Will Virgin install a second access point for ethernet?

[Briz21]

Hi all,

I've recently joined Virgin and am working from home, but the router signal doesn't reach far enough and my booster isn't stable enough to be relied on for all the video calls I do.

I'm currently using an ethernet cable that trails through the house, but am keen to get rid of this as it's not pretty!

Does anyone know if it's possible to have a second access point installed in my home office (first floor, opposite side of house to the router) that would allow me to connect via ethernet without any interior drilling or additional cabling? Either by Virgin or a third party?

Thanks!

[sophist · Accepted solution]

Virgin will not. 

well, you can have a second vm connection installed in the office but you will be paying for two accounts.

much better off investigating wireless mesh systems that will give you the outcome you want.

check out the tp-link deco range, for example.

depending on your wants/needs you can spend anywhere from £100 to £500+ on a mesh system.. the deco m4/s4 is a good entry level option… tell us a little more about your property, number of devices, budget etc.. and we can help you with the selection… 

[adhsmith]

The best solution is to wire ethernet to your office, there are many ways this can be done discreetly, but I realize it is not always possible or convenient, I have wired half, I use Huawei AX3 2 wired and 2 wifi for full coverage in may house, they are setup in 160Mhz mode, with these I can disable VM wifi entirely and get good perfomance all over the house.

These provide a mesh setup (HUAWEI Wi-Fi AX3 (Mesh Kit) - HUAWEI UK) my wifi ones are between upstairs back of house to downstairs front, they are not the last word in feature set etc and have limitations as they are cheap, but with two of these placed at opposite ends of the house and my devices connected to their LAN ports I can max out the LAN ports on transfer between upstairs and downstairs through their  wifi connection and no drop outs etc, I run multiple VPN, the entire family are spending our days on Teams and Zoom etc, no issues.

[Adduxi]

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@Briz21 wrote:

<snip>  Does anyone know if it's possible to have a second access point installed in my home office (first floor, opposite side of house to the router) that would allow me to connect via ethernet without any interior drilling or additional cabling? Either by Virgin or a third party?

Thanks!

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Consider running an external Cat 6 ethernet cable from the Hub, going outside and up to the Office, or into the roof space.  Once done you can add an unmanaged switch and/or wifi access point.  Mesh solutions are okay, but cable is by far the best.

[Briz21]

Thanks sophist, that's good to know. The house is a Victorian terrace and the router is in the front downstairs room. I'm getting 100mbps+ when wired, otherwise about 40mbps when in the same room as the router, dropping off to low teens or single figures in my home office, which is first floor and opposite side of the house.

I have an old TP Link signal booster set up which I've moved to various points in the house, and whilst it improves signal it doesn't get the speed past 15mbps in my office, and struggles to provide a stable signal consistently, especially at busy times. Would the mesh system you're suggesting provide a significantly better solution for this/any extra info that'd help? Ideally I'd be wanting a very stable 20mbps minimum.

I will be working from home for the long term, so a stable, permanent option would be ideal, although preferably without any structural work as we've just had the place decorated. Budget-wise I'm open to ideas, although ideally no more than £200 or so.

Thanks!

[Briz21]

Hi adhsmith, thanks for your answer. I haven't had a lot of experience with these kind of setups, so am I right in understanding that you have one VM router that's connected via WiFi to two Huawei AX3 routers, which are then connected by ethernet to some devices and by a WiFi mesh setup to others? Or have I got that wrong?

Any info you can share in layman's terms on how you've got this set up would be great as an option to consider.

I'm also guessing that whilst the Huawei AX3 looks like it's cable of very fast speeds, they're ultimately limited by the speed of your VM package, e.g. 100mbps?

Thanks!

[Tudor]

With a little ingenuity you can hide Ethernet cable. It my son's house, where there are wooden floors we hid some under the cork expansion at the edges. Ethernet cable wins over WiFi every time.

[adhsmith]

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@Briz21 wrote:

Hi adhsmith, thanks for your answer. I haven't had a lot of experience with these kind of setups, so am I right in understanding that you have one VM router that's connected via WiFi to two Huawei AX3 routers, which are then connected by ethernet to some devices and by a WiFi mesh setup to others? Or have I got that wrong?

Any info you can share in layman's terms on how you've got this set up would be great as an option to consider.

I'm also guessing that whilst the Huawei AX3 looks like it's cable of very fast speeds, they're ultimately limited by the speed of your VM package, e.g. 100mbps?

