It's not uncommon to find yourself in the situation where your wi-fi router isn't getting the job done for your home. Poor connectivity can be due to a number of issues from the use of electric appliances to the construction of your home. It may also be the case that you need an extended range solution for a wired device. Fortunately there are solutions that can solve these issues, and we'll discuss a few of them here.
Wi-fi Range Extender
The image above shows the Netgear Universal Wi-fi Range Extender. This is a relatively simple solution, as you plug it into the wall and forget about it. It's compatible with b/g/n networks and supports WPA/WPA2/WEP encryption. One interesting feature is that it has an LED indicator that will let you know the best location for the device in your home. It can also act as a wireless bridge for a single device (more on wireless bridges in a moment.
Powerline Adapters
Another possibility is the Netgear Powerline AV+ 200 Adapter if the Universal Wi-fi Range Extender isn't an option. One scenario where this would be more ideal is if you have a relatively large home, you need internet access on either side, and you don't want to daisy-chain Wi-fi extenders across the house. The powerline adapter essentially turns your home electrical system into a wired network. This is an elegant solution in that you can gain access anywhere in the house that you have an outlet. One possibility with this device, as well as the wi-fi ranger extender, is that you can connect it to another router and enable multiple Ethernet-only devices to connect to the network.
Home-brewed Wireless Bridge
The final solution for improving access to your network is home-brewed using a Linksys wi-fi router and DD-WRT firmware. Setting something like this up is beyond the scope of this article, but stay tuned for an in-depth tutorial later. This is a great, and cheap, option of you have an extra Linksys router laying around since the only other thing you need is a free download of the DD-WRT firmware. Once you have the firmware it's just a matter of updating the router with it and specifying the various options in the control panel. Again, this is a bit more technically challenging than the other two options, but it allows you to to create a 'bridge' for multiple Ethernet devices wirelessly, thus combining some of the strongest features of the first two options.
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