UK How to go about adding a secondary router/wifi hub

[Brad0593]

Hi all

I’m after a bit of advice regarding wifi/secondary router.
Data is not a strong point of mine so any advice would be very much appreciated.

I currently have the wifi hub set up in the hallway - located centrally in the house.
Wireless connections with phone, tablet and laptop works great, but for some reason the televisions throughout the house struggle to hold a stable connection for very long. Why, I don’t know.

I’m in the middle of renovating the house and have thought about hard wire an ethernet cable to each TV.

The problem now is that I don’t want that many cables on show in the hallway at the back of the hub - which has prompted me to come here and seek advice.

I’ve had a few suggestions about running a secondary router and having it somewhere out of site (I,e - in the attic). And using this second hub to house all the ethernet cables that would run to each television.

So my questions are:
1) Does anyone have any other suggestions?

2) If no, then how do I go about adding a second hub?
Is it as simple as running an ethernet from one hub to the other? (+ power supply obviously)

3) If that’s the route to go down, can anyone suggest a secondary router to use?
someone has told me about a TP-Link hub, but couldn’t remember which model.

Thanks in advance for any replies and suggestions

 

[nicebutdim]

TWENTY years ago I was working in Singapore. Every.single.last.new.build (anything) was having fibre laid to it, defacto. We are so behind in this country it's unreal, and we wonder why we're being overtaken by practically everybody else.

This house was built 6 years ago as part of a new development. I was stunned to learn that Openreach were providing copper connections, despite being in the process of upgrading much of the town to fibre. Broadband speeds are decent with 1,000/200 being available, although we have a 'basic' fibre deal at just over 100mbps - provides what we need at a reasonable price.

My parents could avail of a maximum 3mbps until very recently and until a couple of years ago it was 2mbps. They're within several hundred yards (as the crow flies) of an openreach fibre cabinet, but instead are connected by copper to the exchange 3 miles away and openreach will not offer connection to that cabinet, despite it serving only a very small rural community.

Last year a rural broadband initiative finally reached them and offer up to 1gbps on their service, which is now available at reasonable rates only slightly more expensive than I pay on Openreach network. Despite this service, Openreach still have no plans to upgrade from those long copper lines.

It seems as though planning and roll out of fast internet connections has been effective, yet I fail to understand why existing networks could not have been utilised. I guess there will be factors involving Openreach license terms and guarantees given to providers who have rolled out new networks. Beyond my pay grade, unfathonable and likely involving some bonkers reasoning, but it will be a Godsend to those running businesses in rural areas or to those starved of readily available moving picture pornography.

 

[Rockingit]

Daughter lives in ROI deep in the countryside, has fibre to home from Voda, 500M download but it does drop when busy. I was blown away... i have FTTC and 80M is a good day. @Rockingit bet 4G would give a better upload

Nah, mobile signal is carp as well!!

 

[plugsandsparks]

Nah, mobile signal is carp as well!!

Starlink | Specifications

View technical specifications for our Starlink hardware

www.starlink.com

 

[Rockingit]

Starlink | Specifications

View technical specifications for our Starlink hardware

www.starlink.com

You’ve seen the subscription fee??

 

[James]

£500 equipment charge and £75 per month.
certainly not cheep
ignoring the equipment cost, about £400 per year more than my 500Mbit fibre connection

 

[plugsandsparks]

Thats even before round trip delay, lol

 

[mhar]

I just envy James' speed. Out here in the sticks its all FTC and we get about 30/5 on a good day. It's OK for download and streaming but not good for any video call/cctv upload back. Although I do need to investigate options for getting off of Sky as their modem/routers aren't that great but you get tied in with VOIP over them, so not so easy to swap out.

Sky have their own equipment within the exchange so it is not just swapping over a router, alterations have to be made in the exchange

Nah, mobile signal is carp as well!!

I recently did a 4G system as BT could only offer 4mbps fibre. Very poor area for mobile signal as well but by using a 4G aerial in the attic and having the router adjacent they consistently get 50mbps download. Luckily the people I was working with had sims for all four networks so I was able to experiment to see which network gave the best result.

I used a tp link 4G router and four of their Deco jobbies around the (v large) newbuild to give good coverage pretty much everywhere