[johnm]

Our solution was a TP link to extend ethernet and wifi. So the master is connected by ethernet to the hub and the slave is in the study with my machine connected ethernet and herself's laptop wifi it works fine with almost no loss from the 50 mb fibre connection to the house.

[rikur_]

.... in the room directly below the hub ...

In my experience many (most?) wireless hubs dipole antennas whilst omnidirectional - cover level with themselves far better than above and below.
( I put a wireless hub in the apex of our garage roof thinking it would cover the garden, and found that whilst the coverage in the garage itself was ok, if I stood just outside the garage the coverage was poor, and then improved as I walked further away from the garage, which caused me to read-up on the topic of WiFi antenna design! )

There seem to be some poor reviews about the Plusnet One Hub wifi performance, so you might be ok simply getting the Draytek - but there might be some basic physics going on and as johnm suggests that the ultimate solution might be to run an Ethernet cable to somewhere central and have a second access point.
(nb: I have found ceiling mount power over ethernet are often easy to fit)

[Flying badger]

thanks everyone.
I've gone for this, hopefully it'll do the job
https://www.amazon.co.uk/RE360-Universal-Extender-Broadband-UK/dp/B0734C533K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1532130892&sr=8-2&keywords=TP-Link+RE360+AC1200

Probably not... but you asked for advice and ignored it all....!

Just because i didnt buy exactly one of the several different products mentioned doesn't mean i didn't find the feedback useful in making my decision.

Out of interest why do you think 'probably not'?

[PeteSpencer]

When I asked stevelup's advice 5 or 6 years ago when my wifi extender kept dropping out he told me that units which just picked up the wifi signal then shoved it along were notoriously unreliable.

He recommended the Solwise gadget that I used for 5 years till we moved house: This transmits the signal by wire using the mains.
It worked famously..

Is yours the former or the latter?

Peter

[Flying badger]

I’ve had those in a previous setup, I was looking for a simple wireless solution to cover my new extension. If it doesn’t work, I’ll come back and sheepishly admit it.


edit. happy to report it works fine.

[stevelup]

That's great news - they rarely work!

They must work for some people - otherwise they wouldn't sell them - but on the whole they are pretty hopeless.

[cjrpaterson]

Three of these https://store.google.com/product/google_wifi are working very well in a relative's (American-sized) house. Creates a new mesh network rather than boosting a weak wifi signal.

[stevelup]

I'll pass on Google having any network infrastructure in my property thanks

[cjrpaterson]

Eh, at least if they're leaking data out to the internet it's intentional - unlike most consumer-level routers which do it accidentally https://www.tomsguide.com/us/home-route ... 19245.html

[Morten]

thanks everyone.
I've gone for this, hopefully it'll do the job
https://www.amazon.co.uk/RE360-Universal-Extender-Broadband-UK/dp/B0734C533K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1532130892&sr=8-2&keywords=TP-Link+RE360+AC1200

Probably not... but you asked for advice and ignored it all....!

edit. happy to report it works fine.

That's great news - they rarely work!
They must work for some people - otherwise they wouldn't sell them - but on the whole they are pretty hopeless.

I've generally found that for simple, well known problems like the need to boost a wifi signal, the simple, cheap stuff works quite well, whereas whenever I have listened too much to some well meaning and no doubt very capable expert (IRL on online) it has often become a dog's breakfast - through no fault of the people involved, I'm sure.

So my current approach nowadays is always to go for the cheap and easy option and only if that doesn't work, try something else. So far, so good

I'll pass on Google having any network infrastructure in my property thanks

That sentiment I agree wholeheartedly with. Funny how I used be a quite happy Micro$oft basher (with the all important $ ) but nowadays, I'd much rather pay for the software I use to avoid ads and data harvesting than the opposite. Sadly, when it comes to e.g. mobile phone operating systems, the option is not there

The 'Let Google do it' ads make me genuinely uneasy about where we're heading ...

[rikur_]

I've generally found that for simple, well known problems like the need to boost a wifi signal, the simple, cheap stuff works quite well, whereas whenever I have listened too much to some well meaning and no doubt very capable expert (IRL on online) it has often become a dog's breakfast - through no fault of the people involved, I'm sure.

So my current approach nowadays is always to go for the cheap and easy option and only if that doesn't work, try something else. So far, so good

I recognise that problem from the other side ....... it's often a choice between something optimal and more secure, vs something adequate and relatively secure. For many purposes 'adequate' is sufficient.

[Morten]

Yes, indeed. A combination of the Pareto principle and the fact(?) that the average user is ignorant of the real effect of the choices they made. The skill of a good service provider is to be able to explain to the user why they don't actually need what they think they need. (and the skill of a good marketing department is then to make sure that he errs on the other side by paying more for something he doesn't actually need either )

[avtur3]

..... Situation now improved by relocation of master socket allowing hard wire connection of my office equipment to the router and all is reasonably well. But the performance of the Plusnet One Hub wireless is very poor. Have tried using wireless range extender, TP AC750, but this couldn't pick up the signal from the router at just 2 metres and one brick wall away, not very effective as far as I'm concerned......

...... I'm wondering if there is something odd about the brickwork in this house because it appears to stop the signal from the Plusnet One Hub stone dead. It is a brick built house of the late 50's not a stone cottage....

Oh dear ... there are those so blind they cannot see or those who cannot see the wood for the trees. Confession time ... I think I've been here before.

So master socket relocated and office equipment hard wired to the hub, working reasonably well. Speed testing shows very low 'jitter' and 'ping' and downloading average above 35. However some sites (flyer included) still occasionally show a 'time out' message and don't load; I really don't understand that. However performance is very much better than before so I'm reasonably satisfied. But wireless performance is really poor.

I've just taken a good look at my surroundings in the upstairs office and realized I may have over looked something. The house is a tad over 60 feet from gable wall to gable wall. I'm up in the roof space with my desk facing one of the gable walls and the router on the desk in front of me up against one of the gable walls. So I'm looking at a very asymmetric layout.

Just behind me there is a chimney stack running up within the house, it measures at least 1 metre by 1 metre and it is sitting less than 2 metres away from the router, my defence is that it is behind me so I don't see it . Because the router is so close to the chimney, and of course the chimney runs down to floor level on the ground floor, I think there is every good chance that the chimney is masking the wifi signal from most of the rest of the house and perhaps why the only marginal acceptable wifi signal is in the room directly below where the router is. I've been very focused on distances from the hub and brick walls, studded walls, but completely forgot about the chimney which may well create a significant amount of 'wifi shade' for the rest of the house.

I've ordered some network extension cables to allow me to experiment with the position of the router. When the cables arrive I'll experiment with the router position and report back.

[Flying badger]

That's great news - they rarely work!

They must work for some people - otherwise they wouldn't sell them - but on the whole they are pretty hopeless.

To be fair my very simple problem only required a simple solution, but if I’d had say two different weak areas, then I’d have probably looked more seriously about jumping up a price bracket or two, but for £40 I’ve got full bars where previously I had an intermittent dot, so I’m happy.

[Joe Dell]

The Japanese ones are rubbish here. Their walls are paper.