I receive plenty of calls from Customers with various problems with their wifi. Some are trying to reach a far flung corner of their property and want some advice on what to buy whilst others have already purchased a wifi extender and are now struggling to achieve what they set out to do. Wifi extenders or Powerline adapters were the way to go whenever you had a black spot in your home but now when you look at cost, complexity of setup and the range of issues you will experience there is a new and better option.
The best way to think of any IT problem is that it is an issue that requires a solution. IT Businesses like Churchdown Computers are solution providers and we aim to solve the problem that you have. Solving wifi issues has always been a bit of a problem in itself because the products available on the marketplace were only really a patch that was attempting to hide the bigger problem rather than an actual solution. There is now a proper solution that will be discussed later in this article.
Wifi extenders were often seen as a cheap fix to get wifi to a blackspot in your home. You could either use an extender on its own or buy something known as Powerline Adapters that actually use the wiring in the mains rather than wifi to carry the signal to the location that was previously unreachable. The original problem can be that the existing Router has not been centrally located by the Service Provider or that you need a long reach and there are thick walls or metal objects in the way. The problem you can be immediately faced with are the Powerline Adapters don't communicate back from the far flung location perhaps because it is on a different ring main or the wifi extender simply still doesn't reach where you want to get to. You cannot extend from an extender as all extenders connect back to the original router so you are still stuck. Even if you do succeed you may still have a very weak signal at the location you are trying to reach.
Lets assume you succeed with an okay signal but unfortunately the problems don't really end there. Extenders typically have their own network name and you are connected to it with a different password than the main wifi. You may see your normal wifi network and another network with _EXT on the end. Whilst this has no effect on simple tasks like checking your e-mail or surfing the web you suddenly find that printing doesn't work. The printer is attached to the main network with another password and therefore doesn't understand your attempts to connect from a different network with a different password. Some wifi adapters have a Clone mode. If you carry out a clone the adapter drops its own network name and password and adopts those of the main network and this helps with this type of problem. However, the original documentation that comes with the adapters often doesn't explain how to do a clone and it takes some searching on the web to find out how to do it. Let's now assume you have achieved this too but when you wander around the house you still find your phone and tablet are connected to the weakest signal and not the strongest. Yes, that's correct unless you go completely out of range of the adapter your device won't automatically switch over. It will remain on the one it is connected to if it can still see it unless you manually disconnect and reconnect to the other network.
So having read the above problems with wifi adapters and how to set them up you can understand why I say they are simply a patch to a problem and not a solution. So what if there was a system that actually solved all these things for as little as £60. Well the good news is that there is and the setup is relatively straight forward too. Mesh networks provide complete coverage for your home and the signal strength at the furthest point from the router is just as strong as the nearest. If you require new coverage at any time you can simply buy another access point and add it on. Each access point connects to the other access points so you can extend and extend creating a spiders web across your home and a far flung access point finds its way back to the router via the web you have created. Every access point has the same name and password and as you wander around your house your devices immediately connect to the access point with the strongest signal. You might be thinking that these networks must be complicated to setup but they are not. Provided you are a smart phone or tablet user there will be an app that helps you find the best locations to place them and sets them up in minutes.
All the main suppliers like Netgear, TP-LInk etc offer Mesh systems but I like the Amazon Eero system because it is a good price and straightforward to setup with the app. If you would like Churchdown Computers to help with your wifi problem then just call Mark on 07557 483438, e-mail mark@churchdowncomputers.co.uk or fill out the form at the bottom of theContact page
