Spotty wifi in house

[citykid]

We are very frustrated that we can't seem to get wifi to work consistently in our house. We tried upgrading routers a couple of times but still often can't get wifi in the basement (which is finished with an office) or the third floor. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

[Litter Box]

We are very frustrated that we can't seem to get wifi to work consistently in our house. We tried upgrading routers a couple of times but still often can't get wifi in the basement (which is finished with an office) or the third floor. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Check out a range extender, Belkin makes one for about $50.

[Hospitalitygirl]

We have the same problem and I'm trying the Almond range extender.

[seand]

Get a range extender or go old school and pull some wire. I run ethernet around my house because I play hidef video from a media server and use VOIP hardware phones. For toodling around the internet wifi is fine but when you are moving a lot of data, plain old ethernet 5e can't be beat and its super cheap if you buy your crimper and a spool of wire.

[ShoshTrvls]

I have 2 Apple airport express routers in my house and they work well to extend range.

[guzzijason]

Range extender will help. There may be ways to improve coverage with your existing router, but they would involve varying degrees of difficulty.

• If you're using a "dual band" router, you will find that while the latest and greatest 5.0 GHz band can be super-fast, it absolutely sucks at penetrating walls, floors, etc. In which case, the older 2.4 GHz spec is better, but...
• The flip side of that is that the 2.4 GHz band is more likely to suffer from interference from other nearby networks (or cordless phones), limiting its usefulness. One way to help fix this is to survey your area for other networks, see what channel they may be running on, and then try to find a 2.4 GHz channel that doesn't conflict. Keep in mind that while there are 11 2.4 GHz channels, the only ones that don't overlap are 1, 6, and 11.
• In many cases, you can install 3rd party firmware on your router (such as DD-WRT) which will let you manually bump up the transmit power of your router. Use with caution so you don't cook the router.
• Switching to "Wireless-N" (from A,B, or G) supposedly will double your range, if other conditions are decent.

If you don't like fiddling with stuff, then buying a WiFi range extender to use in conjunction with your current router is the way to go.

__Jason

[HLS]

We are very frustrated that we can't seem to get wifi to work consistently in our house.
We tried upgrading routers a couple of times but still often can't get wifi in the basement (which is finished with an office) or the third floor.
Any suggestions on how to fix this?

1) Check for interference from neighbors systems.
Wifi has 11 channels. (up to 14 in some cases)
Default is channel #6. Each channel bleeds over for about 2 channels.
Result is channels 4-8 are generally un-usable in a crowded area.
But, channels 1-3 and 9-11 are usually open.

If you have (or can borrow) a newer phone with wifi, I'd highly recommend an app - Wifi Analyzer,
See what wifi traffic your router is trying to shout over.
Look for a quiet band area, and change your router accordingly.
Changing wifi channels on the router requires logging in and manually selecting a broadcast channel - not to difficult.


2) Does your house have an addition?
Extend the network.
Brick walls muffle wifi.
Stone walls kill wifi.

Basic
Cable is cheap.
If you (1) have hot air heat,
(2) have a router near a heat vent,
Run 2 ethernet cables through the ductwork to the upstairs and downstairs. (network cable is rated to something like 140 celcius, or way above 200 F, )
100" of Cat 5e cable (works for 10 meg ethernet, 100 meg fast-ethernet and 1,000 meg gigibit)
is only about $10 bucks online.

Better
After you run the ethernet, look for used wifi-routers.
Start stopping by your local thrift shops,
Westell 327s (black and red) or Linksys (blue and black) show up for $10 to $20.
They can be used to create a wireless access point (aka extender) and repeat the wifi signal.
Works best if each router/repeater has the SAME name, but spread the channels e.g. 1, 6, 14.

[hkp]

Kitchen appliances will really mess with a wifi signal. If you can, try plugging the router in somewhere else and unobscured/open spaced. If that's no good, then a range extender would be a great second option. I have an Airport Extreme and Airport Express and I have no deadspots whatsoever in my house now. Basement to roofdeck, full bars.

[radiocolin]

• In many cases, you can install 3rd party firmware on your router (such as DD-WRT) which will let you manually bump up the transmit power of your router. Use with caution so you don't cook the router.

The caveat to this is that if there are physical reasons you can't get the signal through, just because it can reach your iPhone or laptop doesn't mean the iPhone or laptop will be able to send back.

[mixiboi]

Skip wifi all together:

VideoLink 3 Powerline Internet Adapter | Powerline | Networking | Products | Belkin USA Site

[citykid]

Thanks to everyone for all your suggestions. I have been out of town and just getting back to Philadelphia Speaks, so I was very happy to see all of these ideas we can try...even if I don't understand a third of the techie jargon! I will look into all of these things and see what may work best for us.

[dcss1205]

A Simple solution may be to point the two antennas 90 degrees between the two.

I heard it said that you could install a 2nd router, assuming they are fed by the coax, and you have the ability to add a splitter elsewhere in the home.
If anyone has experience with 2 wireless routers in the same house, Please verify and share any lessons learned. Thanks.

[guzzijason]

A Simple solution may be to point the two antennas 90 degrees between the two.

I heard it said that you could install a 2nd router, assuming they are fed by the coax, and you have the ability to add a splitter elsewhere in the home.
If anyone has experience with 2 wireless routers in the same house, Please verify and share any lessons learned. Thanks.

Having two separate routers each serving its own network would be more trouble than it's worth. If you have two separate networks set up, your client won't automatically jump to whichever one has the best signal. For instance, if you fire up your laptop, and get get a good signal from "A", and then move to a section of the house that has a better signal from "B", unless the "A" signal gets so bad that it drops off, you will probably need to manually switch to "B".

Plus, as a general rule, adding splitters to your cable is bad and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, as each time you split, the signal gets degraded.

__Jason

[HLS]

I heard it said that you could install a 2nd router, ...

If anyone has experience with 2 wireless routers in the same house, Please verify and share any lessons learned.

I've got 4 routers arrayed across the property.
Excellent signal in both portions of a masonry house/attached trinity, from basement to attic. Good signal on the adjacent 4 acres or so.

Simplest thing to do is take an old Verizon router, (327w works well) and re-configure to work as a wired "access point".
Set each router to use the same NETWORK and PASSWORD, but different wifi channel.
Connect the routers LAN ports (not WAN) with a 50' or 100' ethernet cable and you have a wifi range extender.

More complex is to take an old Linksys router (WRT series works well) and re-configure it as a wireless "repeater" by changing the firmware.
Similar result, but a repeater works wirelessly.