I have a TV in my bedroom that is at the opposite end of my house as my router/modem. I have no issues using my phone, iPad or tablet in my bedroom on wifi. My TV (this year’s Vizio “smart” TV) has wifi built in but when I’m watching Netflix or Amazon, it will lose its connection about every 15 - 20 minutes. Vizio says that my two options are to move my router closer (which isn’t really an option) or to run a cat5 to it. This is directly an option either.
I’m looking into either a wifi extender or possibly an ethernet over powerline solution. The reviews of both are pretty mixed. In either case, I would run ethernet from my new device to the TV. I’m hoping that will eliminate the signal dropping, which I believe is the result of poor built-in wifi.
Does anyone have experience with either of these devices that they would like to share? Thanks.
I have used Ethernet over power line devices. They work OK, as long as they are on the same “leg” (phase) of the 220v lines. If not, they don’t work at all (at least, the ones I tried didn’t). WiFi extenders cut your bandwidth in half, which may still be OK for what you need.
I have a similar situation. Because my phone handles the WiFi better than my Blu-ray player, I use it and stream to Chromecast using the Netflix app on my phone. At $35, it’s a cheap solution that works well for me. As always, YMMV.
It’s not a universal solution, but in a lot of homes and small businesses where you can’t run a cable to every user or location, you can still run one from the modem/source router to some other end of the building - attic, basement, crawl space, even outside.
So you run cables to two or three points, and put a WiFi AP on them. Every corner of your house and yard has full-power WiFi, and while it’s not the cheapest solution, it’s a lot easier than fully wired, it’s the way things work these days, and it’s a lot cheaper than screwing around trying to make one WiFi hub blast through walls and obstacles. ETA: or putzing around with WiFi-over-AC, or nonstandard wiring, or all the other fairly high-cost, low-reliability methods.
I’ve had very good luck with a regular wired router/firewall and Unifi pucks from Ubiquiti. They come in high and low power versions, and 1- 3- and (I think) 6-packs at well under $100 each. Central browser management and configuration and support daisy-chaining for those really difficult reaches. It’s industrial-grade stuff at a very reasonable consumer price point.
Another possible option is a directional antenna for your WiFi router. I installed one of these on my ASUS router and aimed it in the general direction of the garage (opposite end of the house) and it has measurably improved the reception there. In theory it should reduce the signal in other directions, but I haven’t noticed it.
What brand and model is your WLAN AP? That way we know what type of antenna configuration you have, which is important. (I’ll try and get back to you today.)
It’s a Zyxel model something something and IIRC correctly, it has no external antennae and I don’t believe it has a place to plug one in either. I’ll check when I get home.
I had WiFi problems when using the standard wireless AP/router that came from my ISP. I added a Ethernet over Powerline adaptor to place a new wireless router more centrally in the basement and it works extremely well. It’s placed by my primary home entertainment stuff so my TV/Netflix/etc can be wired and only remote terminals/phones/etc are wireless.
The powerline adapters do have to be “re-sync’ed” occasionally, and there was a bit of network configuration required to get DHCP and other file/printer sharing services to work correctly. But overall I’m happy with it. Netflix is far more reliable than it was before.
I couldn’t use the extender solution since I have neighbors on all sides using non-standard WiFi channels which cause lots of interference.
Oh, and my powerline cubes are not on the same circuit either, so at least in my house that isn’t a show-stopper.
I used an ethernet over power thing a while ago after reading great reviews of it.
And it was great! It was way faster than wifi and meant I didn’t have to run cables all over the place in my house.
Until one day a few months later, it wasn’t great. It got really slow, and nothing I tried made any difference. So I gave up and ran an ethernet cable around the edge of the ceiling.
I guess this counts as a mixed review. Clearly they can work, since it did for months. But then something changes, and they’re really slow. No idea how to debug such a thing.
I’ve used Netgear power line adaptors for several months with absolutely no issues. For me they work great. I don’t think it matters what leg of the panel the circuits are on, as the signal is carried on the neutral. Couple of things you should be aware of. First, the instructions say that they won’t work through a surge suppressor. Second, arc fault circuit breakers might be an issue. Apparently there are two types of arc fault breakers, one type works and one doesn’t. This might be an issue since arc fault breakers are (I think) in bedrooms, though if you have an older house you may not have them.
That said, the power line adaptors were a simple plug and play solution for me.
Same situation here. Router is in the study, and the big screen with its HTPC is in the living room, in the other end of the house. Reception was spotty with drops. I used a WIFI extender from D-Link. First I tried using it in “extend mode” where the SSID is the same. This didn’t work well. My HTPC wanted to connect to the router, even though the signal was very weak. I blacklisted the HTPC MAC on the router to force it onto the extender. That lead to frequent drops when it still tried to switch to the router and was refused.
I then reconfigured the D-Link extender to create a new network. Since then it has worked well. I haven’t noticed any drops.
Throughput does take a hit, but not 50% as someone said above. I get 1.8 MB/s without the extender and 1.4 MB/s with. This is on 801.11g.
