No idea sorry but so pleased you got there and all your belongings did also. Will ring later in week

Better to use a wired LAN connection I would have thought

Thanks Amber. Although I might be asleep day and night after today until early next week...

LOL Debster. Remind me, are you still using Windows 95? ;) We do have the (can be wireless) printer (in the upstairs office) connected to the (downstairs) router by an ethernet cable, which goes through a ducting pipe (carefully imstalled by Mr BW when the builders ahd gone home one night) and behind all the Kingspan insulation. There is an ethernet cable permanently in the back of the router for anything that needs direct connection occasionally. But, other visible wires there will never be. I've always wanted a house with no visible cables, and now I have it, and that is not going to change!

Is it possible to install a second ethernet cable in the ducting?

Is it possible to re-use the printer cable to supply a wireless access point, and then use the printer wirelessly, and would this improve the coverage?

No idea regarding the wireless boosters as I am currently glaring at the useless TP Link one sat on my desk. I must get rid of it as it is unused.

Nord VPN is a possibility but you have to pay for it. The Black Belt Barrister on you tube is always plugging it and there is a discount if you quote his code when contacting them. I'm afraid technology left me behind many years ago and out home based tech moved out to live with his girlfriend.

Thanks for the thoughts... but we really really do need to improve the wireless coverage in the single-storey end of the longhouse, and not by using an ethernet cable.

The coverage is fine in the double storey bit, and using the existing ducting to the printer won't help, as that is where there is already good coverage.

The existing boosters are plug-in and worked fine with 1MB broadband, just not with 1GB.

I've upgraded to Windows 7 from 98se. I'm a big fan of wires. Put wires under the carpet or skirting boards.

You can get routers which double as VPN - that way you don't have to pay an ongoing subscription. But I'm afraid I don't know any to recommend.

We have Zen internet and their router is made by Fritz. I have bought a couple of wifi boosters which do a good job in our rambling house.

Thanks Tim - I now think the problem might actually be the fact that I bought a new small laptop just before we went south to finish up the house sale. It is utter shite and it is that that is not connecting properly to the router or allowing printing over the network and it keeps falling out - I've gone back to the old one now and it is fine again. Now to wrestle with PC World to get them to take it back! Fortunately, there are reviews saying exactly this, so it's not just me.

The router supplied by the rural broadband company is a good one and I don't think there is anything to be gained by changing it for one with a built-in VPN (which would probably be a complete pain to set up - way beyond my tech skills these days, and Mr BW has just spent 3 days making my new laptop look exactly like my old laptop (Win 11 looking like Win10), so he's all out of tech-patience right now).

I now need to look at all the different VPN offers in more detail. The NordVPN one that delcatto recommended above seems to get good reviews, but I've always used AVG free anti-virus, so perhaps now giving them some money for additional services might be a nice gesture (although the AVG VPN doesn't have the best reviews).

I'd suggest powerline adapters, that piggy back the signal on your electricity circuit, rather than trying to get wireless signal through stone. I use the tp-link ones but different brands should, at least in theory, be compatible.

(Some adapters have wireless, some just a network port; some have a pass through socket, others don't. You probably want the wireless passthrough ones)

Regarding VPNs, in my experience you'll find that the BBC will block those addresses sooner rather than later whichever one you use

Ian - those plug-in adaptors are what we have, but they are old. Now that we have worked out the problem was with the connectivity on the new netbook, which is now going back, we find we don't actually need new signal boosters as the old ones work well enough with the HPs. The main router is 1GB, but 100MB (using the old signal boosters) in the furthest bit of the house is still OK for what we need!

The BBC/iPlayer blocking VPN addresses was my concern about the VPNs too. I'll have to give it some more thought and see if there is a way of not using the VPN when using IPlayer (which is via a FireStick, so may be possible).