Buffering issues, Wifi extender or Powerline adapter for Wifi setup?

I have my Tablo setup through Wifi as having it hardwired through ethernet is not an option due to poor antenna reception near my router. (Can’t move the router for various reasons)

So Tablo on 2nd floor of house, router on 1st. Antenna signal is fine but it has resulted in lots of buffering issues with live tv. So much so sometimes its unwatchable. I have run speed tests on the Wifi and there is a drop from 40Mbs on 1st floor down to 10Mbs on 2nd floor.

Looking online I have seen multiple options for improving this. Wifi extenders, Wireless access points, and Powerline adapter. Wireless access point is no good because needs to be hardwired to router. Wifi extender seems to get mixed reviews. I am leaning toward Powerline adapter but I am worried because it would be plugged into a different circuit in the house than the router would I would get a drop in signal as it crosses over and then run into same buffering issues.

This is the Powerline adapter than I was looking at
TP link Power line

Any advice on best thing to do?

i run mine on powerline adapters and have no problem

Would definitely recommend the powerline adapters. Second choice would be a secondary access point but then you have to run a Cat 5/6 cable to the first router which could be a pain.

I went the access point direction myself but only because I already had the access point on hand and Cat6 cable ran… Had either of those not been the case, I would have went powerline.

Wifi extenders cut the bandwidth in half, so while you end up with a better signal, your potential max bandwidth is less. They do serve a valid purpose in some cases but normally either of the first 2 options will serve better.

Thanks for the quick response.

Do I need to worry they are on separate circuits? Doesn’t that reduce the speed?

did a quick google search and looks like the consensus is that it’ll still work. Just make sure they PLA are 500MB rated

Awesome thanks!

Any home plug AV2 should work. MiMo increases the speed and usually starts at 1200 and above. How much speed do you really need. 2000 seems to be the current upper limit for MiMo.

Powerline works across circuits but there is some throughput reduction. Some vendors may have actually produced a graph covering the reduction.

Is a home plug AV2 a type of Powerline? Forgive my ignorance in this.

For instance what is the real difference between these two?

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One offers the pass through outlet. A must have imo…

AV2 is a powerline standard. http://www.homeplug.org/tech-resources/hpav2_next_gen/

Looks like both of the ones you posted are AV2 compliant.

Gotcha thanks

I see that now. Guess I should have just read the description. Thanks!

I run TPLink Powerline adapter from my house to a second separate garage. The Powerline adapter connects the house to the garage and the adapter in the garage has both ethernet connections and WiFi. I use the WiFi to connect both an Amazon FireTV stick for Tablo use and Directv Now and also use a laptop. Everything works together fine.

I also use powerline adapters. They work great for me. It has allowed me to add my top floor to my network. Streaming through the powerline using the tablo works great. These are the ones i have.

Smallnetbuilder.com has a good section on test results for powerline adapters.

Your Antenna itself and the placement of it will definitely play a big role for solving your buffering issues too… I would definitely work on those first by going to your Tablo settings and scan those channels you want several times and make sure you get a solid green signal… Tablo works best on solid green signal only… If the signal fluctuates a lot, then you will have issues even if you have all your wifi powerline, extenders in place…

I highly recommend to setup an Outdoor Quality Antenna instead of Indoor… You will definitely get an excellent results and you will appreciate Tablo a lot more…

MoCA (networking via coax) as a third option, depending on whether you have coax outlets that can interconnect at both the Tablo and router locations. MoCA throughput can be 100(140+) Mbps, 400+Mbps or 800+Mbps depending on the MoCA version employed: 1.1, standard 2.0 or extended/bonded 2.0.

For example (though extreme)…

OTA & cable signals mustn’t travel on the same coax segments, but antenna/satellite diplexers can be handy for dealing with otherwise implacable situations.

MoCA is indeed a good option where you have existing coax runs and those terminate on the other end somewhere that you have network… another alternative would be a multi AP solution such as Google WiFi… The system is simple (to a fault IMHO but probably complex enough for 99% of home users) but it delivers solid roaming multi-AP wireless mesh to a house.