Wired network question

Johnnyb1234

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Good morning. Some advice be greatly appreciated as I am a complete technophobe. Ok here goes......we are getting a home office build at the top of garden outside WiFi range. Electrian is running a cat 6 ethernet cable as well as electric cable to cabin. My question is what do I need in the cabin to get WiFi?. I am with BT and have a BT home hub. Can I just run the ethernet cable from my hub in the house and plug it into say one of those BT whole home discs in the cabin??. Would this work? Would it be just plug and play so to speak?. I really am confused over something which u guys prob see as simple - I have been reading about standalone access points but the thought of having to change settings or complicated installation confuses me. As I said I am a technophobe....any advice appreciated. If I got a BT disc would I need to change or amend settings or just plug ethernet cable in and good to go?. Thanking you!
 
Setting up a basic SOHO AP is not very hard - it is rarely more than giving it an IP address (which many will do automatically using DHCP,) naming it's SSID's and setting a passphrase (AKA "W-Fi key.") After that, you can try to optimise the performance by tuning the radio channels, but if it's far enough from you router, you don't have to.

Some of them come armed with a feature called "WPS clone" or something similar whereby you push the WPS button on your router and the new AP and it clones the settings, but you don't have to use it (I never do.)

The "complicated" part is the myriad options for establishing the backhaul link from the AP to the rest of the (wired) network, but if you are planning to use a cabled ethernet link (which is by far the best option) then it's no more difficult that plugging in the cable both ends (do that first.)

Irrespective of how you set them up, if you want your client devices to automatically "roam" between the Wi-Fi hotspots, then give them the same SSID/passphrase (but note that is the client devices that decide if/when to roam and they do not constantly "hunt for the best signal") or if you want to control which hotspot you are connected to, name the SSID/passphrase differently but note client will never roam between them automatically. There's no real "right" and "wrong" way to do this, it's a matter of which you find most convenient.
 
Thanks - should have checked that myself 🙂. So if I bought either a BT whole home mini disk or whole home standard add on disk - either should work? Mini disk cheaper (around £50). I would only need one disk hence buying an add on rather than pack of 2 or 3. Thanks for help - as I may have mentioned I'm clueless......
 
I've done this with a standard BT Whole Home disc (AC2600) - you only need one. S/H or Refurbished they're around £40-£50 on eBay.
 
Many thx everyone. So cjed is it just plug in the ethernet cable to disc and good to go - WiFi same password as my home hub etc. Cheers!


 
Not quite. You need to download the BT Whole Home WiFi app onto a phone / tablet, and then follow the instructions. It will tell you when you need to plug in the disc. Note: you'll need to do this while the phone/tablet is connected to the existing WiFi, so probably do it next to the hub and plug the disc directly into that. You can choose the name(SSID)/password for the WiFi that the disc serves (which can be the same as the Hub's existing one). When it's all setup, just unplug it from the local to hub connection and take it to where you want to use it and plug it in and turn it on.

I think the latest BT Hubs have software that knows about the discs, so the setup procedure may be simpler, but I think you'll still need to do it with the app.
 

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