Question Help Improving WiFi Reception for High-Speed Internet Service

bgphilbin

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Hi - long-time and frequent reader, infrequent poster, here -

I've just had Frontier 1Gbps service installed for our home and I also upgraded my network card with one that has external antennas, but I'm still getting crummy speed (33 Mbps upload max and 18 Mbps download speed, max - which seems ridiculous - should at least be 120 Mbps) on my bedroom desktop PC, which is connected through said network card.

The distance from the router to the PC is about 30 feet and there is a TV between them & usually the door is closed out of necessity, due to my wife's work.

My current plan is to get an extension cable for the two antennas that my new network card has coming out of the expansion slot this should remove any interference from the TV. I might also consider mounting the router at the end of our kitchen counter, but that will only get us about 5 feet closer and we'll still have the door interfering with the signal.

What I'd like to what kind of options I have to boost the router signal, outside of replacing the router, itself? Seems to me that a repeater on the computer side of the door might not improve things so much (particularly since there would then be a filled dresser between them), but I'm open to suggestions.

Here are my specs:
HP Pavilion 590-p0007c Desktop Computer
Motherboard: Lincs Customized Form Factor
CPU: Intel i7-8700
RAM 12GB DDR4-2666 PC4-21300
Hard Drive: 1TB
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 550
NETWORK CARD: Fenvi FV-AXE210NG Wi-Fi 6E Desktop Kit Wireless Adapter Bluetooth 5.2 + 3000Mbps 2.4Ghz 5Ghz 6Ghz M.2 2230 Key E With Intel AX210 AX210NGW 802.11ax/ac Support MU-MIMO OFDMA Windows 10 With 6Dbi Antenna Set

ROUTER: ARRIS NVG468MQ (2021/07) Frontier

We have 4 different PCs that we use with the router, plus a ChromeCast unit and 3 Android phones:
Mac Powerbook (my wife, connected via ethernet cable)
HP Pavilion 590-p0007c desktop (Master Bedroom, WiFi)
HP Pavilion 590-0070 (Kitchen, ethernet cable)
HP Pavilion 13t-bb000 Laptop (WiFi)
ChromeCast
2 Moto G Power (2021)
1 LG K30

Thank you for your time and attention - hoping for some help!

Pax, harmonia,

Brian G. Philbin
 
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Do you use different SSID for 2.4 and 5. Those speeds are acting like you are connecting to the 2.4g radio.

If you look at the status for the interface it many times will tell you the radio band. It should also tell your the so called "speed". This is actually the data encoding but it does represent how good a signal you are getting.

Also the wifi6e is pretty new so I would verify that you have the latest drivers, you want to get them from intel.

Some walls just eat wifi signals and there is no good solution. The kitchen tends to be the worst place for any wifi. Things like your microwave oven are designed to block more that 1000 times the power your router is allowed since it runs on the same 2.4g radio.

So I noticed something very internesting about the modem. It has moca ability. Do you have a coax connection in your room. You would just buy a moca adapter and it will use the coax to connect to the router and appear as a ethernet cable.
 
Hi - long-time and frequent reader, infrequent poster, here -

I've just had Frontier 1Gbps service installed for our home and I also upgraded my network card with one that has external antennas, but I'm still getting crummy speed (33 Mbps upload max and 18 Mbps download speed, max - which seems ridiculous - should at least be 120 Mbps) on my bedroom desktop PC, which is connected through said network card.

The distance from the router to the PC is about 30 feet and there is a TV between them & usually the door is closed out of necessity, due to my wife's work.

My current plan is to get an extension cable for the two antennas that my new network card has coming out of the expansion slot this should remove any interference from the TV. I might also consider mounting the router at the end of our kitchen counter, but that will only get us about 5 feet closer and we'll still have the door interfering with the signal.

What I'd like to what kind of options I have to boost the router signal, outside of replacing the router, itself? Seems to me that a repeater on the computer side of the door might not improve things so much (particularly since there would then be a filled dresser between them), but I'm open to suggestions.

Here are my specs:
HP Pavilion 590-p0007c Desktop Computer
Motherboard: Lincs Customized Form Factor
CPU: Intel i7-8700
RAM 12GB DDR4-2666 PC4-21300
Hard Drive: 1TB
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 550
NETWORK CARD: Fenvi FV-AXE210NG Wi-Fi 6E Desktop Kit Wireless Adapter Bluetooth 5.2 + 3000Mbps 2.4Ghz 5Ghz 6Ghz M.2 2230 Key E With Intel AX210 AX210NGW 802.11ax/ac Support MU-MIMO OFDMA Windows 10 With 6Dbi Antenna Set

ROUTER: ARRIS NVG468MQ (2021/07) Frontier

We have 4 different PCs that we use with the router, plus a ChromeCast unit and 3 Android phones:
Mac Powerbook (my wife, connected via ethernet cable)
HP Pavilion 590-p0007c desktop (Master Bedroom, WiFi)
HP Pavilion 590-0070 (Kitchen, ethernet cable)
HP Pavilion 13t-bb000 Laptop (WiFi)
ChromeCast
2 Moto G Power (2021)
1 LG K30

Thank you for your time and attention - hoping for some help!

Pax, harmonia,

Brian G. Philbin
Webmaster, MetropolisPlus.com
In addition to the above, there is a free wifi analyzer app in the Windows Store that you can use to check which channel you are on and how many other people are on the same channel. In my densely populated area I can see almost 100 other users and see that 24 of them are on channel 157 which is an area I avoid. Also depending on your budget I've been using the TP-Link TX3000E pcie wifi adapter which is provides great reception because it has great antennas. Best I've ever used.
 

bgphilbin

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That coax moca adapter idea does seem like it could be helpful.

