WiFi Coverage throughout Large Oxfordshire Home

Upgrading WiFi equipment for improved, secure coverage

A client with standard BT broadband their large Oxfordshire home required better WiFi to cover the whole property. The client wanted to use their converted barn for office work too during lockdown and needed a reliable Wi-Fi connection there. They already had Apple WiFi units fitted around the house where the cabling extended but these were old and unreliable.

For home working, a more reliable and secure connection

The client needed a more secure and stable connection to the internet for work video calls, phone calls and VPN connections to global offices, and for their children’s school work. In the evenings, the family also wanted uninterrupted video streaming. Our brief was to install reliable, secure WiFi that covered the house, garden and remote barn.

Solving WiFi coverage issues throughout the home

We evaluated possible solutions including fitting simple powerline units around the house which use mains wiring to relay the internet around a building. This would, in some instances have been a solution but our tests found the WiFi signal would not reach the barn and would require laying a cable, which would be expensive. Nor would they reach the house’s upper floors because of its mains wiring setup. We did use a powerline device to send the internet down to the wine cellar however, to which there was no ethernet cable, nor WiFi reach for meshing and a simple isolated WiFi signal would suffice. Our tests also revealed some faulty existing ethernet wiring which we quickly resolved.

Apart from fixing the faulty wiring, we fitted a robust network supplied by Ubiquiti which allows WiFi roaming throughout the house and a UPS power supply as the rural area is prone to brief power cuts. The Ubiquiti WiFi units can seamlessly connect together wirelessly (known as roaming), taking the signal to all rooms without cabling (via meshing) and easily connected to the barn from across the parking square via a secure link. We rate the Ubiquiti router highly. It is secure, highly configurable and accommodates separate WiFI networks for the house, guests, the children, and for TVs and other internet-enabled gadgets (the ‘internet of things’). The client is very happy and today enjoys making video conference and voice calls in peace from the barn, such is the reliability of the signal.

Cost of entire project (including time and hardware) approximately £2,800