Home plugs

I would like to improve the wireless availability in some parts of the house, particularly in the living room. At the moment I have the router connected network socket in the back room that is connected to the main socket in the living room, because the wireless from the back room through the house to parts of the living room is non existant the router is on through a wall from the network socket and gives good wifi in the back room and poor but acceptable wifi in the living room and a signal that is just about there in the other room we use.
I wondered if I moved the router to the main socket which solves the wifi problem to the two rooms on the front of the house we use, and then bought an AV500 home plug for the living room and an AV200 wireless home hub for the back room ( I can not find an AV500 wireless home plug ) whether this would be likely to work and whether I would get improved signals?

What is the general opinion of Home Plugs, how do Home plugs work with BT infinity which has just become available for me?

I have 4 TP-Link TL-PA211 adapters (AV200).
1 connected to the router (in the loft) , 1 to a PC (ground floor front), 1 to an Xbox (ground floor front), 1 to Sky (ground floor back).
Frankly, all but Sky could be OK on wireless, but the sync is better with these.
All work fine - generally syncing at around 100 Mbps.
I chose the TP-Link purely on price - £29 a pair from Amazon. I got 2 and found them OK, so got some more.

Take a look at this post...

If Infinity go for AV 500 units to push the speed around

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/70-de...

Has comparisons to same manufacturers AV 200 units.

You can plug a wireless access point into the Home Plug, and would be my preferred method of doing things. Though for my own lounge I ran external Cat5 down outside of property 5 years ago.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If Infinity go for AV 500 units to push the speed around

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/70-de...

Has comparisons to same manufacturers AV 200 units.

You can plug a wireless access point into the Home Plug, and would be my preferred method of doing things. Though for my own lounge I ran external Cat5 down outside of property 5 years ago.

I have a cat5 cable from the lounge to my study, what equipment would I need as a wireless access point, I would welcome suggestions.

Maybe http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002YETVVE/ref=asc_df_B00...

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Maybe http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002YETVVE/ref=asc_df_B00...

So looking at that could I use a spare modem router to do the same job, I have a netgear dgn1000 router in my drawer, would this do the job? Is there anything I would have to do to make it work or could I just plug my primary router to the Bt socket, the cat5 cable to the primary router, the netgear dg1000 to the socket and then the netgear to my desktop and wireless for everything else in the back room?

If you disable DHCP on the router, and ensure its IP address does not clash with existing network, then yes you can do that.

You get an access point, and 1 of the four switch ports is used to connect to network, giving you a 3 port ethernet switch too.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If you disable DHCP on the router, and ensure its IP address does not clash with existing network, then yes you can do that.

You get an access point, and 1 of the four switch ports is used to connect to network, giving you a 3 port ethernet switch too.

I have a problem. If I connect the netgear router to the primary router in the way you suggest. Without moving anything the system works but as soon as I move the primary router to the bt socket and connect the netgear router to the primary router through the cat5 cable it does not work. So my cat5 cable was provided by BT and has a plug on one end that fits directly into the BT filtered faceplate and terminates in a BT socket in he back room, from there I have always used the phone cable that comes with a router to plug into the socket and then to the input socket on the router. The simple question would be is the cable wired correctly? Ie are the pin assignments on the modem cable the same as the pin assignments on the network cables, if they are then I will have to have another think, if they are not then I have yet another job to do.

The BT installed cat5 cable is NOT wired for carrying ethernet data, it is only meant to carry VDSL data from telephone line to openreach modem.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The BT installed cat5 cable is NOT wired for carrying ethernet data, it is only meant to carry VDSL data from telephone line to openreach modem.

Having seen this I opened the socket in the back room and whilst all the wires are there they are not all connected, it has an rj45 plug on the other end, do you know if this is similarly not connected. If it is not connected I assume that all I need to do is to get another socket cut the plug off and connect the cables in the right places, and connect all the cables at other end. As an aside whilst it may be a BT supplied extension they did not fit it, a kindly BT open reach engineer supplied it and I fitted it.
Can I thank you so much for the help you have given me so far it has been most helpful.

Hi Bill, this might help you sort the Cat 5e cable problem with a very good video.

http://www.lanshack.com/make-cat5E.aspx

http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html

http://www.merseyworld.com/wadarc/Technical_Topics/C...

