WiFi question

[Solasum]

I have a BT router on my ground floor. Because of concrete ceilings it currently only works reliably on the ground floor.

I would like to set up a home office on the second floor. I need a fast connection, so thinking Ethernet cable best?

If I have to pull up the carpets to lay a wire I would ideally also put in an Ethernet socket on the first floor where DS will eventually need to use a computer for homework.

BT say BT complete is not yet available here.

Is my best bet to lay a wire from the router under the carpets to the top floor? Does length of cable affect speed? Would having a junction on the first floor be a problem?

Any recommendations for kit?

Many thanks

You could put a cat5 socket in each room upstairs and then connect these to an Ethernet switch. From where you locate the switch, run some cat5 down to the router, one end into the router, the other into the switch.

Recommended distance for cat5 is 100 metres if I remember correctly.

We changed our Virgin Media hub to work in modem only mode and bought a powerful Netgear router. We now have strong WiFi from the loft down to the ground floor, despite great metal support beams in between.
There will probably be YouTube help on how to do this but it can't be too hard as my parents managed with BT hub/netgear router and they are generally not great with hardware!
We tried the plug in WiFi extenders but they were not reliable.

@Glittertwins

We changed our Virgin Media hub to work in modem only mode and bought a powerful Netgear router. We now have strong WiFi from the loft down to the ground floor, despite great metal support beams in between. There will probably be YouTube help on how to do this but it can't be too hard as my parents managed with BT hub/netgear router and they are generally not great with hardware! We tried the plug in WiFi extenders but they were not reliable.

You can do this with BT routers. When I had BT as my ISP I had the hub5 downstairs (master) and upstairs the old hub3 for WiFi.

All I then did was connect the two routers together via cat5, switched off DHCP on the hub3 and assigned it an IP on the same subnet. The annoying flashing broadband light can be switched off on the hub3. It all worked fine.

The cable would be the best solution but a power line adapter might be the most convenient.

www.amazon.co.uk/Powerline-Adapter/s?k=Powerline+Adapter&tag=mumsnetforu03-21

why not use poweline adaptors, they just plug into an empty socket? I use them and have no problem getting full bandwidth around my house.

Have you asked bt to try the WiFi extender disks? I'm thinking placed in strategic places they might work ?

We just have Ethernet cable along the skirting

@Ifailed

why not use poweline adaptors, they just plug into an empty socket? I use them and have no problem getting full bandwidth around my house.

Where's the geeky fun in that.

(puts on anorak a sits in the corner )

Where's the geeky fun in that.
Fair point. I suggest she installs a Token Ring network, just for a laugh.

@Ifailed

Where's the geeky fun in that. Fair point. I suggest she installs a Token Ring network, just for a laugh.

Now you're talking!!

Where's the geeky fun in that?

Although I recommended powerline adapters, we don't use them. Our main router Wi-fi signal cannot penetrate the walls in our house so we have a total of four routers dotted around acting as switches and Wi-fi extenders. One is outside and covers the garden.

Wow, answers. Thank you all!

There is a sad dearth of spate plug sockets in my house, so that limits options a bit

You don't need spare ones. You can get plug through powerline adapters.