Wi Fi and range extenders

[richardfinegold]

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-powerline-networking-kit/

[Dave2002]

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/be...etworking-kit/

Interesting - though of course your plugs/sockets are different. That review also mentions Zyxel. I had some of those for a while, but eventually they failed, the TP-Link ones were cheaper, and so far they've been good, and the units seem to improve gradually year on year.

For examples - https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-PA4020PK...ywords=TP-Link

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Extender-Broadband-Ethernet-TL-WA850RE/dp/B00AHXXJVW/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1533155858&sr=8-6&keywords=TP-Link

Some of the higher rated units are significantly more expensive, but often the cheaper ones are good enough. There's often not a lot of point in having a very fast internal network (wired or wireless) if the streaming services which supply the content to view or listen to are slower.

[richardfinegold]

Installed the two TP Link units today. So far, so good. It’s great to be able to get my NAS and Bluesound on line, and the Oppo as well. The TP Link are also playing nicely with the Netgear units on the other floors of the House.
I am going to contain my enthusiasm for now, because let’s see how durable this fix iss...

[gradus]

We're renovating a building about 20metres from the house it is next to my garage which is supplied with electricity from my house. The renovated building has a separate electric supply. Could a TP link type gadget in my house provide an internet service in the renovated building so that I could avoid a router in the other building?
Grateful for advice.

[richardfinegold]

We're renovating a building about 20metres from the house it is next to my garage which is supplied with electricity from my house. The renovated building has a separate electric supply. Could a TP link type gadget in my house provide an internet service in the renovated building so that I could avoid a router in the other building?
Grateful for advice.

I suspect not, sine the building in question has it’s own electrical wiring, and the Powerline Adapters send their signal via a common mains system. What might work are the WiFi Mesh Networks—I would find a store that sells them and hope that you get a salesperson with some expertise (see #6).

[gradus]

Many thanks.

[Dave2002]

We're renovating a building about 20metres from the house it is next to my garage which is supplied with electricity from my house. The renovated building has a separate electric supply. Could a TP link type gadget in my house provide an internet service in the renovated building so that I could avoid a router in the other building?
Grateful for advice.

Richard has already given what I believe to be the correct answer, since the two buildings won’t share the same consumer unit. However if the buildings aren’t too far apart you might be able to get a wireless bridge to work between the buildings. I once advised someone about a much further distance link, plus pointed out the legal restrictions on power. I think we based the design on parabolic reflectors at both the sending and receiving end, to give a narrow beam. Later he reported that everything worked fine for a link of more than 1 kilometre, though I don’t think he bothered to turn the power down which might have been a good idea for full regulatory compliance - in another EU country, not the UK.

If you adopted a wireless link (or bridge) approach you wouldn't need another router. You might be able to get it to work without parabolic reflectors if distances aren't too large.

[gradus]

Thanks Dave.

[richardfinegold]

TP Link products get the best reviews for this type of product. I haven’t tried them because the stores here off Neatgear only, at a fraction of the price of the TP products, but after reading this thread I found a vendor in New York that offers the TP products and they can be returned for up to 90 days for a 15% restock fee. It’s unclear when I can get the crew that offered to wire my house out here to do the job so I ordered the TP 2000. I will be in New York for a wedding in a few weeks and if it doesn’t work out I will return it and be $20 poorer, but if it does work I will have saved considerably more.

An update: after working well for a few weeks the TP Link Powerline Adapters gave up the ghost. I think there was a Power surge in our neighborhood that may have affected them but after hours of trying to get them to work for the coverage of my house I threw in the towel and had Ethernet wiring installed for the home. The wires are not visible and it cost me about twice what the price of the TPA Adapters cost, so I regret not going that route initially.
We watched a movie last night and it was great not to have any buffering issues or other hiccups. Also, it may be an aural memory phenomenon, as I have been overseas for a while and haven’t listened to my system for that time, but it sounds to me as if music reproduction is improved as well. I was never a believer in the claim that Ethernet cables make a difference in music reproduction
, but everything sounds more vibrant to me, on all 3 systems in the home. It probably helps that the music is fully removed from traveling the same wires as the electrical system.

[gradus]

An update: after working well for a few weeks the TP Link Powerline Adapters gave up the ghost. I think there was a Power surge in our neighborhood that may have affected them but after hours of trying to get them to work for the coverage of my house I threw in the towel and had Ethernet wiring installed for the home. The wires are not visible and it cost me about twice what the price of the TPA Adapters cost, so I regret not going that route initially.
We watched a movie last night and it was great not to have any buffering issues or other hiccups. Also, it may be an aural memory phenomenon, as I have been overseas for a while and haven’t listened to my system for that time, but it sounds to me as if music reproduction is improved as well. I was never a believer in the claim that Ethernet cables make a difference in music reproduction
, but everything sounds more vibrant to me, on all 3 systems in the home. It probably helps that the music is fully removed from traveling the same wires as the electrical system.

Having looked at the alternatives I've come to the conclusion that running an Ethernet cable from my router to our outside building is the cheapest and best option. Not only will I want to stream audio, I will also need a way of controlling the Wi-Fi linked electric heating - regrettably my only (and expensive) option as we have no mains gas and I don't want liquid gas or oil.

[Quarky]

it sounds to me as if music reproduction is improved as well. I was never a believer in the claim that Ethernet cables make a difference in music reproduction
, but everything sounds more vibrant to me, on all 3 systems in the home. It probably helps that the music is fully removed from traveling the same wires as the electrical system.

Without spending time delving into the technicalities, I'm assuming that a Powerline Adaptor (and Wi-Fi) has to reformat the signal received over the Internet (TCP/IP) into a form (OFDM) suitable for transmission over the power lines. So by using Ethernet wiring, you're saving on an extra layer of coding. Perhaps this gives rise to the better quality audio signal.

No doubt someone can give a more accurate technical explanation......

[Frances_iom]

Without spending time delving into the technicalities, I'm assuming that a Powerline Adaptor (and Wi-Fi) has to reformat the signal received over the Internet (TCP/IP) into a form (OFDM) suitable for transmission over the power lines. So by using Ethernet wiring, you're saving on an extra layer of coding. Perhaps this gives rise to the better quality audio signal.

No doubt someone can give a more accurate technical explanation......

the music will already have been digitised - more likely that any improvement due to lower jitter in reconstruction if significant retxm is required because of noise interfering on the power lines - there will be a tradeoff between the buffering and expected noise levels - if UDP used then packets may be simply be lost rather than in Tcp where retxms would be requested and signals buffered until a correctly received packet handed on.