Wi Fi signal strength improvement

Eldest is complaining about the wi-fi signal strength in his bedroom and frequently ends up sitting on the stairs instead to play multiplayer games with his friends on his laptop / phone. Current setup in one modem/router in the hallway – this one:

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/tp-link-archer-vr400-ac1200-wireless-vdsladsl-modem-router/archervr400.html

What would be the best way to improve the signal? New router with more modern wi-fi protocols, or a range extender? I am hampered by what would be deemed ‘acceptable’ to the other inhabitants of the house, and also by the fact that it is an old house with thick walls, not as many power sockets as would be desirable for setting up a full mesh system, and most of which are 1″ off the floor with cupboards over them making pluf in extenders difficult to locate properly.

You can turn the sockets 90 degrees quite easilly 🙂

But from sounds of things a range extender at the top of the stairs will sort you out nicely.

If not powerline ethernet from router to eldests room?

Download a WiFi checker app onto your phone and see what the signal strength is like in his room.

Assuming it’s crap then you have a few options in order of good to bad.

1. Get a mesh system. We have 1 router upstairs and another downstairs. Gives us good coverage in our house.

2. Power line over ethernet. You can get ones that have a pass through power socket so you don’t lose the socket. We also had a set of these in the old house. Worked well across the upstairs and downstairs ring. I assume your son’s device can be hard wired.

3. WiFi repeater. Tried various incarnations of these and found them to be a bit crap.

If everyone upstairs is having WiFi issues go for option 1. If just your son then go for option 2.

As a real quick and dirty use a mobile phone as a WiFi repeater. Connect it to the home WiFi, setup WiFi tethering and leave it at the top of the stairs. Then connect laptop to the phone tethering network.

Before replacing the router, I would try an improved wifi receiver. I was getting poor signal from my motherboard wifi receiver (even though it has dual external antenna) but after plugging in a TP Link Archer T9UH the signal is rock solid and I’m at max speed. I am also in a very old house with solid stone walls. We actually have a mesh system downstairs to cover the ground floor, but this particular computer is upstairs and still wasn’t getting a good signal despite there being 3 routers in the house.

We had generally rubbish wifi until I got a tp deco x20 mesh – they’re great, even through victorian brick. The access points also have a lan connection so if you were to put an access point in your sons room, he can hardwire into that – which is then wireless to the main router

Another MESH user (TP-Deco) here – we went from dodgy connections and intermittently slow speeds to great speeds, great connection and comfortably serving multiple devices simultaneously.

I installed a switch in my house and then looking at getting one of these in the ceiling

https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/collections/unifi-wifi-flagship-compact/products/u6-plus

the powerline adaptors aren’t as good as you get reduced speeds

I tried range extenders, they were rubbish. Could get a better/stable signal, but it reduced the speed and increased ping. This was a problem with my copper wired broadband… Narrowest broadband i’ve ever seen…

Then got fibre to the house and built a small hardwired network (initially one router, one micro server, a computer and a playstation).
Wireless speed was still crap.

So i now have a hardwired mesh with three nodes.
Everything is lightening fast, haven’t had anything hang or go slow for months.

Its worth checking wifi channel usage within his room. If there are other networks (neighbours) on the same channel, switching to a less congested one might solve this.

You’re not really supposed to use Power Line Adapters across mains rings and upstairs and downstairs are likely separate rings. It usually works but you might get the occasional drop out.

Im going to begrudgingly say this – But, Virgin’s new WIFI booster POD’s work brilliantly. I used to tun a separate mesh network at home, but when Virgin replaced my router with the most up to date one, they also offered the booster pods (black) and the signal strength in the house an even at the end of a 50meter garden is brilliant.

Other than that Virgin are horrible..

So i now have a hardwired mesh with three nodes.

Same here, worth the faff of putting in ethernet. TP-link Decos.

Mesh! Deco is where I started; what you’ll want will depend on your house and budget, but I’d suggest at least 2 pods; probably something that broadcasts on one network and uses another for backhaul or (if you have network cabling installed in the house) that uses Cat6 for backhaul.
You can probably get what you need for <£200

Happy with our TP deco setup here.

Wi-fi extender pack that sends signal via electric circuit, one in plug by router and one in plug close to or in his bedroom?

A mesh setup will be more expensive. If you just need to get to one part of the house, an extender is a batter option IMO. Much cheaper and works almost as well. I use the TPLINK RE450 and it has served me well for over 5 years.

UPDATE – bought the Tenda MX3 2 pack (mesh system) when it was down at £70 last week, installed one downstairs and the other upstairs in sons bedroom. There is some kind of voodoo going on because wi-fi is now excellent throughout the house. I connected the Tenda unit up to my existing modem/router then set the Tenda one to AP (bridge) mode. Can anyone confirm that’s the correct setup? Seems to be working but want to avoid any DNS conflicts etc down the line which may be hard (for me) to diagnose.

We have mesh. It’s usually fine but now and again I have to restart everything.

If I could be bothered with the upheaval I’d run Ethernet – apparently quite easy to set up ‘mesh’ with wired backhaul.

Mesh? All the cool kids to backhaul over IP these days. Get a second AP up and wire it to the switch with Cat5e or 6. saves bandwidth on the WiFi that the mesh would use.

Which version of the router do you have? If it’s V1 or V2 these are probably as posous as a sieve last update for V2 in 2020, V1 before that. V3 is about 2 years since the last firmware update.

Try a Unifi UX Lite and add a wired AP to it upstairs if the signal is still poor.