Changed to BT Infinity with Home Hub3 - Now I have wireless network issues

My wireless hub (previously a BT home Hub 2) is located in the living room. My main pc is upstairs and connects wirelessly to the hub using a TP-Link USB wifi adapter. In my other living room, which is an extension on the back of the house, I have a Netgear WN2000RPT extender to pick up the wifi through what used to be the original outside wall. I then have four network products connected by ethernet cables to the ports on the extender; these are a TV, Sky box, blu-ray player and a Marantz NA7004 network audio player.

Four days ago, I had BT Infinity installed, and was given a Home Hub 3. Since then, I've noticed some issues. Firstly, the extender seems to be droppoing the connection with the hub during the night. I have to reconnect every morning, by pressing the WPS button on each component. This is a PITA. I've ceecked the hub settings for power-saving modes, but these are all disabled. The other issue is that when I try to use my ipad to stream music from my upstairs pc to the Marantz using Airplay, it's not responding. I've read that Home Hub 3 has troubles with Airplay, and that changing the security setting to WPA only will fix it. I tried that and it hasn't, at least not so far. That's not a major problem, as I don't have to use Airplay to stream the music, I can do it using the music server mode on the Marantz itself.

The priority for me is fixing the problem with the dropped wireless connection between the hub and the extender. I'm thinking of going down the homeplug route (something like this), and replacing the extender with a ethernet switcher box, (something like this). Before I do that, though, am I right in thinking that you can use any main socket so long as they all go back to the same fuse box? Or do they have to be on the same ring?

If I can't sort out the Airplay situation, I might have to ditch the Home Hub 3 and put in a different router. If so, what do people recommend as a good quality product for around £100?


Hope that explains the problems, and soemone can offer some ideas

Paranoid69 said:

Home plug can work well and generally connects fine on the same phase (so the same fusebox in a home setup), don't expect the quoted speed but you should beat wireless.
You don't necessarily have to ditch the new router, it'll likely drive the Internet side well - just consider using a different wireless access point (perhaps the old router can be reconfigured as an AP only, there were always a few hacks or hidden config menus in the older ones, Google will likely help).

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Thanks. I understood the first bit, about the homeplugs. The speed side of things is fine, I just want a stable reliable connection. I think a trip to Maplin is in order.

Not sure what you meant about setting up another router (I've already thrown the old one out by the way) as "AP only".

OK, I've set up a fully wired homeplug system. The good news is, it works upstairs and down, and according to the speed test I've just run on the PC, download spoeeds have doubled. The bad news is, that so far, the Marantz Nework player is not "seeing" my PC as a music server. It is seeing the laptop, but unfortunately there's no music on that. I'm sure that with a bit of time and patience, I'll figure that out. It may just be a case of reauthorising the player

I spoke too soon. The homeplug connection upstairs - to the main desktop that I use for work - stopped working and thereafter refeused to pair up to the rest of the network, no matter how many times I repositioned and/or reset it. So I junked the homeplug idea and returned to a wireless setup, but with a change of router. I got a Netgear N600 WNDR3700 dual band router & swapped out the BT home hub 3. The wireless signals are a lot stronger - especially to the Netgear extender - and Airplay operation is fully restored. I also downloaded Twonky media streaming software to my pc, and successfuly configured it with the Marantz to restore music server operations.

So, all in all, I'm as happy as I can be without a fully wired setup..