Getting WiFi around the house.. How to make it better?

Hi all,

We been struggling to get decent WiFi around our house since we moved in but for some reason it seems to be getting worse.

To give context…. The house was originally a 2 bed end terrace. Previous owners built a 2 story extension on the side to make it a four bed.

The problem area is the extension as the wifi signal has to get through the outside wall of the original house so we end up with weak or no signal in the that end of the house.

I’ve tried the things you plug into the electrical sockets to boost it and they work to an extent, but the signal completely drops out quite often.

When searching for wifi upstairs I can see the extenders listed but cant seem to connect to them?

We are on regular broadband with talktalk and have their newest router (now about 18 months old though)

Recently had fibre from the pole installed in the street and now looking to move to that.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Get a Mesh system. We had issues and the Mesh system sorted it. One downstairs and one upstairs sorted it, although this is in a new build so not the most solid of things.

We do have a pair of power line adaptors as the upstairs mesh router has to sit in a different room to No. 1 son’s and he wants a hard wired connection for his desktop.

I had a similar problem, and used BT  Wholehome WiFi extenders to share the signal around the house. Although you may be connecting to any one of  the 3 or 4 discs, this happens seamlessly on the same network name.

Other similar systems are available and may be even better.

We use a mesh system, the Fibre Optic cable comes in on 1st floor at the front of the house so we have a Mesh repeater downstairs to boost it at the back of the house and now it reaches all the way into the garden.

You can daisy chain them together if required and devices seem to switch between them pretty seamlessly, unlike old school extender systems.

I would run 2 mesh routers (one either side of the old exterior wall) via an ethernet backhaul (wired).

Also, upgrading the receiver can work wonders if you’re on a PC.

Get the fibre installed and then don’t bother with their router, just plug it straight into a mesh wifi system. Dot them about your house as appropriate, and problem solved. Bonus points if you can hook them up with ethernet.

Mesh network. Deco from TP-Link transformed WIFI provision in the house and outside into the garden. Reasonable price and additional units can be added if needed, e.g. loft, shed, etc.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Really Renton? Really?

I’d ask if you’re new here but I know you’re definitely not!

Questions like this must be near the top of the list!

Search “mesh”.

Mesh as above, but when you get fibre installed the installers are usually pretty flexible on where they route the fibre into the house, and hence where the router is (there is no dependency on where current master socket is). You might be able to get the router located more centrally in the house which will help. You’ll still likely need a mesh system, but it might minimize the number of nodes needed and you might need less hops between them to cover the house.

I’m not technically minded so not entirely sure what Mesh systems are! But we used to have a nightmare with our virgin WIFI despite living in a pretty standard sized 3 bed house.

Like OP tried the plug in boosters but they were useless.

What did work brilliantly was just getting a different and better router than the one virgin supplied (which we then had to put into modem mode). Internet connection has been excellent in house since we did that.

Might help?

@rockbus

I got a tplink mesh system. Really easy to set up. Works well. 2 nodes covers the house well. I got a set of 3 but not needed the 3rd yet.

@rockbus – same as Jamie we use TP-LINK Deco. Combination of wired between mesh “nodes” and wifi connected. Same issue here with thick walls/funny shaped house. We actually have six (including one in an outside building) but could easily get away with 3 or 4.

If you do go to fibre from the pole, make sure whatever mesh you buy as a gigabit uplink. We’re on 900meg here and loads of people who signed up to the scheme were complaining about the speed of the wifi because they only had 100 meg uplink ports.

Tenda mesh system here due to solid walls etc.

Easy to set up, fast and stable connections.

I’ve tried the things you plug into the electrical sockets to boost it and they work to an extent, but the signal completely drops out quite often.

in my experience they are a complete waist of money.

As soon as I bought a mesh system problems solved.

Make sure you get one that can add more meshes (whatever they are called) and one that can handle the speeds you expect to download.

I’ve got Deco M5 x 3 and they have been great. Come with good software too for controlling users

Is the wife reception better or worse upstairs?

