Best way to set up a network in a unconventional house

Its above a shop, officially a flat but has 5 rooms, 3 bathrooms and a living room and kitchen over 3 floors and even then its not as easy as it seems

Imagine the highest rooms are on right side of house, router is bottom left 2 floors down and in the middle floor is 2 rooms and bathroom/washing machine.

Its a old sandstone building that is listed. so the signal doesn't travel far.

The room I am staying in is not far from kitchen where the router is, did have issues setting up internet when I first moved in but been fine since (though speed fluctuates but think thats more a line issue)

I did think powerlines running into range extenders but the problem there is that as its a old building there is multiple circuits in the building so I doubt that would work.

I was thinking right outside kitchen is a small loft space area (not sure what its used for) I was going to ask the landlord (he was the one who asked me my advice) if its possible to route a ethernet cable through that, if its doable of course and run that into upstairs hallway and have a range extender there?

My other thought was far more drastic running cable out of kitchen, along wall (I really find it difficult to describe, its a small corner of house with kitchen small bedroom and living room and a small landing onto 2nd floor which has 2 more rooms then leads onto stairway that goes down to front door and up to 2 more bedrooms)

Or is there a even simpler way?



Any better ideas that arent route cable through walls?

I would get a couple of power line adapters and see how you get on.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I would get a couple of power line adapters and see how you get on.

Possibly with built-in wifi. I just fitted this setup at my brother's.

The unit with the pass-through power socket is the master, with no wifi. The plain one is wifi plus two ethernet sockets.

What I was worried about though was different power circuits, theres 3 sets of fuse boxes in the house (one in each section) so I would assume it wouldn't work?

If they're wire fuses, the signal will pass straight through (unless the three fuse boxes are all on different phases). If they're miniature circuit breakers, the signal may or may not pass through. To be honest, your best bet is to see if you can borrow some homeplugs and see if you can get a connection.

Edited by caffn8me (Sun 19-Jun-16 01:14:41)

A couple of these may also work, with some potential slowdown on the wireless.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-RE355-Universal-Ext...

They just pick up the wireless and boost it.

EDIT: You need to place them somewhere which already gets a decent wifi signal. Usually half way between router and the dead spot.

Example is (imagine a flat one floor house as below). As we change rooms we go furhter from the router.
BEFORE BOOSTER
living room (router located) - kitchen (good signal) - bedroom (good signal) - study (weak signal) - garden (no signal).

AFTER BOOSTER
living room (router located) - kitchen (good signal) - bedroom (good signal) BOOSTER HERE - study (good signal via booster) - garden (good signal via booster)

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 19-Jun-16 13:59:08)

Well currently what I notice is theres a tiny ranger extender in middle floor hallway right outside 2 rooms (which seem to pick up a good signal but even then its 2 bars on desktop unless at a certain angle)

The people on top floor have laptops and with that single tiny extender get a lot of drop outs.

I am told its even worse when multiple people use it at once but from what they describe it seems less of a line speed issue than signal as they say it fails to outright connect but seems much better around bedtme.

Was also thinking they have night storage heaters which may play a part in the signal loss

There have been a few reports on here of people picking up their neighbours homeplug networks by accident. If the fuse boxes are on the same phase then there is a reasonable chance the homeplugs will work across them - how much effect they might have on connection speed though is an unknown to me.

Yup, just try it. Homeplugs worked for me to extend a network to my Garage which is on a different circuit to my House.