Wireless setup query

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I'm with BT at the moment who are charging me a fortune. So will need to change providers soon. I will also be moving all my PC gear into the small bedroom where there is no phone socket so it will have to be wireless only. I havnt changed providers for quite some time now so dont really know much about it, but are wireless speeds still drastically slower than cabled connections? If so do the speed differences between wireless and cabled vary between providers in anyones experience?


I'll want as fast a wireless connection as possible, i dont even know right now if my PC has wireless connectivity! its a well specc'd but quite old machine so might need something. Are there good wireless cards/dongles available that would maximise the connection between PC and router? I could always run a phone extention around the house from the downstairs phone socket but not sure if the distances involved would degrade the signal too much?


Anyway, not sure what the best solution would be right now for providers and bits that i need to buy. Any suggestions would be great :)
 
Hard wired (ethernet cable) are always quicker than wireless. Can you not run a Cat6 ethernet cable from your existing router position to the new computer position?
 
General thoughts on the surmise that you are talking about WiFi when you mention wireless.

A wired connection will be faster than a WiFi but for a lot of purposes depending on the distance from the PC room to the router you may well be fine:-
How far away from the router will you be?
What is the house constructed of ~ if you have solid brick walls and or solid floors the WiFi signal may be quiet weak so your speed will be lower!

I know that some folk say the HomePlugs are good for the situation you describe. These rely on the home mains wiring but again depending on the state of & how the house is wired between the floors can have an effect but AFAIK there are now HomePlugs that exceed the sort of max WiFi.
 
modern wifi 5ghz is pretty fast but doesn't do walls as well as old 2.4ghz but your older wifi products probably wont support it.
best bet is to run an Ethernet cable from the router to your small bedroom and just buy a cheap switch
 
The second bedroom is pretty far away from where the router would be so it would mean a very long bit of cable running round the house.

With regards to the speed difference with cabled and WiFi. If, say, I pay for a 50Mb connection and the wireless is only 20Mb. Would the wifi still be 20Mb if I paid for a 20Mb connection or does the wireless speed scale down with the main speed? If you see what I mean. I just don't want to pay for a super fast connection if there is no point.

The walls are solid, no idea about the electrics.
 
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IMO and AFAIK you can in general ignore the relationship between the 'received' speed and the WiFi speed.

Having said that your premise is a worthy one, as in just what max WiFi speed are you likely to get and based on that limit then it may may make sense to get a "service package" that does not exceed the likely max WiFi because you will see no benefit.

But note I say max WiFi speed possible.......................because as mentioned due to:- the router WiFi performance, structure of the house, distance from router to the furthest device using WiFi you may never see the max that the router & device can connect at. e.g. sitting in the same room as the router yes (subject to possible interference/congestion of the frequency channel in use) but as you get further away........no idea how low the speed would drop!

Edit ~ subject to you checking out (or getting recommendations) your best bet might be the HomePlugs....yes slower than direct connection to the router but how much quicker than WiFi???

Edit2 ~ re the electrics ~ do you have a modern consumer unit with the circuit breakers, that might at least suggest more modern wiring. Plus if you look at the unit each should be labeled as to what they are protecting.....if you see Ring Main 1 and Ring Main two that I think can cause issues with HomePlugs if they are on separate ring main circuits (if you have the two ring mains, it is straightforward to check which parts of the house are on which ring main)
 
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In simple terms, as a generalisation, yes wireless speeds tend to be drastically slower than cabled connections, most particularly it's not as stable so you get fluctuations. I'd always recommend going with an ethernet (cabled) connection if at all possible. Ideally you want wireless for phones, tablets, laptops etc... but everything else wired.

When talking about this stuff it's best to try and think of/treat your router/network equipment as your own network (called a Local Area Network or LAN) and your internet service provider's network as a separate network (a Wide Area Network or WAN) that your LAN is linked to, which in turn allows you to access the internet through all your devices.

To try and give some perspective on the wireless vs cabled speed (generalisation alert): an ethernet cable connection is generally going to support 1000Mbps and have a very low latency (lets just say like less than 0.5 milliseconds, it obviously depends on the cable length and other factors) and that's going to be very consistent. Now with wireless it's opening a can of worms to try to put the same metrics to it, but lets take my wireless setup for example, I get about 450Mbps absoloute worst case throughout my house and latency is probably around 1.0ms to 30.0ms. It's nowhere near as consistent as an ethernet connection, but it's about as stable as you get for wireless, it's using Aruba access points at the moment, but I've had Ubiquiti and Ruckus running the same kind of speeds. Most consumer routers are going to be dipping down to speeds far lower though, fluctuating way more than that, say 20 to 500Mbps and that's where you see the average person complaining that their broadband is playing up, in reality it's their wireless LAN bottlenecking the connection. *All of that is very rough and it's just to give some kind of perspective.

