Question Getting my WiFi signal to cover the whole house ?

[Austen Robinson]

Please bear with me because I know very little about hardware. Here's my problem.

I have a fairly new (last 2 years) Netgear Nighthawk dual band 2.5/5 router that works fine for a limited area of our apartment which is shaped like an L. I can get around 100 mbps from the master Bedroom to the guest bedroom directly behind it. Continuing down the hall that connects the bedroom to the kitchen i get about 70 mbps in the kitchen which is fine.

Now here is my problem. if i walk 10 feet from the kitchen into the living room the signal drops to zero. In the living room is a huge mirror about 6 feet tall on the wall. from what I have read, mirrors kill signals. I need to get at least 50 mbps to the living room. I was considering a repeater or 2 but even with those would the signal even make it because of the mirror problem.

 

[USAFRet]

guess no one wants to help. oh well

Its only been a couple of hours.

 

[Slakemoth]

Get an access point not a repeater, as far as I understand more than one repeater causes chaos in terms of communication between devices and the base WIFI Router + repeaters suck they just extend the already bad signal.

The best access point are Ubiquiti access points.

You can often purchase cheap LR ones of ebay, I got a used one for about £30, worked brilliantly. Just make sure you get one that allows PoE + Comes with the PoE adapter (This means you can power it with an ethernet cable from your Router, rather than requiring both a cable for ethernet and a plug to the access point), the only drawback is you have to string an ethernet cable from the router to the access point.

 

[bill001g]

Lots of things block signals a mirror is just one of them. Your microwave oven runs at over 1000 times the power as your router and runs on the same 2.4g radio band. You can see through the glass front but the amount of signal legally allowed to leak out is only a tiny fraction of what your router is using to communicate.
There really is no solution to this. A repeater needs a very strong signal where you place it and still be able to send the repeated signal to the far room. If you would say have a concrete wall in the path then you could have trouble putting a signal through it even very close.

Best would be to consider some none wifi solution and then us a AP or a router running as a AP to provide the wifi in the remote room if you need wifi.

Ethernet cable is best but most people asking this question do not have it. Next if you have coax cable you can use MoCA which run very close to 1gbit. Next would be powerline networks. Hard to say the speed you will get since it depends on the path the house wiring takes and its quality. Many people can get over 100mbps with the units that have 1000 or 2000 numbers on them.

 

[Austen Robinson]

i have a powerline system where you can plug it into the wall. i have used that to get a pretty good signal hard wired into a laptop with a decent signal . not sure if i can run an ethernet cable from that into a second router or how to get the second router on my network. would that work? if so I would need some direction on how to set that up.

 

[bill001g]

Check to see if your router has a AP function and try to find the instructions on how to set it up. Otherwise you can use any router as a AP. Basically it is disable the DHCP,change lan IP to not conflict,use a LAN port to connect to the main router.

 

[bill001g]

Yes, mirrors interfere with Wi-Fi signals.
This is because mirrors reflect radio waves.
So, if you have a mirror in the path of your Wi-Fi signal, it's likely that the signal will be weakened or even blocked.

Move your router:- If your router is currently located in the kitchen, try moving it to a more central location in your home. This will help to ensure that the signal is distributed evenly throughout your home.

Use a Wi-Fi extender:- A Wi-Fi extender is a device that helps to extend the range of your Wi-Fi signal. You place the extender in the living room and it will repeat the signal from your router, which helps to improve the signal strength in that area.

Use a mesh network:- A spam removed network is a system of multiple Wi-Fi routers that work together to create a single, seamless Wi-Fi network. This can be a good option if you have a large home or if you have areas that are difficult to reach with a traditional router.

Did you write this with chatgpt. This is all a bunch of generic recommendations that mean very little. This post show little actual understanding of how the technology really works.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Not to mention the fact that the OP hasn't responded for two weeks --- LOL