wifi not reaching all points of house

[Paul C]

Hi all. I was wondering if anyone had any advice. I've moved into a new rental property, and the house is 2 story and bit rambling. I have 40mbs fibre with the router in the lounge. TV/PS4/android box connected. Problem is, I am struggling to get a wifi signal in the office side of the house, as well as upstairs.

I bought a tp-link ac750 range extender, but that doesn't help much. It just boosts the signal to the office, (not enough for streaming or anything like that), but not upstairs. Is my only option to run an ethernet cable upstairs (and to the office, so two separate cables) and use the repeater(s) in access point mode? And if I do that does that mean I will have two or three separate wifi networks in the house, so when we are all downstairs we use one, but when the kids go upstairs for youtube or gaming or whatever, they have to then switch to a different network connection on their phones?

Or can I run a cable upstairs and to the office and just use the extenders to extend the existing wifi network (but seeing as they are plugged directly into the router, then does that mean it will be a stronger signal?)

 

[PsyWulf]

Your ideal option is cabled
Your backup option that might work well enough to skip the cabling is using Powerline ethernet adapters (that use your home's electrical wiring to transport network signal),you get units with Wifi capability

I've done quite a few deploys in houses with ridiculous slabs where cabling is impossible
Generally worked decent

 

[ArtyLoop]

Hi there
I had a similar problem when living on the 2nd floor of a block of flats. When we moved the problem automagically disappeared, which leads me to believe that the proliferation of wireless routers in the block of flats was causing interference.

Also, wifi repeaters, just cause endless crap. Rather use Ubiquiti APs and set them all to the same SSID network (the software allows you to do this I did it once before at a company in Sandton). I am not particularly a fan of their product though because the things get hacked and they do die after 8-12 months and require firmware re-install.

 

[wetkit]

Standard these units is set to channel 7, so you can get issues from other units in the building.
Get yourself an app like WiFi Analyse on your phone.
See which channels is open and try them out.
Different channels can give different speeds.
Switch N mode off. Your connection speed will drop, but your signal strength should increase.

Other than that, wire up your AP's.

 

[websquadza]

The best solution here is to install access points via cable throughout the house. It's also the most costly. The UniFi APs are great and easy to configure. We haven't seen any of @ArtyLoop's issues on 100+ APs installed, maybe just a bad batch you got there? You get great coverage and built in network management (which takes care of pesky wifi interference).

Repeaters are useless. They slow down your network (by design they half your network speed) and they land up causing more headaches than they're worth.

Mesh solutions are a middle ground between pricey APs with installs, and useless repeaters. Out of the box, you usually get 2 or 3 mesh points that connect on one band and broadcast on another. You get a single SSID, usually an app -based controller and improved interference management. Look at the Tenda Nova and Airties options.

 

[powermzii]

Slight derail - anyone gotten good value out powerline adapters (power over ethernet) to extend networks?

 

[Jola]

I tried all sorts of things, including routers with powerful wifi, powerline adapters, etc, at the end of the day the only thing that worked is cabled access points, Unifi in my case.