I have never tried this before so I have no idea if it will work.

I live in a sheltered housing complex with a communal lounge. In this lounge is a PC and a Fibre Optic internet with router. That is part one.

The flats within this complex are being fitted with smart meters incorporated within a new fuse box and instead of being wireless, they are all being hard wired to this router via a box in the loft that connects 18 cables in and one to the router.

My thinking is to utilise the Broadband connection within my home using:

Two of these: http://tinyurl.com/hxl6wad (or similar)One to be placed nearwhere the cable enters my flat then use a long ethernet cable to the cupboard where I have my existing router but instead of using the router, use the second ethernet switching box

My questions are

Would this work?

Would all the connections lead to a significant drop in signal?

I did think of connecting the two routers together but it looks very confusing adjusting the settings of the router in my cupboard

That should do the job. Preferably though, if you have an old router lying around all you need to do is to plug and Ethernet cable from the router or the switch in the loft into your router and then in your router's settings turn off DHCP. In effect this makes your old router into a switch.

Your network should not see any significant drops under 90 meters of Ethernet cable.

You may also need to use a crossover cable between the two routers.

A couple of my computers sit at the end of some very long cables (20 metres), and I don't notice any signal degradation.

I've never needed to use a crossover cable. I use one of the (usually of four) ports on the front of the router.

Cool

Once I have my meter put in, I will try it and let you know how it goes. I still need to discuss this with the council as it is their property although when we had broadband installed, it was intended that we have wireless repeaters around the complex. This was abandoned due to cost

Cool

 

Once I have my meter put in, I will try it and let you know how it goes. I still need to discuss this with the council as it is their property although when we had broadband installed, it was intended that we have wireless repeaters around the complex. This was abandoned due to cost

A wired connection is usually better than wireless for reliable connectivity.

No need for crossover cable, only need these if you go PC to PC, it goes without saying that s hard wired connection is faster n more reliable than wireless.

If it's standard switch, you shouldn't need to do anything, just plug cables in, if as suggested it's s router that dhcp enabled, it will need that turned off so there is only one box giving out dhcp addresses, you'll need to login to the router using a web browser and the routers IP address.