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best way to fairly share wireless

mjltigger
Newbie
Posts: 7
Registered: ‎30-05-2014

best way to fairly share wireless

I am struggling with the whole wireless thing.. my household is 6 people, all old enough to have armfuls of devices... I checked just now and there were no consoles on (unusual) just laptops and phones and televisions and tablets... you get the gist... 17 devices active right now..
I also live in a rambling old house.. I have a couple of TP_link TL-WA750RE range extenders that do some magic stuff (that is a technical term look it up).. it's a listed building so I can't start making huge changes to it and I don't think a wired network is the answer but I really am struggling to maintain a decent connection speed.. most of our devices are wireless and they all connect OK but very often all of them will grind to a halt.. sometimes, one or another of them will be working fine and the rest will die off.. sometimes and only sometimes, they all work fine. For example, the other day I wandered round the house connecting to the main router and each wireless extender in turn with my mobile and did a speed test each time. Various kids were doing various (often multiple) things with the internet including youtube, facebook etc and I got speeds varying from 6mps on the main router down to 0.5mbps on the daisychained extender at the other end of the house.. meanwhile netlix on the TV in the lounge (media linked to an extender that was reporting 4.5mbs when I did a speed test) buffering every minute or so on netflix, the x-box reported no network connection whatsoever and the laptop wouldn't print as it timed out waiting to connect to the (wireless) networked printer
I have fibre coming in on Monday with estimated speeds of 50+.. I currently get 7.4 (pretty stable if I turn off the wifi and connect a single laptop via ethernet)
I'm not computer illiterate (in fact I am an IT professional) but this is driving me nuts... and what I don't want is to spend all this extra money on fibre and not improve the situation
So, short of either building a full home network with multiple hard wired access points or confiscating all the technology in the house, how do I get a reliable, stable home network that will fairly share the huge bandwidth plusnet are delivering on Monday..
Simplez? ? Cheesy

6 REPLIES 6
HPsauce
Pro
Posts: 6,998
Thanks: 146
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: best way to extend wireless

I'd put in local wifi hotspots that connect back to the router (by a small switch if necessary) over the mains wiring.
You can get simple plug-in devices to do that quite cheaply, usually configurable with either their own unique SSID or mirroring the main node.
mjltigger
Newbie
Posts: 7
Registered: ‎30-05-2014

Re: best way to extend wireless

thanks HP
I did try this with a pair of those that BT gave me when I had vision.. but I only got sync errors.. I don't know how to tell if my wiring is right for it.. plus the worst wifi signal is in the annexe (which you would expect of course) and that runs off a separate circuit to the rest of the house.. and I don't even know if that matters.. there's so much I don't know  Embarrassed
dick:quote
mjltigger
Newbie
Posts: 7
Registered: ‎30-05-2014

Re: best way to fairly share wireless

sorry / thanks moderator..
so I've been looking a bot more at what is actually happening with speeds round the house and so on..
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/140148677835494566507.png
that was my speed test wireless sat next to the main router in the kitchen
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/14014871534345648285.png
this one is connected with wireless on my laptop turned off and using the ethernet port
now what I see is an abysmal upload speed.. is this normal? ?
Townman
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 22,921
Thanks: 9,538
Fixes: 158
Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: best way to fairly share wireless

What are your router stats like?

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

tijara33
Pro
Posts: 1,360
Thanks: 50
Fixes: 6
Registered: ‎22-06-2012

Re: best way to fairly share wireless

Firstly I STRONGLY recommend that you purchase a decent router. The PN supplied Thomson is very basic with poor wireless. I use an Asus RT-N56U which is dual band & does a great job for me. Stick the kids on the 2.4 sevice & save the 5 Mbps for yourself! There are updated versions from Asus which may serve your needs even better.
Secondly you will find the QofS to be very useful where you can prioritise your usage. EG, TV, gaming, file transfer etc.
Hopefully the change to fibre may overcome most of your problems on its own but DO get a decent router.
mjltigger
Newbie
Posts: 7
Registered: ‎30-05-2014

Re: best way to fairly share wireless

Quote from: Townman
What are your router stats like?

now we go beyond the depth of my knowledge in this area..