Wifi Extenders

[TinCow]

I bought the 4-port version of this one, though I bought it through Newegg. It arrived and I installed it yesterday. So far, it is superb. It could not be simpler to use, just plug the single port transmitter into an outlet near the router, and connect with cat-5. Then plug the 4-port receiver in wherever you want to extend the network, in my case behind my media center in the living room. So far I've only hooked up my TiVo to it, but there's already been a significant improvement. I used to stream to the TiVo via WiFi (Wireless N) which wasn't bad, but if I was transferring a 1080p blu-ray rip from my fileserver I would sometimes need to give it an hour headstart or I'd run out of buffer. Netflix generally streamed perfectly fine, but at the start of any video the quality was extremely bad and it took about 20 seconds to get up to snuff. Netflix also occasionally experienced some video degradation or stoppages during play, though not enough to really irk me.

With the powerline extender installed instead of wifi, I was able to watch a 1080p blu-ray rip from my fileserver with only 2 minutes of buffering, which is a massive improvement. Netflix also streamed perfectly with only minor visual degradation for the first 5 seconds or so, and no degradation or stoppages during about 3 hours of playback. I've not yet moved my N bridge to the extender, as I need to dig a spare router out of storage to use as a hub in its place. I've got 4 devices wired into the N bridge at the moment and can't lose those connections.

So far I'm very pleased with the system, and the modular nature of the product is very nice. I can expand the network simply by buying more of the things, be they the 1 port, 4 port, or WiFi models.