Anyway, so with that in mind if you are stuck with not being able to run ethernet cable, my recommendation would probably be a wireless mesh setup like the Ubiquiti Amplifi or TPLink Deco. I personally wouldn't recommend homeplugs, I think a mesh setup or even just a good single WiFi router or access point will perform better for most situations, but it does depend hugely on the particular environment.

As far as provider recommendations under BT's network (ADSL, FTTC, FTTP) I would say Plusnet for cheap, Andrews & Arnold or Zen for high end service. If you can get Virgin Media fibre, Hyperoptic or any of the other small ISPs doing FTTP, they may well be worth a go too.

If you go with an ADSL or VDSL service I'd recommend getting a ZyXEL VMG 1312-B10A or Billion 8800NL router and using it as a modem together with the mesh system you choose.
 
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Before you go through the hassle of changing providers I'd give BT a ring.
Baldly state unless they you get the cost down you are moving and see what happens.

I did this 6 months back and got £200pa off over the phone. Same ballpark as the new customer
deals on offer then - I checked.

The deal only lasts a year but then it's phone time again. £200 for 5 minutes works for me :)
 
I'm with BT at the moment who are charging me a fortune. So will need to change providers soon. I will also be moving all my PC gear into the small bedroom where there is no phone socket so it will have to be wireless only. I havnt changed providers for quite some time now so dont really know much about it, but are wireless speeds still drastically slower than cabled connections? If so do the speed differences between wireless and cabled vary between providers in anyones experience?


I'll want as fast a wireless connection as possible, i dont even know right now if my PC has wireless connectivity! its a well specc'd but quite old machine so might need something. Are there good wireless cards/dongles available that would maximise the connection between PC and router? I could always run a phone extention around the house from the downstairs phone socket but not sure if the distances involved would degrade the signal too much?


Anyway, not sure what the best solution would be right now for providers and bits that i need to buy. Any suggestions would be great :)

The second bedroom is pretty far away from where the router would be so it would mean a very long bit of cable running round the house.

With regards to the speed difference with cabled and WiFi. If, say, I pay for a 50Mb connection and the wireless is only 20Mb. Would the wifi still be 20Mb if I paid for a 20Mb connection or does the wireless speed scale down with the main speed? If you see what I mean. I just don't want to pay for a super fast connection if there is no point.

The walls are solid, no idea about the electrics.

Let's use water as an analogy.

Internet provider is like a tap. Wired cables is like a hosepipe. Wireless is like using your hands or a bucket to carry the water.

How fast the Internet provider offers (ie: 50Mb, 20Mb, etc) is like how much did you turn your tap on. The higher the figures (ie 50Mb) is like you turning the tap fully open, so you have fast flowing water. Lower figures (ie 20Mb) is like you turning the tap on a little, so you have a slow running water flow.

Using wired cable is like using hosepipe, all the water goes through the pipe, at the other end, you get the same amount of water as you get out of the tap.

Using wireless Wi-Fi is like using buckets to carry the water, you would have a chain of people passing buckets after buckets, but because there are doors and stairs and furniture in the way, those caused some people to spit some water as they try to pass it over the big sofa or the bucket gets knocked against the doorframe. You get a little less water coming, but still get the rest of the water coming, therefore slow to get all the water you paid for out of the tap, as well as missing a few drops.

Thus...

The further away your PC is from the Wi-Fi hub, the more walls, doors, floorboards the signal have to travel through (as well as what kind of walls and doors, ie: hallow plasterboard walls or thick brick walls) the signal had to go through.

Therefore: It is not the wireless equipment that scale down the speed, it is what is in the way (ie: walls, doors, floorboards) of the signal that scales down how much signal and speed.

Best bet is run an extension all the way from phone socket to bedroom, to get all the data coming through the cable, like hosepipe. But if this is not an option, then...

The trick is to run a phone extension but only to get the Wi-Fi hub to a good central point where you can cut down the number of 'gets in the way' things that slows down the signal.

For example, if your bedroom is at one end of the house on upper floor and the router is at the other end of the house on lower floor, you could have like 4 or 5 walls plus a floorboard, and a number of furniture in the way of the signal. But run an extension to the middle of the house, have the Wi-Fi in the hall, you could cut down to 2 or 3 walls, plus one wardrobe and a floor between your bedroom and the Wi-Fi.