Thread hijack. I was running virgin media router in modem mode hooked to a decent router and that gave great performance, as it did later with a Plusnet connection, both over copper. Fast forward 6 or 7 years and I ‘upgraded’ to fibre. Configured the ISP’s router again to behave as a modem but performance is much poorer, in terms of signal strength and connection reliability, despite turning off the ISP router’s WiFi. Speed tests report great results but WiFi connections are flaky as hell. Any ideas?

If it has got worse it could be because a neighbour has updated their signal. How many WiFi networks can you see when you connect a device?

You can get apps that tell you which WiFi networks in your house have the strongest signals, along with the channels that are congested and then you should be able to change the channel your WiFi network runs on from your router. From memory try and have space between the channel you are on and your neighbours.

Tenda mesh system here due to solid walls etc.

I bought a top-of-the-range Tenda mesh system, “MW12” I think it was.  It was garbage of the highest order, I sent it back.

^ that. We had neighbours get a new router which decided to use the same channel ours was on. I switched channel and usual service resumed.

and +1 on the plug in things being crap.

I helped a colleague set up BT Mesh things and it was both a doddle and transformational in accessing wifi all over their big old house.

Quick question: 1959 built solid brick house, Extended a couple of times. Virgin FTTC comes in at the downstairs front extension at 274Mbps. Virgin Hub3 router. Using a TP Archer which means 2 separate wifi addresses and patchy coverage. Just moved into a bedroom at the back extension upstairs.
If I get the TPLink Deco S4 AC1200 3 pack linked above (£110 from Amazon) can I move seamlessly through the house, garage and near bits of the garden without it keeping dropping out and is a 3 pack about right?
And is there something a bit better for about the same price?
And I can see next door’s signal all over the place. I should ask him what he’s got I suppose.

Default BT mesh with a disk on each floor of the house has been excellent. Router is in the lounge. Simple to set up and flawless execution. I used too plug my work laptop into the disk in the office in the loft, but now I can’t be bothered because the new laptop is USB-C into a monitor acting as power and USB hub, rather than the old docking station. It has made no difference whatsoever to performance.

My Wife reception is better when separated by two floors 😉

Ta bunk. I’ll take another look at that…

Is the wife reception better or worse upstairs?

That’s a very, very different thread..

Another question: if I get the Deco system, how do I connect them together if there are brick walls between them?  I can’t run a cable, I’ve already established that the WiFi is patchy and upstairs and downstairs mains sockets are on different MCB circuits.

So mesh with units hardwired between them if either side of a thick wall is best way, If you can’t hardwire them then you may need line of sight (inc. through doors) or through floors.

In my parent’s old house with 3 floors and thick internal walls I’ve had to deploy 8 mesh units (Deco M9’s so not cheap!) and even then there’s still some areas with only a weak signal between two units. I found the signal goes through floors much easier than the walls so on the middle floor I have 4 units that only go through one wall max and go the whole length of the house, then from these I drop down to a mesh unit in the room below (4 total: living room, dining room, hallway and kitchen) thankfully the loft bedroom gets a good signal from a middle floor unit. The ground floor ones mostly connect with a unit in the room on the floor above them, although occasionally they connect with each other. Probably could have done with with only 2 units on the middle floor if I could have hardwired them and also the best place for some units isn’t always available as there’s no mains plug near enough.

The TP-Link app is really good though and makes it easy to set them up and it reconfigures itself from time to time if it works out a better way for the units to talk to each other.

One other thing I found out when the Internet dropped one time, when in bridge mode (which you use when deploying a mesh network) the ISP router (Plusnet’s one at least) also stops serving DHCP IP addresses (obvious in hindsight). So when I went to check what was wrong with the Internet connection on a PC hardwired to the router and it wouldn’t connect I thought it was actually the router that had an issue so I went down a rabbit hole for an hour or so, it was only when I did a factory reset (which switched it back to router mode and hence enabled DHCP again) I realised what the issue was (simple fix is to statically assign an IP to the PC). Doh.

I forgot to add.

If I run a speed test it says I am getting 56mbps but I can be sat in the room that has the router and try and load something on my phone but it wont load??

I have my TV hardwired to the router and sometimes this is hit and miss too?

Based on this thread, I think I want this set up.

