Search for a way to get Wi-Fi upstairs and you will find extenders, boosters, mesh systems and powerline adapters, often side by side on the same shelf. They are not four versions of the same thing. Each moves the connection around your house in a different way, and which one works depends on what is in the way.
Four products, one problem
Your router sends Wi-Fi out in every direction, and every wall, floor and appliance takes a share of it. By the time the signal reaches the back bedroom, the attic conversion or the far end of an extension, there may be little left.
Every product here tries to put a second source of Wi-Fi closer to that room. The difference is how each one gets the connection there in the first place: through the air, or through a wire.
Extenders and boosters
A Wi-Fi extender, also sold as a booster or a repeater, picks up your router's signal and broadcasts it again. To pass on a good signal it has to receive a good one, so it must sit where the Wi-Fi is still reasonably strong. That is often not far enough towards the room that needs it.
A basic extender also has to listen and talk on the same radio, so it can pass on only part of the speed it receives. Many create a second network name, and devices do not always move between the two when they should.
Extenders are cheap and quick to try. They suit one room that is just out of reach. They struggle when the signal has to cross several walls or a floor before it gets to them.
Mesh Wi-Fi
A mesh system is a set of units that work together as one network, with one name and one password, handing your devices from one unit to the next as you move around the house. It is a clear step up from an extender.
Most mesh units talk to each other over Wi-Fi, though, so the link between them faces the same walls and floors as the router did. A unit upstairs still needs a decent signal from the one below it. Where the units can be joined by a network cable, or by powerline, the link between them stops depending on the walls, and mesh works far better. Our guide to mesh Wi-Fi goes further.
Powerline adapters
Powerline adapters carry your broadband over the electrical wiring already in the house. One plugs in beside the router, another in the room that needs the connection, and the data travels inside the wiring rather than through the air. Nothing is chased into walls and no floors come up.
How fast powerline runs depends on the wiring: its age, how the circuits are laid out, and what else is plugged in along the way. The same adapters can do very well in one house and poorly in the next. That is the one real catch with powerline, and the reason to measure it in your own house before paying for it. Our guide to powerline in Irish houses covers what decides it.
Access points on a powerline link
The fix we fit combines the two ideas. Powerline carries the connection through the house to an access point placed on the floor that needs it, and the access point gives that part of the house a strong Wi-Fi signal of its own, on one network name throughout. The walls stop mattering for the long part of the trip, because that part happens inside the wiring.
We place each access point where the measurements say it should go, and test every floor before we leave. You can read more about how the fix is quoted.
How to choose: measure first
- One room just out of reach, the rest of the house fine: an extender may be all you need.
- The signal fades across a whole floor: a mesh system can help, especially if its units can be linked by a cable or by powerline.
- Walls or floors stop the signal before it gets anywhere: a wired or powerline link to an access point gets past them.
- Slow even beside the router: none of these will fix it, because the problem is the broadband. Our guide to telling the line from the Wi-Fi shows how to check.
Before buying anything, test beside the router and again in the room that struggles. Our free Wi-Fi check does both and grades the result green, amber or red. Our guide to testing room by room explains what the numbers mean.
If you would rather see the fix working before you buy it, the €395 home network assessment measures your broadband by cable at the router and every floor of the house, then leaves a working trial system on the floor that struggles for three days. You live with it before you decide, and you get the figures in writing. It is credited in full against any work you go ahead with.