We often get contacted by customers who have three storey houses and the existing ISP router is always on the ground floor. Thanks BT!
We often find that the BT smart hub wifi cannot reach the third floor but the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 can often do the job wirelessly because it has great wifi coverage.
If you have three floors you might be fine with the wireless signal from the Netgear with it connected to your existing router .
It really does have very good coverage.You should use the 2.4ghz for devices that are far away from the router as this signal travels through walls better than the 5GHz. We only recommend using 5ghz for line of sight or devices in the same room or close to the router. If you can get your router up on a high shelf this really does help too.
The VPN Router has to be connected by ethernet cable not wireless to your existing router or it will not work. But the good news is there is a great way of doing this without a very long ethernet cable! However for most customers I would still suggest trying the Netgear router first to see if it can reach the third floor by wifi on 2.4ghz but then use this below as a fall back plan if you need to.
The fall back plan would be to buy two power-line adapters from Maplins. You just plug one into a power point next to your existing router and you connect an ethernet cable from this powerline adapter to your existing router. Then plug the 2nd powerline adapter into a power point on the floor where you want your new router to be. You again connect the new router to this powerline adapter by ethernet cable. Now as long as both power points are on the same fuse board your vpn will work between the two routers as they think they are effectively connected together by ethernet cable but they are really using your house wiring .
The key thing to remeber is once its all working anything you connect by ethernet cable or wireless to your existing router will access the internet normally. Anything you connect by ethernet cable or wirelessly to your second router will access the internet via your VPN.
We recommend IPVanish as they have fast servers which are good for streaming. The Tomato routers are also easy to use so an IPVanish Tomato router would be a good choice for anyone unsure which one to buy.
I would recommend the R7000 Tomato Router if you have the budget it has a very fast processor and excellent wifi coverage and might save you buying a powerline adapter if you are lucky and you are trying to cover a big area.
The Asus Tomato Router is an excellent router but would need to be used with a powerline adapter for three floors but it also has a fast processor and is cheaper but will do a great job in the setup described and also has 2.4ghz and 5ghz but has only internal antennas but would be fine on two floors.
The LINKSYS Tomato router is our entry level unit but its a good little router and will still do the job if you use it with a powerline adapter and you are just planning on streaming on one device at a time.
Here are links for three routers mentioned here
We would recommend choosing the "I like it easy" product option. You supply us with your IPVanish or other VPN details and we set up the router so all you have todo is plug it in and it will connect to IPVanish. If you dont want todo this we can send you easy steps so you can set it up yourself but most people like the easy option.
Please use discount code save20 to save £20 before the offer ends. It will end soon!