I want to improve the Wi-Fi range in a house we just moved into a few months ago. The Wi-Fi drops intermittently and gets sluggish often. I’m a total noob when it comes to networking I get confused easily so please bare with me.
We have Verizon FiOS 50 or 75 mbps up/down speed. The house is three stories and about 80 years old, so there probably is a lot of materials that are not Wi-Fi friendly in walls and ceilings. My budget is about 200-250 for a full solution and we have many devices connected to the modem wirelessly.
I have heard as a Verizon subscriber you CAN’T change your main router and can only connect it with another one or something. Is there any benefit to buying a new router then or can I utilize my current one. I believe the router does get congested with everyone having a laptop and phone connected to it.
If the above is true can I connect the new router to the old and use its powers somehow? A benefit to that would be placing them farther apart from each other and using them both therefore increasing the signal area.
I was watching this Linus video and he mentioned ‘access points’. I was wondering if I could place one on each floor and connect them to my router. Will the speed or gaming performance be effected? Also will it fix the congestion problem mentioned above or is that a router limitation? I know that connecting an ethernet cable straight to the router is the best option but it isn’t really convenient now ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUBdUJjgmQY&ab_channel=LinusTechTips )
If you can bridge it, just buy a new router and hook it up. If you can't, then you should look into access points or making a new network under that one.
It is kind of an abomination that isps are still handing out those actiontec surfboard routers. Those things are pretty ancient. If I'm not mistaken, I believe all versions of those actiontec routers are single-band (2.4GHz only) which is unfortunate because you have less ability to spread the wifi load across both bands.
You mentioned that Verizon said that you can't change your router. I'm calling bs on this. They just don't want you to change it because they likely have hooks into that hardware. Also, they are claiming that other routers will potentially have a negative impact on FioS service (sticker on the router), which is a lie. You should be able to use any router you like, however, it would be good if you could find information to verify this. I don't use verizon, so I cant say this for certainty.
You may be able to achieve decent wifi spread across the large home with a single router and not need to use repeaters or any other hardware. Regardless of whether or not you'll need repeaters or something more than a single router solution, I'd suggest getting a decent dual-band router that supports 802.11ac (something like a Netgear AC1900) if you are able to change the router.
If you can place the router centrally in the home (e.g. on the middle floor towards the center of the floor space) that would be ideal. Make sure you use the advanced configuration on the router to set things up. You'll want to make sure that it is using 40MHz mode on 2.4GHz and 20/40/80MHz mode on 5GHz. Then, download a simple network analyzer tool called inSSIDer (you can find older free versions online) and get it installed on a Windows laptop if you have one available. Use inSSIDer to select the "cleanest" frequencies (wlan channels) and set your 2.4GHz radio and 5GHz radio to broadcast on those channels. Next, walk around your house and see how the RSSI (signal strength) of your router changes. In my opinion, you don't want RSSI to be at -70dBm or lower (-40 or better is preferred, but sometimes can't be achieved).
If you are still getting wifi drops in certain places, then you may need to look into installing a repeater.
You could use powerline adaptors to get the network up to each floor and then use access points. Each floor would have it's own wifi but to be honest it's better than repeaters.
The problem with buying an AC router is none of the devices we have at home will benefit from it. Buying one can be considered a future investment though.... Would I still benefit if I bought one and connected it to the current router? Will I have to disable the wifi signal from the old one?
I'm going to use inSSIDer right now to see if I can get a slightly better signal just from changing the frequency, I'll check every room as well.
The powerline adapter is very interesting, I never knew these existed lol. I like that I can connect my desktop directly to it and hopefully get a faster signal. I might buy a 2 set and try them out and If they don't work I'll return them.
Can you guys please clarify if congestion can be responsible for the inconsistencies? Will applying any fix besides getting a new router fix this? What I hate about my current router is I have descent signal but no internet. My cousin who would be right next to me, on the same network has internet and I don't.
Powerline adapters are great - provided that the home wiring is a single loop and in good working order (being >=80 yr old house maybe the wiring is a little dicky). If powerlines fail and the access point is near a spot where you could drill a hole in the roof/floor - run ethernet cables through the floor/ceilings then to another wifi access point so forth.
There are a few config things you can try as well - going to a free channel, checking that the tx (transmit power) is at the maximum value, & the rest at default should be fine (beacon intervals etc).
Position of the access point in the house is critical - if you have several outlets choose a spot where the wifi coverage is the best. Maybe even try swapping out the antennas to better ones - the ones on there are probably 5dBi so an upgrade to 8 (or more) dBi antennas may help. You can pick up cheap ones off ebay.
Powerline adapters are alright, if your house isn't 80 years old. It relies on your house having good wiring that are connected together. Sometimes floors are on separate rings.
You best solution is to buy 3 access points, one for each floor and connect them to your crappy ISP router via Ethernet cables.
You dont need anything fancy, TP-Link APs are pretty good and can do PoE so you only need the Ethernet cable to connect them and power them.
Something you can do with your ISP router is as suggested bridge it, and if thats not allowed simple hook it up to another router and keep it as a different network. Your new router will be the home router and first floor AP, and hook up the other APs to it. the ISP router will only route from it to the home router. This has the additional advantage of reducing the spying your ISP does on your network.
