Placement of router and parking at Gatwick Airport!!!!

[tintin]

Two birds, one stone hopefully :)

The Virgin guy is coming this afternoon to "fibre" us with 300+MB..... we live in a detached modern house (20 years old) and the cable is coming in at the front of the house but in terms of performance where is the best spot to put the router? We have had our loft converted so has to cover 3 floors and as I have two boys (13 and 17) could do with good coverage throughout the house...... views?

And completely separately, we are going on holiday in August, flying from Gatwick. I prefer to drop my car off outside the departure and someone takes it away / brings it back when I land - I've looked on line and there are too many choices - Have any of you got any recommendations?

Many thanks in advance, have a nice weekend.

[Plug]

No idea about Virgin, but if you're parking at Gatwick I strongly recommend you park it yourself and hang on to the keys. I've heard too many stories of cars parked in fields and being driven like they're stolen to let some unknown loose in my motor.

The long term parking is an easy enough bus ride to the terminal (personally I always park at the South Terminal, regardless of which one I'm flying from), and if you book early enough you can get good savings on the short stay and walk from there.

Cheers,

Plug

[Mr Curta]

You’ll probably need to bung in a WiFi repeater or two to get decent cover throughout.

[Carlton-Browne]

You’ll probably need to bung in a WiFi repeater or two to get decent cover throughout.

Precisely. I've no idea what kit Virgin give you for free but it's likely to have been value-engineered by a bean-counter and be of quite a low spec compared to what you can buy yourself (we had an upgrade option with our German ISP where for an extra €50 up front they provide a Fritzbox device that I couldn't buy myself for under €180 and it's been wonderful - but I still need a repeater if I want to work on the bedroom balcony).

Wireless is an art rather than a science; if you want science you need to introduce bits of copper.

[zelig]

I’ve got Virgin cable & the WiFi doesn’t cover our house (2 floors semi)

Get yourself a Power line adaptor & Apple airport express - works a treat for me.

It’s a doddle to set up.
Just make sure you name both networks with the same SSID / password.
(so you don’t have to bother loggin into 2 WiFi networks)

z

[wombleh]

Does the Virgin box need to be next to the TV? Might limit options. If not could try it on the 1st floor somewhere but we got crap signal from ours, as said above it's cheap junk and uses a built in antenna. Now use Unify APs around the house, but things like powerline could work just as well.


I'd use the carpark at Gatwick too, 5 min bus journey. Have used the offsite before and it's flipping miles away, plus no risk of:

[Jeremy67]

Use the official Gatwick valet parking. You park in short term, it's only an extra two minutes to where you'd be dropped off by a cab and very reasonable. Also look at prices for both terminals. Sometimes it's significantly cheaper to park at the wrong terminal and it takes only five minutes to transfer between on the little train.

[dickdutch]

No idea about Gatwick, but IT is my area.

For a house over 3 floors, you could probably do with a mesh system, something like the Netgear Orbi, or TP Link Deco, I know Orbi is good, but don't have any experience with the Deco. These systems create a mesh covering the whole house and work much better than repeaters, which have limitations when you use them with other tech, it also doesn't matter where you put them, within reason. If you need any help or advice PM me.

[Matt London]

I had a Netgear repeater thingy (3yrs ago) and it was Shi*e! I changed up to an Apple Airport Express and it’s great!

Admittedly the Express is hard wired but the Netgear repeater (wireless) constantly needed resetting.

[TBKBABAB]

Use the official Gatwick valet parking. You park in short term, it's only an extra two minutes to where you'd be dropped off by a cab and very reasonable. Also look at prices for both terminals. Sometimes it's significantly cheaper to park at the wrong terminal and it takes only five minutes to transfer between on the little train.

As above then there is no taking you’re car off site while you’re away, very convenient for both
departure and arrival.

[Mr.D]

Repeater likely required , maybe even a couple.
Raspberry Pi(s)makes quite a nifty repeater for not much money if you have the tech skills.

Alternatively run a hardline cable and socket to each area you want and hang a router off it for wifi.

[justin44]

Remember Gatwick was the airport where the offsite parking company (well one of them) ended up to be a bunch of cowboys, they went bust and just eneded up handing all the clients keys into a police station one day. People were coming back from holiday and no car! They were turning up all over the place for months, side streets, village halls it turned out one employee used to use which ever car he got as a taxi while he had it.

Meet n greet or Gatwick long stay is best but book early it’s cheaper.