I want to upgrade my home wifi coverage after having renovated my house recently. My wifi router is in the living room on the ground floor and I have a smart TV and Xbox in the basement. I want to connect the TV and X box with a wired connection and to have good wireless performance in the basement which is only 3.5m by 3.5m. My existing Wifi router provides good coverage on most of the ground floor but on the first floor it's not great on the side of the house opposite the living room so I could do with a wireless boost for the first floor. To summarise:
1. Basement: Need 2 to 4 Ethenet wired ports to connect my devices and need to improve the Wifi coverage
2. Ground florr: Need to uplift the wireless performance in parts of the back of the house
3. First Floor: Need to uplift the wireless performance in parts at the back of the house
Can anyone recommend which Netgear product or products would be best to acheive the above?
In this case, one of the first things to check, is if you have any other netgear routers that you may already own. Most will have a function to create a wireles bridge, and since there are fewer space and power constraints, they will often have far better receiver sensitivity, better transmit power, and better antennas (often 2-4dBi antennas), while many mobile devices will have unigain or negative gain antennas.
With that in mind, if you only need wired ports, then an old router can be used while being set as a wireless bridge.
If you need Ethernet ports as well as additional WiFi coverage, then you will largely need a range extender product such as the EX8000 wwhich has a very good RF front end that is more likely to make a good connection with the main access point in the living room while being physically located in the basement so you can access the 4 Ethernet ports on the EX8000. Another thing that can also be done is experiment with the antenna positioning of the main router/ AP.
Another thing that needs to be considered is the real world throughput needs at the basement location. For example, suppose you cannot run an Ethernet cable, and you also need upwards of 500Mbps at the location, and cannot run Ethernet cables to other leves of the home, then you may end up needing a more complex setup, such as the PLW1010, in addition to a cheap unmanaged gigabit Ethernet switch in order to provide enough ports for the wired devices in the basement.
Powerline adapters can provide good throughput over a long range in the majority of homews provided a few conditions can be met. The powerline adapter (both endpoints) are on circuits where no appliances or devices that failed EMC compliance testing are in use (those would be devices that would largely be illegall to sell in the US, UK, EU, and various other countries, but can still be purchased in private sales on places like ebay and imported (it is rare for anyone to have such devices).
PS, power line adapters perform best when the circuit that both endpoints are connected to, are on the same pphysical side off your electrical panel. (on your circuit breaker you will see 2 columns of circuits, if a circuit for an outlet in the basement and a circuit for an outlet in the livingroom are on the same physical side, then you can often get close to the full throughput of the adapter even over a decent distance.
Overall, there are many options available.
PS, if you absolutely need to improve coverage in all parts of the home, then you may end up having to go with a mesh system such as the orbi and using it along side your current access point, e.g., a 2 satellite system where the first unit is connected via Ethernet to the main router, and placed in a more optimal location if possible (e.g., if the main routr is on the top floor and you could possibly run a long Ethernet cable along walls and down stairs (neatly tacking the wire to the baseboard), and having the main orbi unit on the floor below, then having the second orbi unit in the basement. You could have fast speeds anr really good coverage throughput the entire hoe, though it is a more expensive solution.
