Boosting my home network

[The_Potty_1]

Hi

I've had fibre for about 2 years, and frankly the out of the box experience seems to fail on the final 10%. The actual hardware I have probably just needs a small tweak in order to work a whole lot better.

I have a Raycore RC-CP9 router plugged into the glass, from this, there was 2m of CAT-5 to a Huawei B315 wireless hub / DHCP server / switch. The Raycore has gigabit LAN ports, I'm not sure about the Huawei.

The main problem is, both were installed in the garage. A large concrete bunker. As a stopgap fix, I bought 20M of CAT-5, drilled a hole through the wall, and moved the Huawei into the lounge. It's mostly OK.

A separate issue is, my daughter has broken 2 usb wifi adapters (they were old and quite bulky), so I bought a pair of micro adapters (D-Link DWA131), but it turns out micro means small aerial, which means rubbish signal.

My question is, where to from here? Here's what I'm thinking:

Plug a gigabit powerline adapter (Netgear PL1000-100PES) into the Raycore. Place the other powerline in the office. Plug a gigabit switch (D-Link DGS-1005A) into the powerline. Plug the Huawei and 3 computers into the switch with CAT-5. No DHCP, so I'd have to manually set the IP addresses etc, but that's OK. The nasty blue cable in the lounge is gone, but the wifi may suffer throughout the rest of the house.

I could perhaps improve on the above if I got a second pair of powerlines? If I had four adapters, does that mean I can have 3 output points? I could put an adapter in the lounge, so the wifi point doesn't move. I could put a second point upstairs, which would give the linux box internet access, it's currently running on the second micro wifi adapter.

If that would work, I could put a wifi range-extender upstairs? I know nothing about range extenders, would the signals travel over the powerline network, or the wifi from the Huawei? Actually I don't think I'll bother with the extender, the kids can come out of their holes if they want speed

However, if there's a better way to do this, I'm open to other ideas.

 

[grok]

I have a friend with similar setup to you, fiber connection point wasn't anywhere close to where consumption was gonna be, plus he just setup an office in a Zozo a few meters away from the house.

Sorted his connection troubles with a couple of these..

TP-Link AV600 Nano Powerline Ethernet



The master is between his living room (incoming connection) and the office, but I hooked up his 2 girls' rooms too so they can play games or whatever girls do online nowadays.
Was pleasantly surprised, installation was plug in, click, done. He still thanks me every day despite it being such an easy installation..

 

[The_Potty_1]

Cheers, it just occurred to me that I don't actually need gigabit ethernet throughout, if my actual fibre contract is only 20Mb/s, I should be fine with those, which if I'm not mistaken, only have 100Mb/s lan ports? Still 5 times more than I can possibly use.

My question is still basically, if I bought two TL-PA4010KIT, I would have four of those AV600 adapters? Which I could then plug in, one at the fibre router, and the other 3 around the house, and they would all talk, and specifically, the 3 would all have internet?

 

[sajunky]

B315 has gigabit ports on the paper. The actual speed is close to 100Mbps. Get a better router sans WiFi and plug it to the WiFi router in the living area or use powerlines adapter. A good router is only for R700. It will handle many fiber line speed upgrades easy. See: https://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showth...ice-amp-home-network-project-feedback-welcome

 

[The_Potty_1]

Cheers, your thread looks like a rabbit hole of note, I should probably look at it for my work lan, our phone switchboard just went up in flames, and probably good riddance.

As for my powerline question, yes, you can add more adapters.

https://kb.netgear.com/22165/Adding-a-powerline-adapter-to-an-existing-powerline-network

 

[isie]

Cheers, your thread looks like a rabbit hole of note, I should probably look at it for my work lan, our phone switchboard just went up in flames, and probably good riddance.

As for my powerline question, yes, you can add more adapters.

https://kb.netgear.com/22165/Adding-a-powerline-adapter-to-an-existing-powerline-network

yes you can add more adapters.

 

[Gtx Gaming]

Remove b315, its not great on wifi.

Replace it with https://scoop.co.za/tenda-ac1200-smart-gigabit-wi-fi-router-ac10.html

If range is still not good enough add a https://scoop.co.za/tenda-300mbps-wifi-router-and-repeater-f3.html extender.

 

[PsyWulf]

You can also get a few Eth-over-power adapters with Wifi built in,i've done a few deploys with these for the thicker-walled homes

As for the extending question,you can even mix brands and speeds,they just need to support the same standard ( HomePlug seems to be the running favourite )

 

[The_Potty_1]

OK well I'll report back on the results of the upgrade, thanks for the advice.

 

[The_Potty_1]

All done, and I'm pretty happy. I got the gigabit switch, and the TP-Link AV-600 linked above by evilstebunny, as well as the following:

https://www.takealot.com/tp-link-av600-wi-fi-powerline-extender-starter-kit-white/PLID52034744

In the end I left the blue cable, it's not really visible under the sideboard. So I plugged one av600 into the Huawei, put the second av600 in the office plugged into the switch, and the av600 wifi repeater is upstairs. The linux box is plugged into the wifi extenders LAN port. As for the third av600 ...

OK, so we've just cancelled DSTV, because we weren't really using it. My wife is watching a stack of Netflix on her laptop over wifi, and the kids are doing the same with the XBox plugged into the TV. I think I'll just plug the XBox into the third av600, and see how that goes.