellent WiFi performance.  For our business customers we tend to replace them with Draytek routers / WiFi gateways. They are not cheap, but are quality pieces of kit.

Gary

There is no such thing as "the best channel is always 11", not in terms of reach and for sure not specific to the UK (most radio waves typically don't know which country they're in)

There are technical aspects in relation to different channels, but the statement above does not hold up. Sorry.

If you don't Mind running a cable you will do away with all the wireles problem.

Thank you for all of the comments.  I do think I'm going to have to run some sort of cable - the office is approx 20ft away from the house and I have only had the home hub for 12 months soit should be one of the new ones.

I have tried a wi-fi extender and it didn't work. 

David, i will try putting the home hub in a window and see if this makes a difference.

Again thank you all x.