I’ve had similar problems and am currently running two different solutions in two different locations. A powerline adapter works adequately for streaming from an upstairs router to the TV in the family room, but you’re quite right that reviews are mixed and performance varies dramatically depending on the specific wiring in a particular house, and also, as already mentioned, whether it crosses phases in the breaker panel. Powerline is definitely hit-or-miss, but hey, sometimes you get a hit. Though even with my normally well-behaved one, it still drops its bandwidth dramatically and the little green light glows amber whenever I have a high-efficiency switched-mode AC adapter plugged in anywhere on or near the same circuit, because those things can generate line noise. People have complaned about similar problems when turning on the oven or running the dryer – it’s a tricky technology. Power lines were meant to transmit power, not data!
Another solution I use is a wireless bridge. This is basically an AP in reverse, and often looks exactly the same but just runs different software. Back in the day, running Tomato firmware on a WRT-54G router, you could turn any router into a bridge just by reconfiguring it. To this day, I run a WRT-54G Tomato-based bridge down in the basement and even though it’s only wireless-G, I get terrific bandwidth way down there from a router up on the second floor. Today you can buy wireless-N bridges off the shelf. The key is that they have big antennas so they are much more sensitive than built-in WiFi adapters.
A third solution which works well if you have TV cable in both locations is a pair of MoCA adapters. I’ve never used them but a friend of mine had exactly your problem – streaming to a TV out of range of the wireless – and had great results with a pair of ActionTec MoCA adapters. The nice thing about MoCA is it simply reserves some bandwidth on a coax designed for high-bandwidth transmissions, much like your broadband cable Internet, so it’s not quite as ad hoc as sending data over power lines.
Obviously, the most robust possible solution if physically possible is just to run an Ethernet cable.
I was about to string about 25’ feet of ethernet cable from one room to another after drilling a hole through the wall. Before doing that, though, I bought the cheapest power line adapter Monoprice had. To my amazement, it worked perfectly and worked until I upgraded it to a higher speed one from Amazon.
I would not have been able to solve the phase problem, but I assumed that there was too much noise on the power lines for it to work correctly at all. Glad I was wrong.
Welp, I tried moving my router into the bedroom and I think it would have worked but the wifi dongle that I stole from my old DVR wasn’t compatible with my PC so I put everything back and ordered powerline ethernet adapters from Amazon. I’m counting on a generous return policy if they don’t work.
One weird thing happened when I hooked everything back up, my old cordless phone now says “No line”. I made sure that my DSL splitter has the phone and DSL lines hooked up properly but no dice. I’ve needed a new phone for a while now and I’m hoping that replacing it fixes things. Unfortunately, I don’t have an old corded phone I can plug in and test with.
Another update: I got the power line adapters yesterday. They were amazingly easy to use. In fact, it made USB devices look difficult.
I plugged one into my router and the wall. Walked into the bedroom and plugged the other one into the wall and my TV. The TV immediately switched to a wired connection and that was it. It was on the network. I turned on Netflix and unfortunately, after about 15 minutes, the connection appeared to drop just like before. I turned the TV on and off, restarted Netflix and started a movie. It finished! I started another movie and it finished too. On wifi, it would always disconnect after about 15 minutes so this is a qualified success given the one-time snafu.
Now I just have to hope that I don’t have iamthewalrus(:3='s phantom problem.
When I first tried mine out the connection was dropping out here and there, but after installing the software supplied and updating firmware etc they seem to be going strong.
Bumpdate (In case anyone is considering ethernet over wifi).
I started experiencing the dreaded “Why has my internet slowed to a crawl?” problem. It had been sporadic but then it became constant. I assumed that it was my new powerline devices. I unplugged them and rebooted my router. Didn’t fix anything. I thought that it might be my router but it’s only a few months old so I hoped that that wasn’t the problem.
I unhooked my router and took it to the bedroom (where the TV is), plugged it into my wall phone jack and everything came back on. Netflix in the living room immediately came back. I did a speed test on my phone and it showed 5Mbs, which is what I get when things are working good. I live way out in the country so I’m just thankful to get that. When things aren’t working right, I get about 300Kbs.
Since I now had a working solution, I unhooked everything and took the router back to its original location to try again thinking that it might be the phone cord that plugs into the router. I changed cords and got the same slow connection. As nearly as I can tell, there’s either an issue with the jack in the wall or the line leading to it. I’ll let the phone company figure that out.
I put the router back in the bedroom and unhooked my powerline adapter from the TV. I then connected it to a power strip near the router so that I could have ethernet going to my PC because it’s not wireless. I had no issues with using the power strip. I tried, just for giggles, to connect the other end (by the pc) to my UPS, that didn’t work at all. When I plugged it back into the wall, everything was fine again.
So overall, I’m very happy with my devices. The phantom problems haven’t happened and I still have internet wherever I need it.
I own an old home that at one time had a steam radiant heating system within the walls and floors. It doesn’t work anymore, but all the junk is still in the walls. Most of the walls are plaster over steel mesh over foiled paper enclosing the steel radiator pipes. Effectively, every room in the house is its own Faraday cage. Powerline extenders worked great and we’ve had no problems, even after changing from an old glass fuse box to a modern electrical breaker panel.