Or run an extension to the room under your bedroom, you only have the floorboard getting in the way of the signal, thus lose only a little signal instead of too much signal.

The closer you get your Wi-Fi hub to your laptop, the better.
 
My wife and I run 2 tablets and two laptops wirelesley whilst sitting in the living room, sometimes 2 items simultaneously with the wireless router (BT) in the bedroom directly above, no wire connection to anything. So far we have never had a speed problem, we dont download films or watch sport on our devices, so I would say depending on your intended use you may not need a cable connection at all.
 
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Of course there's two elements. From your device to your router and from your router out of your house.

If your wireless can transfer on the 802.11n protocol it can in theory transfer at 600Mbps or 75MBps between the router and device. But that is redundant if your provider provides you with only a max rate of 20MBps. Even if your router to device has 30% rate drop it will still be quicker than the outside connection.
 
We bought a set of BT WholeHome wifi nodes. One wires into your modem, the rest create a mesh network. We have a reasonably large house (it's only 3 bed, but quite long) and we now get fast WiFi right to the back of our garden as well as every room in the house, and all of our walls are solid brick. Well worth the price compared to some of the other mesh network solutions.
 
We bought a set of BT WholeHome wifi nodes. One wires into your modem, the rest create a mesh network. We have a reasonably large house (it's only 3 bed, but quite long) and we now get fast WiFi right to the back of our garden as well as every room in the house, and all of our walls are solid brick. Well worth the price compared to some of the other mesh network solutions.

I bought the Netgear Orbi which work well when it worked. Netgear kept breaking things every time they released a firmware update.
I sent them back and got Google Wifi. Same mesh system. I have 28 devices connected with around 10 of these being wifi. We get excellent coverage around the entire house with 2 wifi points and have never had any speed issues. The Google wifi app can test the network speed from ISP and also does a speed test between the router and each device. Every wifi device gets a speed test matching or very close the the speed we get from the ISP which is 75Mbps
 
I bought the Netgear Orbi which work well when it worked. Netgear kept breaking things every time they released a firmware update.
I sent them back and got Google Wifi. Same mesh system. I have 28 devices connected with around 10 of these being wifi. We get excellent coverage around the entire house with 2 wifi points and have never had any speed issues. The Google wifi app can test the network speed from ISP and also does a speed test between the router and each device. Every wifi device gets a speed test matching or very close the the speed we get from the ISP which is 75Mbps

Yeah looked at loads of reviews and the BT version was faster on all the tests than the Google Wifi, plus you get 3 modules for the price of 1.5 Google ones :)
 
What is the issue with Home plugs? I only use them for the tv in the spare room with Now TV, Amazon Fire Apple TV and they work fine.

How to mesh networks compare with direct connections for speed?
 
Wired definitely. I went wireless last week and that's as long as it lasted. Just finished wiring up two CAT6 connectors for the PC and Xbox last night. Low pings and stable speeds again.
 
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There isn't any reason why WiFi can't be good. Just dont expect it on low end / cheap kit and/or on a single node system in a larger/denser property.

Exactly that! Got a stable 866Mbps with 2ms latency from my PC (Office on the 1st floor) to my Access-Point located in the hallway (Ground Floor). No issues with coverage and speeds. From supporting family and friends I find the issue for the most-part is that expectations from wireless (BT Advert with the helicopter?) is far too high with a single-node setups. Still prefer cabled connections, but unless 1Gbps+ FD throughput is required then WiFi can be more than sufficient.
 
I'm guessing a little more expensive than some CAT6 cable, RJ45 wall socket and some trunking?

But if money isn't an issue and hardwire is going to be a pain then it's good to know there is a solid WiFi alternative.
 
If you can get a decent wifi signal most of the time there's no perceptible difference.
If it's attenuated by walls try homeplugs, I've had a pair running for more than five years to give wifi and IP cam connection round a farmyard and it's over 50m away
 
ah well, all sorted and it turned out to be a storm in a teacup! I bought one of these off amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0797MVMM8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And its working brilliantly, im getting the same wireless speed as i was cabled which surprised me. Its pretty much matching what im paying for, which is still too much, so im still going to swap to someone else. But this little thing is doing a great job.
 
That's a very low price for the results you are getting! I use a USB3 stick for work purposes as it does get quite warm but I've never actually seen a warning for heat on Amazon before! Lol
 
I didn't see the heat warning. I know my usb3 memory sticks overheat from time to time so I'll keep an eye on it
 
Lioj at the ubliqti products, the spelling maybe a bit off , but they work brilliently. I fitted 2 in a converted farmhouse and got 40mbs across the house. Also they look good
 
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