Technology Help - Hybrid Meetings

Boosting Your Wi-Fi Signal

A lot depends if wi-fi in the Meeting Room is needed for purposes other than transmission to/from Zoom, and the distance involved.

Ravenshead u3a found that at their first Hybrid meeting they had to run a 50 metre hardwired temporary cat-6 ethernet cable costing about £30 directly from the main broadband router in the reception lobby to the laptop in the Main Hall. This was because their survey testing of the Wi-Fi speeds & signal strengths in the hall proved it was too poor for livestreaming.

The Wi-Fi in the Hall was good enough for the use of smartphones as wi-fi enabled cameras using the Iriun app, but failed in the far corners of the room, where they had a transmission breakdown.

They also found in planning for their next Hybrid meeting in their main Church venue, that the dilution of the Wi-Fi signal was significant due to the source transmitter being behind a solid brick/concrete wall with only a small window allowing the Wi-Fi signal through.

They resolved this by using an expensive but totally effective Wireless Mesh WiFi Internet Booster Range Extender (costing about £90) placed just inside the Hall by the small window, and it maintained the source 70-80 mBps download speed and re-transmitted it to the whole church area.

Netgear Booster
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Netgear Nighthawk Wi-Fi ExtenderRepeater
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You can see their survey video prior to the equipment purchase https://youtu.be/jqPzANak8)

Other Methods of creating Wi-Fi in a Meeting Room from a remotely located broadband internet Router

There are also ways to use electrical powered sockets in a location to transmit signals through the AC power supply from a hardwired transmitter plugged into a 13 amp normal power socket. The transmitter unit is connected to the main router by a short ethernet cable, and the signal is transmitted through the power circuit to a receiver plugged into the 13 amp socket in the main Meeting Room, as long as they are both on the same “power circuit”.  

The other option is to set up a temporary hardwired second router using a long CAT-6 ethernet cable and create a wi-fi transmitting hub in the Meeting Room.

There is this WikiHow guide as to how to do it. (WikiHow - Using Two Routers)
Wi-Fi routers can be purchased for close to £20, but the setup is certainly not simple.