I'll set the scene. I live in an Edwardian-era house, and for legacy reasons, Virgin's in-point is on the 2nd floor (IE: not ground, not first, second - as I know some folk say 1st for ground). As Virgin's superhub is quite poor for wireless, it does not broadcast, but a CAT5e goes down a floor, into a room at the back of the house, and is connected to a Netgear WNR854T. Unfortunately, as it's an old house with thick walls, this means coverage at the front of the house is not brilliant, and the WNR854T is not that reliable for wireless and this is what I'm trying to sort out. My current plan is to use a pair of homeplugs to connect the Superhub to a wireless access point at the front of the house (1st floor), and replace the WNR854T with a new more reliable router, which between them should be able to serve the whole house. Therefore, I need a router supporting 802.11g and 802.11n, a smattering of gigabit ethernet ports (for my PC, and for LANs), some way of connecting a USB printer (HP Deskjet 2050) to allow printing without my PC having to be on and simultaneous 2.4 & 5GHz would be nice too. I also need a wireless access point, preferably also supporting 2.4 & 5GHz, plus 802.11n and 802.11g, and a pair of homeplugs. I do not wish to spend a fortune on this, with probably a £150 budget total, though obviously there is some flexibility. If anyone has any better suggestions, these are of course welcome. NOTE: there is no chance of having more ethernet cables running around the place, between floors or rooms unfortunately. I'd also like to avoid asking Virgin to move the in-point elsewhere, as that screws up the wired access for my PC. TL,DR: press Alt-F4.
I don't have any experience using AP's or homeplugs. But I just recently got the Linksys E4200 refurbished off ebay for $100 US. It has everything you're looking for with dual band and print server. This is just pure speculation, but I wonder if you could replace an antenna on an AP with a good unidirectional one to avoid using the homeplugs. You can also find directions on the internet for building parabolic antenna reflectors. I built one once and it seemed to give be a couple dB of gain. Hope this helps you a little.