At the moment we have Fibre to a box just under my desk which links to a WiFi Router. The signal is okay around most the house but not great in the kitchen extension or conservatory (through outside walls). There is bugger all in the detached garage about 10M away.

I mostly want to get wifi in the garage which is a dusty environment, hence one of the routers being ‘outdoor spec’, but better wifi elsewhere would be good.

Please confirm I am ordering the correct 2 items to achieve this before I blow £200 on the wrong thing.

*My Wife is great upstairs except possibly for cleaning the slightly dusty skirting boards under my desk.

Please confirm I am ordering the correct 2 items to achieve this before I blow £200 on the wrong thing.

Don’t think you want either of those things actually. Reckon this or something similar with one of them plugged directly into that black box of yours and the other two plugged in about the house should do the trick.

EDIT: sorry didn’t clock the dusty garage thing, either way I reckon you could have one garage adjacent and still get good signal in there. Or if you do end up having on in the garage they’re solid state boxes, no fans or anything so as long as it’s not being rained on I’m sure it’d be fine.

Please confirm I am ordering the correct 2 items to achieve this before I blow £200 on the wrong thing

Unless you’re on Gigabit fibre there’s no real need to pay the premium for WiFi 6/7 kit (but fair enough if you want to long-term future proof). How far is the garage from the house (where the router will be) and how many walls? If there’s a few walls or it’s a long distance the one in the garage might not connect to the one in the house (so you might need another in the house in between and by a window/door leading to the garage. But no harm to try with just those 2 units first as long as you have the budget for buying a 3rd one later if the signal is too weak for them to connect reliably. As for the outdoor unit version given it’s not a big premium over a standard unit it’s probably worth it although probably not strictly necessary for your average garage levels of dust.

I was frustrated with a cheap mesh system so upgraded to a Ubiqiti system, possibly a bit more spendy but absolutely rock solid in operation – ive got 4 teenage kids with all the gaming devices that entails and 2 adults working from home and a 6 bed house with some very heavy walls in the middle of it and  so somewhat worth it

id start with a cloud gateway ultra to do your routing instead of your broadband supplier device

https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/all-unifi-cloud-gateways/products/ucg-ultra

then ceiling mounted APs to suit. you may well find that one placed centrally is enough as they’re very powerful but you can add them one at a time.

https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/all-wifi/products/u6-pro

Ubiquity have an app where you can put in a floorpan feed in individual wall constructions and it will somewhat test your design. Once it’s installed, you can then do a live signal test by walking around with the app running and it will show a heat map of radio strength so you can adjust placement and power to suit.

a bit geeky, but well worth the effort in my experience

I have ordered what SoundNinjaUK recommended and pick them up tomorrow. If I am on line tomorrow I will tell you if they worked.

Those deco S4s are what I have WCA.  One by the router, one in the kitchen. That covers the whole house ’70s 3 bed detached. Brick and stud walls. (And it reaches my work shed and garage)

Well now I feel the weight of responsibility.

Well now I feel the weight of responsibility. – You are.

I am planning to have one in the office, one in the conservatory nearest to the garage and then one in the garage, probably in a plasit bag to save it from the worst of the dust. There is a lot of dust right now, see https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/are-you-bored-enough-to-watch-project-ds911/page/4/

If I run a speed test it says I am getting 56mbps but I can be sat in the room that has the router and try and load something on my phone but it wont load??

I have my TV hardwired to the router and sometimes this is hit and miss too?

Turn off your extenders to make sure that the only WiFi your phone can connect to is the router.
Go to the room with the router
reboot the router.
Do a Speedtest using the Ookla app.
Check webpage loading again.
If it’s OK then maybe your phone is connecting to one of your extenders at other times? though you did say that connecting to those was a problem so perhaps not.

One thing I always do on provided routers is replace the DNS server address they provide with one I like. 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9 or whichever one you favor. IDK if this is some sort of talisman, but it seemed to be an improvement when we had Virgin.

You could get your mesh system now and already be getting the benefit of it before you get fibre.

It works!

A bit of a faff getting the garage unit connected with line of site to the conservatory but i managed. You can just see the top of the other unit through the window.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cjoEfouyWiF5JowKA

Phew