Advice Needed WiFi Woes

[Llew]

My brother recently moved into a care home in Peterborough, which advertised as having WiFi access to all rooms. It's a new home, fully wired with Ethernet sockets in the rooms and WiFi range extenders dotted about the building - it's a large complex.

However, the WiFi reception is abysmal in his room, even with a Netgear extender facing his room pushing out 2G and 5G signals. I've been travelling back and forwards for a couple of weeks trying to get something working - I needed to sit under the thing with a tablet to keep a connection without it dropping out.

I contacted the home's manager to ask if the Ethernet distribution system is up and working, and he said don't plug anything into the socket as it may not be wired correctly (!). He's going to contact the IT firm who installed the system to hopefully get it up and running ASAP. Apparently they have a 100Mb pipe running to the home from the care home headquarters nearby, so this should do nicely with, e.g., video calling to me back home with Skype.

My question is, in place of having a LAN cable permanently connected to my brother's Nexus tablet ( via the BobjGearEthernet adaptor), has any member had any experience with a WiFi a travel router or some such, to set up a WiFi access point in, for instance, a hotel room? Are they any good?

 

[Captain Jack]

Hmm... I usually use my phone or a 3G dongle. You could always get one of those power adapters with WiFi points on them - just plug an Ethernet cable in.

 

[Channel Hopper]

If you can get to one of the extenders, rotate the aerial(s) from where they are - vertical - to horizontal, or vice versa. Then reconnect in your room, and do the same with your dongle if there is still no immediate improvement.

Quite often the shielding within the walls is to blame somewhat more than the distance/density, and the angle of dangle of the dongle can make all the difference to your penetration (oooer!).

 

[smoggy07]

If/when they confirm that the ethernet sockets are live, plug in an ethernet cable between the wall and the WAN socket on an el-cheapo virgin/cable wifi router in his room and set it up on channel 1, 6 or 11 (depending on what channel the home uses to avoid any clashes)

You might have to disable DHCP on the inroom router to get it to work with their connection but I doubt it

TBH if you have a spare wireless router of the virgin/cable flavour it shouldn't cause any problems if you went on ahead and plugged it in now

 

[Llew]

Hmm... I usually use my phone or a 3G dongle. You could always get one of those power adapters with WiFi points on them - just plug an Ethernet cable in.

TBH, would prefer him to use their free WiFi or fixed Ethernet. Yes, the power adaptor route is worth considering.

If you can get to one of the extenders, rotate the aerial(s) from where they are - vertical - to horizontal, or vice versa. Then reconnect in your room, and do the same with your dongle if there is still no immediate improvement.

Quite often the shielding within the walls is to blame somewhat more than the distance/density, and the angle of dangle of the dongle can make all the difference to your penetration (oooer!).

No outboard antennas on either the extender or Nexus, Wires inside the case in the latter and presumably also in the former. With his door open, he has line of sight to the extender 10 ft away when he's lying in bed (which is 90% of the time), and reception shows Poor even with the tablet face on to the extender. I think there are issues with the Nexus 10 WiFi reception anyway, just my luck that I got him that instead of a different model, although I tried my Kindle Fire HD which is only marginally better.

If/when they confirm that the ethernet sockets are live, plug in an ethernet cable between the wall and the WAN socket on an el-cheapo virgin/cable wifi router in his room and set it up on channel 1, 6 or 11 (depending on what channel the home uses to avoid any clashes)

You might have to disable DHCP on the inroom router to get it to work with their connection but I doubt it

TBH if you have a spare wireless router of the virgin/cable flavour it shouldn't cause any problems if you went on ahead and plugged it in now

Don't have a spare router, but thanks guys for you suggestions. Will wait for the nice man to come and sort his wiring out.