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Wifi booster

romcgrath
Tuning in

We have a wifi weak spot in our extension & want to use devices outside. We had a cheap booster plugged in the extension which worked fine, but it stopped working when I upgraded the security on our router. It comes up on available wifi as ‘weak security’ and doesn’t work. 
Can anyone suggest a solution or recommend a new booster?

4 REPLIES 4

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person
What do you mean by "upgraded the security on my router"?

I assume you are in modem mode then and altered that ? if so what make/model of router is it?

If not, what did you do to the Hub?

May be worth sorting that out before spending any money if that worked fine for you.

That said, boosters are in general a poor way of improving wifi - you should get either a…

(1) Mesh System, (2) Wireless router, (3) Wireless access point (4) A combination of (2) & (3).

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John
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I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

Thanks for replying. I am not very technical so some of it went over my head. We have a Virgin hub 3 & several months ago I got a message on my iPhone saying I needed to upgrade the wifi security to WPA3 which I did, but since then the plug-in wifi range extender that I had in the extension has been showing on my phone as Weak Security & doesn’t seem to work.

I wondered if there was an easy fix for the existing extender or if someone could recommend an alternative booster. I’ve seen second hand Virgin boosters for sale on eBay but on the Virgin website they say their new pods are out of stock.

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Did you read through this post...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Networking-and-WiFi/iOS-14-Weak-Security/td-p/4410050

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Assuming all your ethernet cable connected devices are working just fine and your wifi is generally good too (unless you move away from the Hub location) you need to consider your wifi options.

To address the wifi, as you say VM now supply “wifi Pods” (not “boosters”). Pods are free to customers on 1GB or Ultimate Oomph packages - is that you? And the website is in need of updating - they are in stock.

If not on those packages you will be charged £5/month. Its a simple solution and should work for you. However, you would soon pay off that cost by buying a "better" wireless solution that will be yours to own and use forever but it isn’t the simple plug and play option of the Pod(s).

A good mesh system should sort you and is relatively easy to set up - we can tell you how.

Have a read through this as a "primer"(start towards the bottom of the article after the recommendations !)

https://www.techadvisor.com/test-centre/network-wifi/best-mesh-wi-fi-network-systems-3661110/


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John
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I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

Thanks. In the link you sent me Kev_B suggested I change my router security settings to WPA2-PSK which I did. I reset the extender & it seems to work ok for a short amount of time, then stops working again. It shows up as Weak Security in my wifi settings on my iPad & when I click the link to Apple their advice is to change to different security settings. Which one should I use & is it this that’s causing me problems with my extender?

Security
Set to WPA3 Personal for better security

Set to WPA2/WPA3 Transitional for compatibility with older devices