A garden room can be a great space for relaxation, work or entertainment, but not without the internet. To extend your broadband into the garden room and beyond, you have several options.
Internet access is essential for staying connected, whether you use your garden room for work or leisure. However, the standard broadband router in your home probably doesn’t deliver a great signal in the garden.
Wi-Fi routers have relatively weak signals to prevent competition between routers in urban areas. By design, their transmissions don’t have the power to persist across long distances or pass through lots of obstacles.
Each Wi-Fi frequency band has its drawbacks. The 2.4 GHz range overlaps with the frequencies used by microwave ovens, which can disrupt nearby devices. The 5 GHz range is immune to this interference but is more affected by obstacles.
To improve your wireless network, you can buy a Wi-Fi booster or range extender. A range extender connects wirelessly to your existing router and repeats its signal, while a booster has a wired connection to the router and creates a second wireless network.
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Range extenders don’t always work brilliantly, given that they’re dependent on a wireless connection to the router themselves. You’ll generally get faster and more stable results with a booster.
Another option is a Powerline booster, which uses the building’s mains wiring to exchange data between two units. This offers a stable connection in areas that previously didn’t have one.
Covering a garden with Wi-Fi is more complicated. Most standard networking products are designed for indoor use and aren’t safe to use outside unless they’re sheltered from the elements.
They are probably not a good choice for the garden, as the signal from your home router is likely to be weak. Instead, you can use wired network boosters or mesh repeaters, connected via an Ethernet cable or Powerline networking.
Laying network cabling from your router to a suitable point outside is another option.
If you want networking in your garden room, an outdoor wireless access point fixed to your home may not be enough, especially if the room is solidly built or situated far from the house.
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In this case, a Powerline adaptor might be the next best option, but it’s not guaranteed to work. You could also try configuring a wireless extender, although this arrangement isn’t ideal, particularly over a long span.
Alternatively, if you have a decent mobile signal, you might want to consider mobile broadband.
However, any second connection will have an ongoing cost, and your garden room devices won’t be on the same network as those in your home. This can pose a problem if you plan to work from your garden room and have devices like a printer or backup drive in your home.
Mobile and satellite broadband also have longer ‘ping’ times, meaning that data takes longer to travel to and from the internet.
It is a solution.
