Live in a two story house. Router on 1st floor. What’s the fastest/best way to get more coverage upstairs? Thx.
Probably want a mesh wi-fi system. I had great luck with these
What kind of router do you have? And I assume you have wood floors?
Our router is on the first floor. We have no problem getting a signal on the second floor, and no problem getting a signal in the basement.
A second router in repeater mode upstairs.
You can also try just moving the existing router a bit. Lifting it up or moving it laterally a few feet can sometimes clear an obstruction.
Same here, the Eero works seamlessly, took a little time to get it setup, but it’s been smooth sailing ever since. Also comes with tools to manage your wifi, you can setup guest wifi, limit devices, stuff like that.
Unlike repeaters, it’s all one network name, no having to switch to a ‘different’ wifi in a different part of the house.
We have similar – Xfinity’s version because we use their equipment.
Some free stuff to try
1: Try switching channels in the router’s settings, you might just have congestion/interference from other routers in the neighborhood.
2:Try relocating the router. You may find a sweet spot where you can get coverage everywhere. If you have a long enough cord for the signal you might be able to play around with locations.
I agree with the mesh network. Eero and Google ones are good (probably some others I haven’t tried).
Only downside is they are a bit expensive but they are set-and-forget and do their job well so worth it IMO.
I acquired a NetGear AC750 extender for similar purposes — in our case, the wired connection comes in upstairs on the 2nd floor and the router broadcasts WiFi for the rest of the house; but the teevee is in the den, which used to be outside the house, the breezeway between house and garage until a previous owner built a roof over it and carpeted it and converted it to an extra room. But the walls are still made of bricks and insulation and stuff and the signal doesn’t go around the corner through the doorway and over to where we sit. Or not very effectively. This doesn’t matter for television (separate cable) but when we want NetFlix or YouTube I pop my laptop down and hook up the television as 2nd monitor and we’re good. Or would be if the signal were better, hence the NetGear extender.
I’m not in love with it. About 20% of the time we lose signal in mid-show.
The extender doesn’t amplify the main WiFi signal, it echoes it as a 2nd (and 3rd) WiFi channel. When we lose signal, the extender’s extra WiFi channels still show bright and strong, they just aren’t on the internet any more. No idea why. We usually switch to the regular house WiFi and hope for the best.
Having posted to this thread, I can find my way back to it and may try some of the competing models discussed here. What the heck is “mesh”, and do these devices work the same way the NetGear does, based on my description?
I do recall these thingamabobs that use your household electrical wiring as passthru signal for network, effectively treating them like Cat6. You plug one doohickey in close to your wired router and another anywhere you want where there’s an outlet and presto there’s a place you can plug an ethernet cable. Those still around? Competitive with the WiFi extenders?
They do not work the way your netgear does. Mesh is a seamless, larger, wifi network, your device will transition from unit to unit without having to disconnect and reconnect to a new network. If you add another Mesh unit close enough to the existing Mesh network, it is able to join and expand the single network to a new space.
I may be acquiring one of those Eero things then.
I’ll second Eero. My mom’s condo has always been a challenge due to concrete walls and interference from all the neighbours. With the Eero she has 100% coverage.
I put in a similar extender for a tv that kept losing the wifi signal about a year ago. The trick is to put it in a location that recieves a good signal from your router but is close enough to the area you are tring to cover. I had to move mine when I found it wasn’t getting a good signal. About six feet closer to the router was the sweet spot.
As folks noted above, mesh is good when it’s good but can be finicky if you have too few nodes or major obstructions that continue to affect the mesh as much as the original wifi network or if network performance is concern. Your your application it’s probably your best bet, but just some things to keep in mind.
For my own case, I am easily frustrated by poor network performance. So, I went with hardwired “access points”. My house is such that running ethernet to a couple regions of the house/property wasn’t too tough.
This is the best solution.
If you can find routers that operate as relays, as others point out above - then that may work. I helped one fellow with the same scenario, his sunroom was an add-on to the back of the house. Wifi did not go through the old exterior wall very well - but we relocated the relaying (or “bridge”) router to inside the sunroom right beside the doorway, and it could “see” the main router much better.
Also consider main router location - is there something thick or metal in between A and B - filing cabinets, washer and dryer, Fridge or freezer, etc.? Good central location makes a difference. Nothing beats wired drops to other wifi points.
I’m not sure how it works with the latest Wi-Fi iterations, but one caution with mutliple points - when a wifi device attaches to a point, it won’t switch to a closer better one unless it loses connection with the original one. I.e. if it connects to hotspot A as “myNet” it will stay attached until it loses contact, even if you move closer to another one. If it loses contact, then it will look for “myNet” and most likely find the closer one.
Commercial systems control this by having a master managing multiple hotspots, and detecting when a signal is louder now at B and tell hotspot A to stop responding, and the device will reattach to B since it now responds sooner. Your home setup won’t do this. Each hotspot acts as if it is the only one. If you attach upstairs, and then go downstairs, unless upstairs is no longer accesible, it will not switch to the downstairs spot. For your laptop or phone, just turn the network off and on again if you think you are talking to the wrong spot. (Better signal = faster response, so that’s who the device attaches to.)
As above, they don’t work exactly the same as a wi-fi ‘extender’ but some of the basic principles are similar.
Extenders and mesh networks and wired access points all handle backhaul differently - backhaul being how these units communicate with each other so your data gets where it needs to go using your available bandwidth.
Wired access points are the best. They communicate between each other using the wires, so the airwaves are for you to use. But running wires is sometimes not feasible or may cost more than you would like.
Extenders will split your existing Wi-Fi spectrum - part of it goes to the extension and part of it for your devices. Since it’s using the same bandwidth for two different things that interfere with each other, the quality of your signal and your usable bandwidth are affected. This is quite possibly the issue you are seeing with your internet connection.
A mesh network will generally split across different bands. So, Eero and similar devices may use the 2.4GHz WiFi band for backhaul and preferentially use 5GHz for your devices. Having the dedicated band for the mesh and a separate one for you is a major part of why mesh networks have fewer performance issues than WiFi extenders. It’s usually fine unless you have some older devices that aren’t compatible with the 5GHz WiFi, and those can sometimes see some performance hit from the mesh.
The newer or more advanced (and often more expensive) mesh routers will use a separate dedicated band (usually also a 5GHz band) for backhaul that should not result in a performance hit on your end.
That said, many mesh nodes/access points generally have lower power antennas than older routers, so depending on the size of your house, presence of walls, etc, you may need to have more of them to stay within range of each other. So, maybe 3 nodes instead of 2. But it’ll depend on how your house is built and where the devices are set up.
Ethernet over power lines (or over coax) is still a thing and can be competitive with WiFi extenders. YMMV as with all things
The smarter routers will do this, but they are usually more expensive
<< Never mind…deleted by poster >>
Yes, the client side device usually determines which access point to use but, and this is getting a bit technical, with the smarter routers, they can be set to drop devices to try to force them onto other access points if it detects other APs in the network might be better.
Too much overlap between APs can be a problem, too, I guess.
ETA: sorry, didn’t notice the edit at first
Do these systems replace the existing router?
I have the Orbi mesh system,main unit and 2 satellites. There is a Ethernet connection on the units in case your peripherals don’t have WiFi.