I currently have Vodafone Home Broadband and am happy with the speed and the ac dual band router they supply. However, my home is pretty long and WiFi signal at the back of the house is pretty weak.

I also have a powerline adapter setup to have wired connections for my PS4 and Xbox One in my lounge.

I'm just looking for a solution to get a better WiFi signal at the back of the house. I have a spare powerline adapter that's a 750. I'm wondering whether I could connect a router to it via ethernet and then have that router create a WiFi access point/hotspot for my broadband at the back of the house? or are there devices that can replace the powerline adapter and emit a WiFi signal access point without needing a router?

I was considering using something like this router: https://www.asus.com/Networking/RTAC51U/

Grateful for any help and advice!

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2016

Long and short of it: It will work. Is it optimum, no.
Probably negligible speed decrease as it will add an extra hop. The router will have it's own network so it may be hard to access resources (shared folders/printers) across the two networks. It just kind of depends what you use and need on your network as to if it's a good solution. Sometimes you can turn off routing functions in the add on and then it just acts as an access point which would be more ideal, but why not just buy an access point?
So your mileage may vary depending on how specific your needs are.

 

The link hadn't come through for some reason, but i updated the op now. The router I was looking at (from what I understand) can be set to work as an access point only, hence why i was looking at it.

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1005259

 

In that case, I think you'll be fine. Nice feature, most of the less expensive routers I've dealt with didn't have that option. You'll need to make sure that the IP address of the new router is in the range of your existing network, and give it an unused address. Also make sure that address is outside the scope of the DHCP pool for your existing router or create a reservation.
There's probably a good tutorial out there on setting it up.
I deal with this type of thing often in the course of my day job, and I can't tell you how often I've gotten on site at a clients location, and they've had two or three different routers for the purposes of extending wireless coverage, and wonder why the networks can't talk to each other. It can happen, but not without some configuration taking place.

 

I found a neater solution, but still finding limitations, annoyingly. Wondering if there's any alternative product?

I found this Netgear kit: http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/networking/powerline/PLW1000.aspx and this TP-Link device: http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-18_TL-WPA4220-V1.2.html

The Netgear one seems perfect, but they only sell it as a kit. I find this bonkers! I already have a Netgear PL1200 home network setup and only want the WiFi hotspot device to use as an access point into my current powerline network. It's even more bonkers cos it say you can use up to 8 of the WiFi adapter on the same powerline network, meaning you'd have to buy 8 kits and end up with 7 wasted adapters (with one being connected to router).

The TP-Link one is sold individually, but is limited as it's only 600mbps and also 2.4GHz only rather than ac.

Any ideas of any device like the Netgear one that is sold individually, essentially like the TP-LInk one but is 750mbps upwards and ac?

 

As far as I can tell, the TP-Link would do fine, considering that the wireless will be the bottleneck anyways and if you do use the wired connection, 600 MBPS is going to be plenty quick for most needs, definitely for video streaming. I sell those powerline adapters a lot and never had a complaint about speed. You have to consider the fact that advertised network speeds are usually best case scenario, but not actual achievable speeds for each different installation.

https://www.lifewire.com/how-fast-is-a-wifi-network-816543

If, however, you are after the highest spec, the advertised speed of the netgear solution is superior, though I doubt that you will achieve those speeds in a real world situation due to external factors such as:

Line noise in your dwellings AC
Radio interference in the WIFI spectrum
Specification of your routing equipment/DSL Modem, etc.
Specification of the equipment connecting to the solution

Just my 2 cents. I'd go for the TP-Link or PWL1000 over a router/powerline solution because it reduces the amount of equipment at both ends and there's no need to pull a wire. Setup/configuration of the TP-Link seems like it would be easier as well.