Wifi signal booster - odd behaviour?

[10800]

Some guidance requested here please chaps and chappesses.

 

I've just moved my office into a new building down the garden.  I can get wifi down there but only on a low signal and only if I move the router (BT Homehub3) round the corner into the living room to avoid the signal having to go through a 2 ft wall.  Signal not strong enough for IPad.

 

Electrician says a pair of these plug-in things won't work because the office is fed from a separate consumer unit in the garage rather than being on the main house circuit (I have to take his word for that but it's what I would have thought).  Why not get a wifi signal booster he suggests?

 

So I Google a bit and find that a product from TP-Link will work with the HH3, easy to set up, not too expensive so worth a punt.

 

Just received a TP-Link WA850RE.  Set up easy, just as described.  Once configured move it to another location better for my office, plug in, it sets itself up as it said on the tin.  Go down to office to test.

 

IPad now works.  Brilliant.

 

Work laptop (Dell Precision running XP SP3) shows signal now very good/excellent.  Result!  But hang on, no internet connectivity (VPN signup doesn't work, not even MS Exchange).  Funny, I thought.  Maybe I've just caught the VPN on a bad day (it happens).  Go back to house, try laptop there.  Still nothing.  Disconnect TP-Link booster, works fine.  Plug it in again, doesn;t work.

 

Same thing with my personal laptop (Dell Inspiron/W7).

 

So there's something about the wifi signal coming from the booster that the laptops don't like.  Even though the work laptop still says it is connected to my HH3.

 

I phoned the TP-Link helpline, they wanted me to connect the laptop using the TP-Link booster so I could run diagnostics.  Seemed a bit odd given I can't connect it to the internet with the device enabled.  In any case the person on the line sounded like it was coming from China or Taiwan and it was difficult to hear or understand.  She said she would send some suggestions by email.

 

Meanwhile I thought - what about the 20000+ resource on RMWeb?  Any thoughts regarding this apparent incompatibility issue?

 

TIA

 

[Suzie]

Some VPNs do not like the latency introduced by the store and forward that these types of repeater do, so you can have trouble. AOL is one particular VPN that is susceptible to excessive latency. If you can position the repeater somewhere in your office and plug in to the booster with an ethernet cable you can reduce the latency and that might work.

 

I found that the easiest answer to this was to buy a directional aerial for the router and point it down the garden. Fortunately my router has two aerials which makes this easy.

[10800]

Suzie

 

Thanks for that, although it seems it's not entirely VPN-related.  My personal laptop which doesn't need VPN access is still in the same situation.

 

I've had an email from TP-Link with some suggestions which I might try later on my personal laptop.  If that is successful I could then see if my company IT will do the same for my work machine (which I don't have admin rights for).

 

Because the IPad is now working in the garden office because of the stronger signal, it definitely seems to be something to do with the interaction between the relayed signal and the Dells.  The booster is doing what it should do in strengthening the signal from the house but it's merely created another problem instead.