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Expanding the range of a Livebox


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Our house is quite large and has very thick walls, so it's not possible to site the Livebox anywhere convenient so that its signal covers the whole house.

After some googling I'm thinking of buying a Linksys WRE54G range expander. Does anyone have experience of one of these with a Livebox  (is it compatible?) or have a better suggested solution?

Thanks for any help you can give.

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Thanks, but getting rid of the Livebox is not an option at the moment. It is situated at the highest point of the house.

The house is three stories high and six rooms wide on the ground floor. I would like a signal strong enough to reach the furthest rooms on the ground floor.

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The WiFi signal travels best through thin air, worst through solid stone or concrete, not too bad through breeze block and thin brick, and hardly notices plasterboard (especially if it's nailed to wooden studs rather than the metal stuff) or floorboards. So try to arrange the siting of your livebox to pass through as few layers of the thick stuff as possible. There'll also be standing waves in each room which lead to add anomalies whereby sitting on one end of the couch you'll get a full signal, yet at the other end there'll be almost nothing. So sucking it and seeing is the order of the day.

p

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our livebox came with the abonnement, and is also a bit carp on range.

What we have done is connect the old wi-fi adsl router we brought from UK to it via an ethernet cable, and then sited this somewhere more usefull. All our machines can now connect to the outside world via one network or the other.
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[quote user="hoverfrog"]our livebox came with the abonnement, and is also a bit carp on range.

What we have done is connect the old wi-fi adsl router we brought from UK to it via an ethernet cable, and then sited this somewhere more usefull. All our machines can now connect to the outside world via one network or the other.[/quote]

Thanks very much. That sounds like a very good solution for our circumstances. Can anyone suggest a reliable router which is compatible with AOL in England (my mother-in-law's connection), and which will connect to my Livebox in France?

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Hi CJL,

I saw a Livebox advertised on eBay which had an external antenna fitted.  The Seller makes claims about increased performance.  The auction has now ended, but you might want to have a look at it, also the Seller’s reply to an enquiry from someone with a stone built house who has signal problems.

To view, enter 250079892530 in the search box on (UK) eBay’s homepage.

(I have no connection with the advertiser).

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Would you trust someone on ebay that is selling something that he does not want to tell you the truth? If it is so good then why is he not keeping it? He's probably upgraded to a Netgear. For less than €70 you can buy a Netgear 834 from a proper trader here in France and be sure that it is better than a livebox with all the known problems.

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With you having thick walls have you considered using ethernet of power circuits (I think that is what it is called Wanadoo do something called LivePlug.)  What it basically is, is a plug which you plug into you house electric via a normal socket and into this plug you plug an ethernet cable from your livebox.  You then purchase additional plugs and can plug them anywhere in the house and connect the ethernet port on the plug to the ethernet port on your PC, so you internet signal travels through your mains electric.  Our local computer shops had them for about 25-30 euros per plug (so could work out expensive if you have a number of computers) but it is supposed to be a great solution (although I have not tried it)

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If you check out your local computer shop or one of the larger hyper markets I am sure you can get them for that price.  Maybe also try grosbill

www.grosbill.com or Amazon.fr.

Edit

Just found this on grosbill

http://www2.grosbill.com/fr/reseaux/adaptateur-cpl/42422/Adaptateur%20CPL%20Netgear%20XE103%20-%20adaptateur%20CPL%2085%20Mbps%20avec%201%20port%20100%20Mbps

it retails at 57 euros but is a netgear so for something non branded you should be able to get the price I saw from an etailer

or this which is 2 14mbps adapteurs for 75.90 euros

http://www2.grosbill.com/1/36453/adaptateur-cpl-NETGEAR-XE102+-XE102--Deux-adaptateurs-CPL---14-Mbps

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