Can you get a booster unit for a better signal on a separate floor?

[Andrew12345]

can you get a booster unit for a better signal on a different floor in a house?

[gavs82008]

@Andrew12345 

Simple answer is no. All they provide is the router and nothing else.

You need to spend extra money to get other equipment.

[Andrew12345]

Thanks for responding. Appreciated. Do you know where you can buy a booster if not through them? 

[RoyB]

@Andrew12345 

Amazon, except I wouldn’t ever buy a booster.

Source a Sky SR203 router cheaply off eBay, use that instead, zero reconfiguration needed, much better WiFi range.

If that is still not enough, get a pair of PLAs with the far end having WiFi, about £60 from Curry's or similar.

Put the wifi end where you need good signal on the other floor. But as above, only if the SR203 doesn’t sort it.

[Heinstein]

@RoyBis an expert in such things and while I agree an old-style "booster" is not a great choice, I quite like the "mesh" option.  But Roy can let us know if that's bad road to go down.

I've used a Tenda Nova MW6 mesh with success.  There are cheaper and more expensive options available, this is a middle-of-the-road solution.  

With the mesh you plug one node into the Now Router (so you need a spare ethernet port on the router and mains socket near the router) and other node(s) around the house.  I've found a two node setup fine (one by the router) but it depends on your layout.  You turn the wireless network off on the Now router and use "Bridge mode" on the Nova mesh, so it's just doing the wireless work and leaving the routing duties (any port forwarding etc) to the Now router.

Good luck!

[RoyB]

@Heinstein @Andrew12345 

Mesh is boosters on steroids - the devices networked on one SSID, so none of the SSID handovers boosters have to do, possibly a whole backhaul network - a sort of ‘hidden’ network that gives the nodes accelerated access to the main node or router - and much greater attention to how devices moving around within the mesh network are handed off from one node to the next.

The cheaper ones are based, like the Tenda, on a mesh node connected to your existing router, rather than supplanting it with their own router, which can do more. And some do without the backhaul, which in principle makes them slower, but often not enough to matter in practice.

Using the existing router makes sense, though, if you don’t want to disturb the existing arrangements with your ISP, and makes for a cheaper solution as you don’t need a replacement router in the mesh. And if it works, for a modest sized property, why spend more?

I’ve just added a Disc to my BT Smart Hub 2; it’s made the WiFi, which up until now has been perfectly adequate in reaching every room in our four-bed detached, a bit faster upstairs. So we didn’t really need it, but we had it, so I set it up so I could experience it.

In your Tenda, one unit is effectively replacing the router as far as WiFi goes (though I presume the router is still doing the DHCP?), and the other is acting as a rather superior booster, as above.

It’s a setup that still has the limitation of boosters that each one has to be in range of at least one other, and at least one has to be wired to the router (or in range of the router, if the router is part of the mesh).

So it might not have worked for my garden room, unless that had been in range of a mesh node in the kitchen, hence me using a WiFi-ended PLA setup for that, which means the far end can be as far away as the mains will reach.

I mentioned it above, as it’s something that can be used to ensure you still get your absolutely top WiFi speed in a place where that’s important, rather than just the good speed you might get if there is any fall-off across the mesh; we get better speeds in the bedroom with the disc, 90 up to 140) but we don’t get the speeds we get in the lounge (370).

But then conversely, that outlying WiFi unit can’t be integrated into a mesh, so it’s horses for courses 😛

[Heinstein]

Fantastic @RoyB , thanks.

Just to confirm, in "bridge mode" the Tenda isn't doing the DHCP, that's still with the Now router.  Given that the router doesn't have a "modem mode" it just seemed easier to leave it doing everything apart from the wireless connectivity.

Also no separate backhaul on the MW6, I was too cheapskate to pay for that on the MW12!

[RoyB]

@Heinstein 

As I thought then, With the two Ethernet ports on the router, I think it has to do the DHCP, as the Tenda wouldn’t ‘see’ the other port.

I’m not sure there’s much if any merit in paying extra for the backhaul unless you have daisy-chaining going on, and you have a single-pointed star there 😛