In reply to a post by Bill_Lord:

So looking at that could I use a spare modem router to do the same job, I have a netgear dgn1000 router in my drawer, would this do the job? Is there anything I would have to do to make it work or could I just plug my primary router to the Bt socket, the cat5 cable to the primary router, the netgear dg1000 to the socket and then the netgear to my desktop and wireless for everything else in the back room?

Hi Bill, to find some devices on the network, you need to setup a static IP address for these device and not within your router DHCP server range.

My router DHCP server range settings.

DHCP Start: 192.168.1.21
DHCP End: 192.168.1.250

I have my router static IP address 192.168.1.251
2Wire router/wireless access point, static IP address 192.168.1.253 the DHCP server disabled.
Computer static IP address 192.168.1.3
Samsung TV static IP address 192.168.1.6

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19249/how-to-assign-a...

http://portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm

http://www.home-network-help.com/configure-ip.html

http://www.home-network-help.com/configuring-ip.html

http://www.home-network-help.com/set-ip.html

http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/static-ip-addre...

Also if you redo that extension so it handles ethernet, best to label it as such, in case someone gets confused at a later date

Though suspect it should be fine for VDSL2 even with ethernet style wiring

Thankyou to everyone for all your help, amongst other things you have saved me at least £50 on the cost of home plugs and possibly more. All I have to do now is to decide whether to buy a RJ45 socket plate and case and then cut the plug off the cable at the master socket end, I am reluctant to do t s once I do it the result is permanent with no going back to a system that does work after a fashion. I think I will probably buy a couple of home plugs http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?... and see how we go from there, this is the option that saves me £50 as using these with the knowledge you have given me means that I do not have to buy a wireless home plug.
Thank you once again.

Just to back up Andrew's comment, I am assuming VDSL still uses a single twisted pair.

If you can punch-down (or recrimp but not so easy) for standard ethernet straight through wiring, that would not stop you using the wire for VDSL, ADSL or even phone extension in future. These would normally use just the centre pair 4+5 (conventionally the blue pair).

In fact you can even share that wire. Using just 1+2 and 3+6 will do 100M ethernet leaving the centre pair free.
Some ethernet cable "economiser" adapters used as a pair have a similar result by splitting the connectors into double sockets 1+2,3+6 and 4+5,7+8.

(edit) but if you punch-down the connections yourself at least you know what you are getting.

So making it an ethernet cable allows either use at the full 1G or still a mix of 100M plus "something else". Assuming it is 90m or less!

Edited by prlzx (Sat 15-Sep-12 12:42:51)

Correct VDSL still uses the centre pair of pins, proof is that things like old faceplates and microfilters still work.

That was what I thought but my supervisor at home would prefer it if I did not do anything that if I made a mess of it would prevent me from putting the system back as it is now (:- which is why I ordered a couple of home plugs this morning. But thankyou for suggesting it

I have two Netgear XE104's which are old but one advantage is they have four 10/100 Ethernet ports instead of just one, I have a router, xbox, ps3, computer and a Humax box plugged into one end and another computer at the other.

Are there any current Homeplugs that have four ports? Seems a waste of plugs to have to buy 4 if most of your net devices are in one area.

There are devolo units with three ethernet sockets

In reply to a post by Cheule:

Seems a waste of plugs to have to buy 4 if most of your net devices are in one area.

Waste of money, more like. Buy one plug and a cheap switch, they can be had for only a few quid.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Thank you for that I have been using this system for several months now, but not without a few problems. Both my routers are technicolour tg582n and on the unit I use as slave I have turned the DHCP function off, I looked for the ability to turn off universal plug and pray but could not find it, the slave units IP address is outside the Ip pool of the primary router but I chose to have the SSID different on each unit so that I could identify wich router the connection was made to. I have tried it with the same SSID but the rest of the wireless parameters are the same. They use different channels.
The problem that I get is that frequently anything connected to the slave ( whether by wifi or cable ) will not access the internet, or indeed will not even recognise the existence of the primary router I simply get a server not found message, the only solution I have found for this state is to reboot the router. If there is a solution to this I would appreciate it, even if it means buying extra equipment, but whatever the solution there must be a wireless and a wired connection available by the slave unit.

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Resurfacing old posts suggests searching for content to attach a link to for the best referrals for yourself rather than genuine help. So deletion happens.