Home WiFi Range Extension Question

[stevej37]

If I take my Kindle Fire from the house to the outdoor deck...it will sometimes stay on the wifi from the house instead of the signal from the repeater. All I need to do is click on the repeater signal and I'm able to stream movies or watch sports at a distance of about 50 yards from the house. Works great...and it was only $27
Second year that I've had one and I'll prob have to buy a new one again this year because I once again left the repeater outside and it's covered by a frozen block of ice right now.

[Z-man]

I know you found a good solution - but I would recommend to upgrade at some point to a Wifi-6 Mesh network. It is a bit more expensive, but it will improve your overall network significantly, especially if you start adding more smart devices to your network.

A lot of the issues at home are bandwidth issues and network traffic. Wifi 5 (ACXXX routers) do not do a good job at splitting up the traffic. If you have a lot of smart devices (Smart TV, lights, plugs, Ring devices) - they can have a lot of collision on your network. Plus your router location hurts your overall network as well. I'm not sure why you can't move your router to another coax location -- any location should work, since the coax setup is a simple network.

I have a similar sized home & used to have an AC2400 router on my main floor & range extender upstairs in my office. I had dismal performance, especially as I added more smart devices to my network.

Recently, I updated to a Wifi 6 mesh network - Linksys's Velop system, two nodes: one on main floor, and one upstairs again in my office. Now, I have much better performance, and am able to see 200 Mbs throughout my home, which is what I have contracted with my ISP. On average, I am connecting 30 devices to my network, most of which are on the first floor. Each node is able to handle 40+ devices without any traffic clashes.

If you are happy with your performance, you may not need to migrate to a wifi 6 Mesh network just yet -- I did as a way to 'future proof' my network. But who knows how long that future is, with the push to move to G5...

[onewhippedpuppy]

Z, I can’t move the existing router and modem easily because the coax comes directly from the outside and is not tied into the rest of the house coax network. I could do so by adding some coax and tying them into the existing wiring but I think that would probably just move the issue.