Ways to Extend Internet Coverage Through Two Structures; Wirecutter Reviews are Awesome!

I have been trying various methods to cut the cable TV cord here in our place at the Monterey area. 

My office and "man cave" is in the guest house, about 100 feet from the main house.  I've put up an antenna to get local TV stations over the air (OTA) which I describe in another blog post.  In the guest house, I have a Windows laptop acting as a DVR, using a SiliconDust HDHomeRun TV tuner and Windows Media Center.

I wanted to connect both houses' computers on a local network, so that my wife could share files with the main Mac in the guest house, and so I could watch WMC-recorded shows and downloaded movies on the Windows laptop in the living room that is connected to an HDTV.  This proved to be a difficult, months-long process. 

I've always used Powerline Ethernet adapters from Zyxel, Netgear, and TP-Link from the Mac in my office to certain outlets in the main house.  The problem is that the connection was pretty slow, and inconsistent through the main house.  I believe that this is because the main house's wiring is both old and passes through breakers to get to the guest house.  Most of the outlets in the main hours are still 2-prong outlets, which cuts the performance of these Powerline Ethernet adapters in half.  The only outlet that works well enough so that my wife can watch Hulu videos on her Mac in her home office in the main house happens to be in that room.  None of the other outlets worked well. 

I next turned to wirecutter.com's reviews.  This site is AWESOME.  I've followed a few of their recommendations for products recently, and the recommendations have worked out spectacularly well.  Wirecutter recommended the TP-Link Archer C7 (v2) router, along with the TP-Link AC1750 Wi-Fi Range Extender RE450. 

I've had other routers and range extenders that worked OK.  My old router was a Netgear 3700 and I really liked it, but upon reading wirecutter's review, I realized that it was an old router that used the "wireless N" band rather than the 'wireless ac" band that could reach far longer distances.  Sure enough, after updating my router and range extender to the TP-Link ones, I got great, strong, and fast wifi signals at the main house due to these great range extenders. 

I had to buy an AC wifi USB dongle for my Windows 7 laptops, which are all about 4-6 years old and did not have ac-band wifi capability.  These cost about $10 from Amazon and worked well. 

I was still not able to transfer files quickly from the laptop in the guest house to the laptop in the main house.  It was not a problem with the laptop acting as a server...it served up files just fine to my Macs in the same room.  I eventually put in an Ethernet cable from the main house to the guest house (I had to learn how to drill and install cables through outside to inside walls, and to crimp Ethernet connectors on Cat5e cable, all easily learned on YouTube).  Surprisingly, the laptop in the living room still could not quickly download or even see files on the server laptop.  I tried some suggestions on internet forums and turned off energy-saving mode on the Ethernet adapter in the laptop.  That did the trick!  I am able to record shows on the WMC laptop in the guest house, and watch pre-recorded shows on the laptop in the main house.  I can transfer files from one house to another quickly also.  It's pretty cool.  I am sure that I can make things speedier and better by using a NAS unit, but this is working for me now just fine. 

Now that I have good Internet capability in the guest house and the main house, I look forward to using the antenna to get local stations (the four major broadcast networks) and using streaming packages like Netflix, Playstation Vue ,and SlingTV.