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Wifi woes

pint

Regular Member
A little out of the usual
Property 1
The router is located in possibly the worst possible place, and due to wiring issues and where the connection enters the property its not possible to move it, the building is a converted old barn, the walls are insulated with foil backed insulation

The router is located in a back/side room the walls of this room are thick/very thick stone again these are insulated with foil backed insulation in effect the router sits in its own faraday cage so the wifi from this router does not get out of this room, wifi is currently provided in the property with a set of old BT branded homeplugs , however these are in excess of 10 years old and are begining to fail, with one unit completly dead .

Options going forward would be a possible mesh system, however if the initial wifi can not get out out then these will be of no use , so other than drilling holes exenting the cables and moving the router, its my understanding a mesh system will be of no use and a more up to date homeplug system to replace the old is the best option - would my guess be correct?
 
Is there an option to run ethernet cables in the home?

You could then use a mesh system, however rely on a wired backhaul, rather than wireless.
 
If it was me I would look to see if your router can be put in bridge mode and then have a router in a suitable location in your house connected to it by Ethernet cable as the house's main Wifi router.

Then just thread the Ethernet cable anyway you can (under carpets, under floorboards, through windows, ceilings, drilled through walls, along skirting boards etc).

If you buy high-quality shielded CAT7 or CAT8 round cable you can get long lengths and not have any line degradation (don't buy flat ethernet cables).
 
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Unfortunately there's no option to run Ethernet cables - or to be more precise drill holes, its not my property however they are asking for help in improving things and are asking for my advice.
Other than an updated homeplug/powerline system i cant think of any other solution.

The connection itself is a Wimax service, provided by Derbyshire Broadband ( although speed checks say its talk talk?) as FTTC/vdsl is painfully slow due to the rural nature and FTTP is a long long way off for that location, and the cable going into the property from the antenna has been routed into the worse possible place in terms of getting a wifi signal out - or even getting a cable out - they dont want any holes drilling , and if there were to be holes drilled then it would have to go through some very thick stone walls
 
Not sure if the property is rented or owned but it does seem to me that whoever is in this space is going to face the same issue. Whilst the answer you're getting back is that drilling holes and running some cables is out of the question, if getting decent connectivity inside this property is going to be fixed once and for all, cables are the right long term solution. Power line adapters could work but it needs to be acknowledged that it's a sticky plaster.
 
Unfortunately there's no option to run Ethernet cables - or to be more precise drill holes, its not my property however they are asking for help in improving things and are asking for my advice.
Other than an updated homeplug/powerline system i cant think of any other solution.

The connection itself is a Wimax service, provided by Derbyshire Broadband ( although speed checks say its talk talk?) as FTTC/vdsl is painfully slow due to the rural nature and FTTP is a long long way off for that location, and the cable going into the property from the antenna has been routed into the worse possible place in terms of getting a wifi signal out - or even getting a cable out - they dont want any holes drilling , and if there were to be holes drilled then it would have to go through some very thick stone walls
If you can afford it, consider getting Starlink.
 
Why? That does nothing for wifi in the house. It only makes for a more expensive ISP solution.

If the owner of the property is unwilling to drill anywhere, it's a bit of a tough ask. Unless you can find some low frequency mesh setup that will get you through said walls, not a lot that can be done really. Powerline would be the only option, and may not give you the results you hope.

The only saving grace is if the conversion was done recently enough that the wiring is good enough to not cause too many issues with that solution.
 
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Difficult scenario. Very difficult for any radio wave propagation, so WiFi between rooms will be a struggle. Best to look at where the usage will be concentrated and try to get an access point in the actual room where it's being used. Sounds obvious but isn't always.

Second problem how to get service to the access points. Noted about sensitivity to holes etc being drilled and perforating insulation etc, but you have to get real. Everything can be put right, and reinstated if done carefully. What about the routes following the power and lighting cables - are there existing penetrations or cavities which could be shared to fish through a data cable or two above ceilings?

Otherwise (god forgive me for saying this, gulp) there is.....powerline ethernet. There I said it out loud. But it could be your only workable options to reticulate network around the joint.
 
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