Awesome Way to Increase Wireless Range

My parents have cable modem broadband, but the only cable jack in the house is located in the family room. I installed a wireless router there a few years ago, but wireless connectivity has always been limited on the second floor of the house. The house is fairly old, perhaps 40 years, and is very solidly built. Recently, possibly due to increased 2.4GHz signal pollution in the neighborhood, he has been unable to maintain a consistent connection in his study.

We first tried a wireless repeater, which worked for some of the computers upstairs, but not for my father. Also, the repeater introduced significant latency into network traffic. Particularly annoying was that printing to a networked shared printer would often fail.

Finally I decided to purchase these powerline adapters and they were perfect. I plugged one powerline adapter into a surge protector in the family room and I connected the ethernet port on the powerline adapter to the wireless router. I plugged the other powerline adapter into an outlet on the second floor. I connected the second powerline adapter to the wireless repeater, which I reconfigured as a wireless access point. I configured the wireless access point upstairs to have the same WEP encryption as the wireless router located in the family room.

Now, a laptop can roam from one wireless signal to the other without having to change wireless profiles. The setup has sufficiently covered the entire house with a consistent wireless signal that everybody in the house can connect to the internet.

I have nothing but praise for the Netgear PowerLine Adapters. As a way to create a wired Ethernet connection using a home's power lines, the adapters work perfectly. True plug and play with absolutely no configuration necessary. Combined with a wireless access point, the adapters are a perfect way to extend the range of a wireless network.