Wireless range issues

[JamieO]

I am trying to troubleshoot some wireless range problems here at a house I moved into a few months ago...

My office (I work from home) is in a finished room over the garage, so therefore, that is where I have located my modem and router. The problem is that connection speed drops nearly 90% when going downstairs to the rest of the house.

I have replaced the router (currently using an Asus RT-N66U (stock firmware) and tried locating in in a couple different places in the room, as well as adjusting the antenna direction, angle, etc. I have 30mb Internet and get 25mb+ speed test results either via wired or wireless upstairs. But, when I go downstairs, my speed drops to <5mb and some devices have a hard time connecting at all.

So, I am trying to determine the next best step. I have considered using a repeater, trying a powerline adapter with access point, etc. It would be possible but a rather large pain to run an Ethernet cable downstairs so I would prefer to avoid that if possible.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[azazel1024]

Changing floors often kills performance, especially if there is a lot of horizontal distance/walls in the way as well. Construction matters a lot too. If it is a room over the garage and the signal has to punch through attic space, insulation and the ceiling, it can flay the signal. ESPECIALLY if what the insulation is, is foil backed fiberglass. My house built in 1961 has that. From my master bedroom, the signal on my tablet is -48dBm (2.4GHz) from my router right below the room in my basement (about 10ft horizontal). If I climb up in to my attic in the access in my closet, I am one floor further up, but with foil backed fiberglass, about 4" worth, then 4" of blown cellulose and a further 11" of rolled fiberglass on top of it all. My signal drops to -78dBm (IE low signal strength). By comparison, moving the same distance and putting a wall between me and the router results in the signal dropping to only -62dBm.

Foil is a B.

Your best bet is moving the AP to as near the rest of the house as you can and tilting the anntenas so that they are at roughly a 25 degree angle or so, instead of straight up and down. Picture the radio/radiation pattern coming out of the antennas as a donut. The donut as the strongest part of the signal, the "non-donut" as the weakest part. Signal is strongest perpendicular to the antennas and then weaker the further above and below them you get. So tilting them at an angle like that will help get a stronger signal below the router/ Since you are in the same room, it shouldn't impact your signal strength there much at all.

Beyond that, my three suggestions in order of "what'll get you the best results" as well as cost/ease would be.

1) Easiest/least expensive would likely be getting a "good" range extender that has a "fast lane/high speed" option where you can link back to your router using one band and extend the wifi network on the other. Then you don't have any range extender speed issues (halved speed). Only question would be, can you get a decent enough 5GHz signal from the RE to the router placing it in the closest room on the main level, to then rebroadcast a 2.4GHz network.

2) Run ethernet. A pain is a pain, but this will deffinitely get you the best results and so long as you are doing it yourself, the cost is pretty little. Just a lot of elbow grease to do it. Then setup an access point/router in AP mode.

3) Powerline adapters. The ease is much easier, but for a GOOD set, it is going to be a lot more expensive than running ethernet and you'll never get the kind of performance you could with ethernet. Then setup an AP.

4) As 3, but you could get a powerline/access point kit. TP-Link makes one and there might be others. One end is a powerline adapter, the other is a powerline adapater/access point all in one wall plug.

4 might be the overall "best bet" depending on what you budget is, how easy you want to make this and what your speed requirements are. If it is just getting roughly good enough coverage over the house for a 30Mbps internet connection and nothing more, than #4 is probably the easiest and most likely to succeed (most PL kits, so long as there isn't anything really bad going on with your wiring, should be able to handle 30Mbps.)

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Being located above garage, it is likely off center location for the house. If router has to be
in that room router alone is not enough I am afraid.

 

[JamieO]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have ordered one of the powerline/Wifi combo units to try first. Hoping that will solve the issue.