I have a cable modem and a NetGear wireless/ethernet Router (WPN824v2) in an upstairs office on one side of my house. In order to provide reliable internet access to a PC in a downstairs room on the opposite side of the house, I hardwired ethernet from the router down to that PC and it works great. I also have a laptop with a wireless NIC which works pretty well until I wander into the hardwired side of the house; then the signal weakens & sometimes drops completely. Here's my question: In order to provide robust wireless coverage in the side of the house that contains the hardwired ethernet connection, is there such a thing as a wired/wireless access point that I can plug into that jack and piggyback the hardwired PC into? Is there a better way to extend the range of the existing router? I hope this question is clear and makes sense. Please keep in mind that I am not very tech savvy, so please answer in layman's (or in my case, laywoman's) terms! Thanks very much.

An access point should work for extending the routers signal to the laptop, no guarantees though, but in theory it should work. It is possible that in the "wired room" there is some signal interferring with the signal from the wireless router. Do you want to keep the PC downstairs connected to the rouuter via ethernet cable, you could add a wireless adapter to the PC and if you bought the AP then connect that also to the AP. But the only device that accept both wired and wireless connections is a wireless router, it would be possible to have two routers and "bridge" them together but this could give you few headaches getting it setup, compatability between routers, configurations and security holes etc....