Thanks!

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OK I have had it set up many ways, I started with two to solve one problem and then realized they were actually quite useful and picked up more, they were pretty much on a fire sale as fundamentally they aren't the last word in routers, lacking in features and functionality that a good mesh system would have but I have simple needs, just coverage and speed, these do that.

I have a difficult double extended victorian house and wifi does not pass very well through the old exterior now interior walls, so VM hub wasn't cutting it, Sky and its minis and boosters didn't  cut it, Wifi was ropey in general but each new standard I give Wifi another shot.

The standalone range in 5ghz on the AX3 was not stellar like every other Wifi device I have had but adding in a mesh node doubles it but unlike an extender still maintains some performance.

How do I have it setup, VM Hub4 with wifi disabled  wired into an AX3 to be my main house router, everything wired/wireless is now fed by this, you plug a lan cable from your VM hub into the WAN port of the AX3 and it becomes your wifi router, you setup wifi name and password and once you have machines working off of it you can fire up a secondary mesh node, to configure the mesh node you basically plug it in sat next to the primary AX3, wait a minute or so while it boots, the main node status light will flash green at which point you push the H button, this send all the setup info to mesh node and then both AX3 should have a green light, with this done, unplug the secondary and take it upstairs where you want Wifi/LAN and plug it in, all being well it should connect to the downstairs guy and provide you seamless network connectivity. TP link range will do similar and if you are feeling really spendy the Orbi range looks very decent, loads of companies out there doing tri band etc.

My janky setup, real networking gurus look away now 😄 red =wired green= wifi black dots exterior walls, the kitchen node in this scenario is superfluous but for the fact I wanted to get connectivity to the garage 10m at the bottom of the garden. The green wifi connection between upstairs and downstairs represents a 1Gb connection limited by the LAN port. The AX£ can work with wired backlhaul from main AX3 shoudl you desire best performance in the future.

The wifi connection to garage is slowest as the little wifi men carryiing the data have to relay it through the kitchen, I still see over 50Mb and its only for youtube mechanicing 😄 so like the kitchen ultimate speed not a priority as its just for streaming video and cameras etc.

Example speed from machine wired to AX3 upstairs, transmitting over wifi to NAS connected to AX3 downstairs, cables, who needs cables 😄 Well apart from the fact I have just wired to give a 2.5G connection to upstairs office but that is purely for data transfer to NAS because I could, the wifi AX3 was really more than sufficient and has been reliable for months, in the upstairs office the family all VPN to their respective machines using teams, zoom, twicth live streaming, voip etc, no problem.

As for wifi speedtest in same room as router on laptop, that is full connection speed I have.

And Laptop to NAS in same room as router

[Adduxi]

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@Tudor wrote:

With a little ingenuity you can hide Ethernet cable. It my son's house, where there are wooden floors we hid some under the cork expansion at the edges. Ethernet cable wins over WiFi every time.

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+1 for cable.  I'm still of the opinion that PoE Access Points are the way to go over Mesh systems, but that's just me .....   😉

[adhsmith]

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@Adduxi wrote:

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@Tudor wrote:

With a little ingenuity you can hide Ethernet cable. It my son's house, where there are wooden floors we hid some under the cork expansion at the edges. Ethernet cable wins over WiFi every time.

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+1 for cable.  I'm still of the opinion that PoE Access Points are the way to go over Mesh systems, but that's just me .....   😉

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Totally agree wired is the solution but your POE Access point should still be some sort of smart mesh based system rather than just some APs running the same name such that you get seamless handover between access points and you don't get stubborn devices like Apple gear hanging on to a weak signal in another room for dear life when you are sat next to an AP that could give you the full beans.

But it is also fair to say you can get a faster connection with Wifi 6 than you can get with a 1Gb LAN, so wired is not always the fastest and wifi can be an OK solution, taking multiple streams from LAN to my Wifi 6 laptop from those Huawei I can receive more than 1Gb on file transfers, think I have seen upto 1.3Gb.

I started with those AX3 fully wireless and over time as I did bits in the house wired the backhaul to some of them for maximum performance and maintaining the MESH, very nice.

But yes wired is most reliable, the benefit of wiring is there is scope for upgrades, it is not impacted by external factors so much and with fairly standard CAT 6 ethernet cable I have been able to run upto 10Gb over short distance ( I have a 20Gb connection between my NAS and main machine, 2x10Gb SMB Multichannel )  and 2.5Gb over longer runs.