Powerline Or Wireless Repeater

[ayabrea38]

Hi everyone,Sorry if this is s dumb question,but I am totally confused by which to buy.I'll explain and hope someone can help.

Virgin Media router in living room downstairs with ps3 wired to it.I'm upstairs with a smart tv and laptop,kids are also upstairs.When I was with Sky the router was in the hall and I was getting 4 blocks and was able to watch iPlayer in HD with no problems.Now though,I am getting 2-3 blocks and buffering if I am lucky,loss of connection happening almost every hour. I was,according to speed tests from bbc site, getting about 7 -8 Mbps with Sky,yet am supposed to be getting20-25 Mbps with Virgin,yet streaming,trying to watch smart tv is almost impossible.

I was thinking a repeater would be the answer to my problems,but then read a little about powerline adaptors and am wondering what the deal is exactly,and which would be best for everyone.As the house is brick and solid but also old and damp the signal I am getting now is rubbish.I also keep losing the connection when watching smart tv-annoying to say the least,so I do need help,and am hoping someone here can!

Hope I was able to make my problems clear,and thanks to anyone who can help.

[ayabrea38]

I have just read yet another review,and it brought up another point.If the upstairs and downstairs are using separate electricity circuits,an adaptor from downstairs to upstairs wouldn't work would it?

[bhg481]

There's no reason why powerline adapters shouldn't work. You may have two circuits but, so long as they come from the same consumer unit, they are connected to each other via the fuses/circuit breakers. So long as both circuits are "on" you have a connection between the two circuits, so one powerline adapter can "see" the other one.

[Fitzer]

Firstly you need to check what speed you are getting at the router/hub, connect the laptop via ethernet cable to the router and do your speed tests, if you are getting a decent speed you can then move on. The earlier Virgin Superhubs were know to have terrible WiFi range, do you know what version you have? Powerline adaptors aren't going to help unless you plug your upstairs devices into them which kind of defeats the purpose, unless you buy the version where the 'remote' one is a WiFi access point such as this http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00DHB2T44

[ayabrea38]

Thanks for all your answers,as far as speeds are concerned,it depends on if its a good time of day.I have the 60Mb package (ha ha!) and the fastest I have ever recorded is 37Mb,but at least the slowest is a fairly respectable 8Mb (I was previously only getting upto 7 with Sky-the main reason for the switch)As for what version,I only joined a month ago,so the latest I presume.

I think I have it right now-Upstairs or downstairs,the circuits are connected anyway,so thats OK.If I where to use a powerline adaptor,I would also need it to transmit the wi fi signal,not just give me access to it upstairs.Have I got that right?

[ayabrea38]

I am thinking this-
Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[Fitzer]

Yup, pretty well, standard powerline adaptors just give you another ethernet socket in another room, I didn't know until I found the one I linked to that you can now get them that as well as extra sockets the remote unit can act as a WiFi extender/repeater which then gives you extra WiFi range from wherever it is plugged in. Upstairs & downstairs sockets are almost always on different circuits so don't pose any problems.

[Fitzer]

That would work, you might have to play with which socket you plugged it into (that doesn't care about circuits or anything as it's only using power and not transmitting data over the power lines). Basically you need to plug it in where it can still get a decent signal from the router and give you coverage where yo want, so sort of half way between the router and upstairs, maybe where the Sky router used to be.