Hey all,
Looking for some recommendations on how to get internet around the home.
We just moved into a duplex in Sydney and I realised the NBN connection box was installed into the garage of all places. There is only one door and it opens right into the main doorway so no way I can get an ethernet cable there.
I thought about getting a professional to wire ethernet through the walls so I can place our wireless router in the kitchen but it still doesnt help with getting internet upstairs.
Some people mentioned Mesh Wifi or Powerline systems. Not sure which path to go down.
We are in a duplex so not sure if that affects the Powerline.
TLDR: Moved into new home. NBN connection in garage. Patchy WiFi everywhere. Need to get internet upstairs.
So to clarify and get more info…
The router is in the garage right now, and everywhere, both upstairs and downstairs, has patchy WiFi? Or is it patchy everywhere downstairs and not working at all upstairs?
Regardless, the theoretically ideal config in most two story scenarios is wired back-haul mesh system, with hard wired points upstairs and downstairs (possibly multiple each story depending on the area of the premises), with a pro obviously doing the wiring to suit (exactly how they wire it depends on your house layout and your preferences for where you put the network switch to tie it all together - if you're paying for this extra points you may need are cheaper to do in one hit usually than added later, but that's all up to you)
Mesh without being hard wired relies on the WiFi signal, so if it is crap due to walls blocking it now then a mesh system (or worse, those WiFi extenders) ain't gonna work with WiFi back-haul. The dedicated WiFi back-haul channels can help, but they don't create miracles.
Powerline Ethernet can be a work around cheaper than getting the place wired, but you need the expensive ones to get decent speed out of it, and it very much depends on your house wiring as to where you can put the powerline outlets. If upstairs and downstairs are on different circuits you're out of luck. If you know someone that has one to borrow to test, it would be a good idea before buying one and finding out you can't use it.
In theory the two halves of a duplex should be totally separate, otherwise you'd be racking up each other's power bills, so that should be irrelevant to powerline, unless it was a single house split in half and done in a dodgy way. If it was built as a duplex initially you should in theory be fine.
Regardless of anything else, as the first step I'd advise getting a long cable just to test things out and simulate having paid someone to shift your router location.
Relocate the router - try multiple locations if you can - to see if paying someone to do the proper wiring job to move the router itself will even help that much. It may fix only downstairs or it may fix everything if you're lucky.
If you have an RSP provided router with weaker WiFi and this fixes downstairs and makes upstairs kind of ok, a single good quality replacement router might be the fix rather than a mesh system. Likewise getting upstairs kind of ok with your current router might make a dedicated back-haul channel mesh system viable, but it is impossible to know without trying.
Hope this helps. No-one can give you a definitive guaranteed fix other than the sell a kidney option without checking out the house themselves.