I'm at present in South Africa suffering under the wifi speeds of the last century, even as it comes out of the wall I am never better than 3 mbps down load on a 10 mbps line. If I could get that on the stoep I would be happy…

The net gear device has a traffic light type indicator to show the signal strength
and I can move it around to get a green signal.

The Netgear forums read like the emanations from Purgatory with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, so I'm not the only sufferer.

I'm not sure how to, "Change channels on the original device," Bushfiva, as my router only seems to transmit one signal. I can renew the IP address but that is all.

Shame we waste so much time on this s**t, I really do have better things to do than chase these internet connections up. It wasn't like this when we got colour TV…

Never had much joy out of wireless extenders. Got a supposedly good one one sitting in the junk chest right now - sort of worked, but slowed up everything - despite channel swapping etc.

Solved by getting a better modem/router or running Cat6.

Not that it makes that much difference with the miserable Internet speeds in South Africa.

Advice: Avoid if at all possible

Mac

Another consideration with Powerlines is that if your incoming mains power is single phase, then three properties away from you the data will be there as well albeit somewhat attenuated.

I use Devolo powerline extenders; 50m from a separate office where the router is installed, 2 WiFi transmitters in our large Victorian house, one upstairs, one down.

The office is supplied by its own power circuit back to the main switchboard.

It works perfectly, far better than any signal booster system could have done, and was simple to install.

However, I never thought about the possibility that the signal may escape to a neighbour; would that be protected by the network key?

I live in a thatched cottage and had poor wireless coverage. I bought a cheap wireless client/access point box and used that with a cable router. Works fine on its own subnet and the netgear router sorted itself out with no intelligence from me happily.

Yes and no. Yes the signal may reach you neighbour (I get up to 9 different signals in my house) and no you key may not protect it if it is easily hackable. A major Telco where I live uses a 9 character key part of which is used in the SSID. I use a WPA2 key generator on my WAP and choose the largest key that it and the wireless cards will take.