Is there a Wi-Fi black hole in your home? Whether it's an outlying bedroom, an outside space or the entire East Wing that your Wi-Fi can't reach, the Netgear Wi-Fi Booster for Mobile can have you surfing and streaming on your phone or tablet even in the farthest reaches of your homestead.
The booster amplifies Wi-Fi coverage in your house by increasing the signal from your existing router. The idea is that you can use your phone or tablet to connect to the Web, check your email or use apps even in parts of the house, garden, flat or lean-to where your 3G signal is patchy.
It's always best to switch to Wi-Fi when you're at home, because it's speedier and cheaper. Wi-Fi has more scope to download files and Web pages or stream film and TV so it makes all Internet-related activities a lot faster. Using Wi-Fi also doesn't eat into your 3G allowance, and it's less likely to have a data limit so there's less chance of incurring excess charges if you do a lot of Internet-ing.
Sadly not everywhere is covered by a Wi-Fi signal -- in my flat, for example, the Wi-Fi signal from my router doesn't reach the downstairs bedroom.
I considered turning that room into a pre-Internet space where the words 'Wi-Fi' and 'apps' are just noises and a phone is a thing you keep in the hall with a pen next to it -- but that only lasted until someone told me I'd have to wait for the finale of Seinfeld to come out on video before I ran back upstairs to the wireless world to start Googling for just such a signal-boosting solution as this.
The Netgear Wi-Fi Booster for Mobile simply plugs into a wall socket and sucks your Internet connection through the walls from your main router. LED lights in the case glow to show you the best place to plug it in. Once located, it spits out a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi signal in whichever part of your home or office is an Internet hinterland, ready for your phone, tablet or laptop to start surfing and streaming.
Pricing and availability for the Netgear Wi-Fi Booster for Mobile have yet to be confirmed, but in the meantime there are plenty of similar home plug devices from the likes of Netgear, Cisco and D-Link.
Do you have an Internet black hole in your home? Are there some places where the Internet just isn't welcome? Tell me your woes in the comments or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 8
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baeta 23 July, 2012 23:13
but surely this type of thing has been out for ages?
and what does 'for mobile' mean?
anonymous 24 July, 2012 07:29
Just some marketing spin for an evolution of a product, opens the product to the less tech savvy who don't realise that such products are not restricted to "'puters". Probably easier to setup too.
Rich Trenholm 24 July, 2012 08:50
This sort of thing has been around for a while, but we haven't covered one for a while so we decided to cover this one and see the response. Calling it 'For Mobile' is a marketing thing, but it's true that more homes are now likely to have mobile devices than when home plug first emerged and it was tipped as being a way of networking computers in other rooms
jezmd 24 July, 2012 12:47
Does it spread an unsecured connection? Or do you need to access a control panel to enter the your network credentials?
anonymous 24 July, 2012 12:49
Otherwise known as a wifi repeater or wifi bridge.
tomfromaardvark 26 July, 2012 16:56
DO you connect to the booster or the original router to get the 'enhanced' signal?
anonymous 28 July, 2012 18:33
What about boisting 3G signals for those of us who depend on it at home?
anonymous 13 September, 2012 17:35
Keeping a room WITHOUT internet? Why... just why? That sounds like a scary and daunting prospect.
I've had to link two flats together three floors apart which means I've used a bunch of these. I had an old Netgear model (two in fact) but the signal would cut out every now and then and the Amped one (this one http://wifirepeaters.net/best-wireless-repeater/) seems to work a lot better and has antennas you can interchange.