Powerline and WiFi

[Halmyre]

The WiFi bit on our Powerline adapter appears to have packed in. However the Ethernet port is still OK, so is there anything I can plug into it to provide a WiFi signal?

[SS2.]

Do you have an old, unused router kicking about ?

One of those could be set up as an access point.

[bristolracer]

Factory reset?

Should be a small hole somewhere on it, press and hold for 10 seconds.
You may need a needle or sim card tool to hit the button

[sgrimshaw]

If the factory reset doesn't help, then something like this can be set up as a WiFi Access Point:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aigital-Extender-Wireless...

However, if you've had your powerlines for sometime it might be worth replacing them .... as with all network kit they won't last forever.

Depending on how old yours are you might find a significant improvement in performance with the latest models.

[Lucas Ayde]

sgrimshaw said:

If the factory reset doesn't help, then something like this can be set up as a WiFi Access Point:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aigital-Extender-Wireless...

However, if you've had your powerlines for sometime it might be worth replacing them .... as with all network kit they won't last forever.

Depending on how old yours are you might find a significant improvement in performance with the latest models.

The newer AV2 powerline adaptors are quite good but the increase in speed isn't as great as you might expect from the numbers on the box. I went from an AV200 setup to AV2-1000 and the actual speeds I was getting went from 80Mbit/s up to 200Mbit/s.

200Mbit/s of real world performance is actually pretty good but not the 5x improvement over the 80Mbit/s of AV200 that the marketing would have you believe. Then again, 80Mbit/s was good enough for most things anyway, I was just getting a bit fed up with waiting to copy large files to/from my NAS and I got a home broadband speed boost to 100Mbit/s and wanted to take full advantage of it.

[Halmyre]

Thanks for the suggestions. Threw out two old wifi modem routers last year Think I'll try an extender running in AP mode, see how that pans out. My powerlinks are only 500 Mb standard but they're fast enough for streaming to a Roku.

[Dr_Rick]

I had similar things start to happen with a few of my Devolo powerline WiFi adaptors. The more I looked into it, the more I concluded that I wasn't using the right tech for my situation.

I've now gone from 6 or 7 powerline things, to a single set of three mesh WiFi boxes. I bought a set of Tenda Nova MW6 from Amazon for about £160. One connects to the router, one stands in the downstairs hall, one stands on the upstairs landing.

I now have 25meg connections throughout the house, whereas before I was struggling in some rooms.

(other mesh things are available, I just didn't want to spend a fortune).

[ZesPak]

I replaced my older wifi stuff with a couple of TP Links (EAP245 iirc), has solved all my wifi issues. Great pieces of kit!

[Halmyre]

Update - bought a Netgear repeater for £20 from Argos and ran it in AP mode and it works fine. To be honest, the main problem is a Lenovo laptop which has a piss-poor wifi reception.