[SOLVED] Ethernet likes to randomly disconnect. (TP-Link AC750 WiFi extender)

[GkKme26kPVpHWd6H4rwcHpy]

I'm on Sky network and using a TP-Link AC750 wifi extender. The router's in the lounge and the extender's plugged into a socket in my room, I have an ethernet going from the port of the extender to my PC and sometimes it will randomly disconnect for no reason. When I go to check what's wrong I see that the wifi is always available, though it's just the ethernet that likes to say it's disconnected. It happens multiple times through out the day and it's annoying. I've tried searching to see if I need any drivers and on their support page they only seem to have pdf manual, which leads me to believe that I don't need any drivers. I've tried updating all of my existing drivers in the device manager, at which it tells me that I'm using all of the latest ones.

I'm using Windscribe VPN, when I'm not connected to the VPN it does still occasionally disconnect me from my ethernet (usually for a second or so). When I'm using a VPN I have to unplug my WiFi extender and plug it back in again for it work. I'm unsure on what's causing this issue as my ethernet still seems to like to disconnect when I'm not using a VPN. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[bill001g]

Does your PC not have a wifi card. You are likely better off trying to connect to the main router via wifi than have a extender. The extender pretty much is just acting as a wifi nic card you connect to via ethernet rather than say USB. Can you try a different location for the extender that you can still run the ethernet cable to. The extender may not being getting a good signal and taking random drops.

You are much better off with powerline networks or moca if you have tv coax in both rooms than using a wifi hop in the middle.

 

[GkKme26kPVpHWd6H4rwcHpy]

Does your PC not have a wifi card. You are likely better off trying to connect to the main router via wifi than have a extender. The extender pretty much is just acting as a wifi nic card you connect to via ethernet rather than say USB. Can you try a different location for the extender that you can still run the ethernet cable to. The extender may not being getting a good signal and taking random drops.

You are much better off with powerline networks or moca if you have tv coax in both rooms than using a wifi hop in the middle.

Thanks, I actually thought the extender was the equivalent to a second "router" so to speak, so I figured that connecting it with ethernet would give me just as good speeds as connecting it to the router would. Though I guess it doesn't. My PC does have a WiFi card, I just wanted ethernet for faster speeds. It turns out it was actually the VPN causing the disruption for whatever reason. I'm considering running an ethernet cable from my room to the router downstairs, as it can't be moved into my room. Would a powerline network work just as well as if I directly an ethernet from my PC to the router? It would definitely save the trouble of using a long cable.

 

[bill001g]

I am not sure why people think a ethernet cable to extender somehow makes things better. This would be like you live on a dirt road and you have your driveway paved and expect that somehow to make your drive to work better.

Powerline maybe slower depending on what speed you get from wifi now. Most powerline units top out about 300-400 with a more common speed of say 150-200, but it depends on the path and quality of the electrical wires in your house.

The key advantage to powerline is the latency is very consistent. People that play online games need consistent latency more than raw speed.

Your best option when you can't run ethernet is MoCA. This requires TV coax cable in both rooms but can actually get full gigabit speeds and also has consistent latency.

 

[GkKme26kPVpHWd6H4rwcHpy]

I am not sure why people think a ethernet cable to extender somehow makes things better. This would be like you live on a dirt road and you have your driveway paved and expect that somehow to make your drive to work better.

Powerline maybe slower depending on what speed you get from wifi now. Most powerline units top out about 300-400 with a more common speed of say 150-200, but it depends on the path and quality of the electrical wires in your house.

The key advantage to powerline is the latency is very consistent. People that play online games need consistent latency more than raw speed.

Your best option when you can't run ethernet is MoCA. This requires TV coax cable in both rooms but can actually get full gigabit speeds and also has consistent latency.

Probably for the same reasons I used ethernet to extender, we figured we'd get faster speeds. I don't have gigabit internet so I don't think MoCA would be necessary, I think my package is 250mb or something. If I used ethernet to router, I'd have to drill holes and somehow feed it through the walls to the router that's in the lounge downstairs.

Testing speeds w/VPN connected to WiFi, I'm getting 19mb download and 16mb upload.
Without VPN, I get 31mb download and 13mb upload.

It's odd because after initially transferring over to Sky, I was getting 70 download and 20 upload. Downloads seem to have significantly decreased in speed since.

The thing that occurred to me the most was that, when connected to the extender using ethernet, my speeds actually increased. Contrary to what was said? With Extender+Ethernet, I'm getting 40mb download and 18mb upload. I'm using Ookla speedtest.

In any case, I think it's worth trying out powerline before feeding an ethernet through the walls. It beats having my connection randomly drop all the time using the current method.

 

[bill001g]

If you have the option for MoCA I would still go that route it is not that much more expensive than powerline. The powerline units you want are av2-1000 or av2-2000. The older technology does not work as well. If you are lucky you can get the 250mbps on the better powerline.

The moca units people like on this forum are from a company called gocoax. The units cost about $60 each. They can in theory pass 2.5g total bandwidth, this would only be needed if you had more than 2 units.

 

[GkKme26kPVpHWd6H4rwcHpy]

If you have the option for MoCA I would still go that route it is not that much more expensive than powerline. The powerline units you want are av2-1000 or av2-2000. The older technology does not work as well. If you are lucky you can get the 250mbps on the better powerline.

The moca units people like on this forum are from a company called gocoax. The units cost about $60 each. They can in theory pass 2.5g total bandwidth, this would only be needed if you had more than 2 units.

Thank you for all the help!