Wireless range extenders

The situation is: Two adjacent stone buildings. There's a WiFi router
in one building, but not in the other. The WiFi signal from the first
building can be picked up quite well in just a few places in the second
building ... but (typically) not where it would be convenient to use
it!

I was wondering whether the cheap range extenders one sees are any good
-- something like the TP Link WA730 that can be had for around £15,
maybe? The kind that plug into a mains socket would be no good because
the WiFi signal isn't strong at floor level, where the sockets are.

There's no possibility of running a cable between the buildings, or
using Powerline/HomePlug.

I'd be grateful for any insights from others with experience of this
sort of kit.

 

I've used them to help people, and it may do what you need. The issue is
whether it will give a useable signal where you actually want it to, which
will depend on what there is to block the signal between the amplifier and
the required location.

Also bear in mind that these do introduce extra lag into a connection and
slow it down quite a bit too. Worth bearing in mind.

 

Because every packet has to be fitted onto the radio medium twice,
they halve the bandwidth available.

What about a second Wifi access point or router in the first building,
but with a directional aerial mounted externally pointed at second
building? May still not give the coverage you want though.

 

Yes, I'm aware of that ... though I suppose a range extender could
retransmit on a different channel ...

The cheap ones I'm looking at don't.

The immediate concern is a holiday home that is close to the landlords'
office. We have permission to use the WiFi but the signal is patchy.
Last time I stayed there the best place to work was standing up with
the laptop on the pantry window-sill ... I think putting a range
extender placed there would get usable WiFi to the kitchen table, which
would be a distinct improvement, and maybe into the lounge.

This isn't a "business critical" installation -- and I certainly don't
feel I could ask the landlords to change their setup just for my
convenience. You're right, though, that would be a better solution --
so would a lot of things ...

My question was really along the lines of "I know this isn't the best
way to do this, but if I do it this way can I get away with cheap kit,
and what cheap kit would you recommend?"

If I wanted to spend a little more money I'd probably get a client-mode
AP and plug that into a powerline device in the pantry, and connect
that to a powerline WiFi device in the lounge.

Thanks, though -- to you and to Simon -- for your thoughts.

 

I use a TP-Link TL-WA7210-N for exactly this situation (well, it's a
boat in my case, but very similar). It does the job very well. I
actually have a wireless router connected to the TP-Link to provide
local WiFi access but you can do it with just the TP-Link.

 

It still adds quite a bit of lag. For browsing the net the loss of speed
doesn't really matter mind you.

Be wary of trying to daisy chain extenders. Difficult to get right and
bloody slow to boot

It might be worth getting an old router that can take a wifi signal and
give you a few Ethernet connections to share it on as a secondary mode.
I.e. It can act as a wireless extender OR share a wife connection over
Ethernet. That let's you do one option and then upgrade later if wanted
without needing to replace anything.

I use a cheap d-link router which cost about £10. But also bear in mind
that a better router might give a better signal. My new router that cost
about £100 gives me a much better signal than my older net gear one. As in
I can get 100 meg on speedtest on the ipad when on the same room, and 20-30
meg down the end of the garden, about 10m past where the old router stopped
working entirely, and that was at a couple of meg at best.

But then again, getting 100 meg over wifi only helps if your net connection
can feed the data that quickly ;-)

 

Too much detail for this newsgroup ...

 

You know what I mean