The SSID is combined, but I am connected to the 5.240 GHz channel.

So was the WiFi analyzer tool - I'm on a different channel than others in the area, so I'm kind of dead in the water, there.

The TP-Link TX3000E would require an adapter to connect to my M2 slot and - as I've just purchased a new network adapter - I'm not inclined to purchase another one, but since my plan has been to purchase extension cables, I will seek out better antennas, as many extensions include them. Perhaps you'll have a recommendation that equals the ones you have?

Is there a way to extend an antenna from the router? Perhaps using an ethernet cable or the like? I'm ignorant of them, as I haven't seen one, but I would hope that could be a possibility.

I did get the latest drivers from Intel when I installed the unit today.

The kitchen is not the actual location of the router, but it is on the outside of the kitchen on a counter that extends into the living room. There isn't a microwave but for another 30 feet in a direction perpendicular to the line of site between the computer and the PC (which, when the door is open, is direct).

The door is definitely a main culprit, as I tested the speed with and without and the speed improved to 101 Mbps upload and 81 Mbps download with the door open.

Adjusting the antennas just a touch improved closed-door speed to 44 Mbps upload and 67 Mbps download, so the antenna extension and improvement would seem to be a solid plan.
 
Some material are very good at blocking wifi. People that live in building with poured cement walls pretty much get all their signals via doorways.
There is no good solution for this. I mean you could put a window in the door or something crazy like that.

Antenna cables are cheap but do not get then much longer than it takes to put the antenna on top of the case. You get massive db loss with longer cables, many times as much as the antenna is adding.

If antenna cables don't work I would look at the moca. Since you already have one built into the modem buying a separate moca adapter for your room is likely going to be cheaper than buying any wifi repeater stuff.
 

bgphilbin

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I do have a coax network in my home, but nothing reaching the east side of my home where the router is located. However, upon review, the first thing about MoCA is that it's another piece of hardware to purchase. Two, actually, a sender and a receiver. I also can't just connect to any coax cable outlet in the house. In my home, it would require me to find a way to get the coax cable halfway across the house to the attic (and the attic doesn't reach both sides of the house, which is why there's no coax outlet on the east side of our home). Even if I used a MoCA adapter, the entire trick would still be running a coax connection through the house to my bedroom (which would need to somehow get to the attic). There's no good way to do that, not even a coax outlet within 60' of the router that I could then decode in the attic to connect to my bedroom. If I could, that would be the way to go, even with the amount of homework it would take to untangle which cable is which. It would be simpler just to buy a CAT6 cable and tack it down along the route to my room - but that means going across open entries to both the kitchen and upstairs hallway (which leads to my bedroom), then across the door that opens to the outside (my balcony) and finally to my PC. The best solution is still keeping it simple & repositioning the external antenna (possibly a better antenna) and mounting the router closer to my bedroom to help bridge that 30' gap (or some kind of extension to the router that connects directly to it).

All this to explain why I'm trying to find out if there's a router antenna extension (or other extension) option for the sending side to pair with the extension cord I'm planning for the network adapter antenna on my PC to get the receiving end out from behind the television. Again, I'm ignorant of antennas that exist for a router that has no external antenna, which is why I'm seeking one - that would be a lot easier to mount under the counter that overhangs (effectively as a bar in the dining room) just under where the router is currently positioned. Any thoughts on that subject?
 
You actually do have coax at the router, it is how the cable company gets the signal to you. What is interesting about your particular router is it has a moca adapater built in so it makes the cabling easier and you only have to buy 1 moca unit for the remote location rather than having to buy 2. A moca adapter only cost about $60.

But that doesn't matter if the coax cable that is connected to the router does not somehow connect to the coax in your room. Like you say if you have to run a coax cable you might as well run ethernet. In many houses all the coax jacks are connected because they were used for old style cable tv boxes or roof antenna.

You can easily find antenna extension cables for your PC. You do not want to get longer than say 12-18 inches. You get huge amounts of signal loss for every foot of cable you put in. They make really thick microwave cable for longer runs but it is very expensive. Antenna on a router is much more difficult.
The antenna many times are either part of the motherboard or are soldered to it. It is technically illegal to make any changes to wifi antenna even adding cables to your pc. The laws require them to make it difficult on you.

Moving the antenna to the top of the case is going to be your best option to increases wifi.

After that you look at stuff like a wifi bridge where you use a ethernet cable to go part of the way and then a wifi device to send the signal the rest. They used to sell devices like this when game consoles and tv only had ethernet ports. Now they are uncommon but most repeater/extenders can be made to run as a client-bridge.
 
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Frontier is not a cable company so no, there's no coaxial. It'll be fiber to home to "ONT" from ONT to router via cat6 or cat 6e. I would recommend a good mesh network router. Like EERO. Get a base and 2 extensions for roughly 500 bucks. Well worth it. You can also go into the router settings and broaden out your wireless channels on the higher frequencies with channel bonding being that you have no neighbors that will be sending any wireless channel interference your way. Btw a mesh network is a series of overlapping wireless coverage, not dB degrading repeaters. That's another thing you can check, with the wifi analyzer check your signal strength in each room with the app. Your signal needs to be negative 75 or higher meaning the closer to zero the better with around negative 35 being the very best to get maximum performance out of each device.
 
Frontier is not a cable company so no, there's no coaxial. It'll be fiber to home to "ONT" from ONT to router via cat6 or cat 6e. I would recommend a good mesh network router. Like EERO. Get a base and 2 extensions for roughly 500 bucks. Well worth it. You can also go into the router settings and broaden out your wireless channels on the higher frequencies with channel bonding being that you have no neighbors that will be sending any wireless channel interference your way. Btw a mesh network is a series of overlapping wireless coverage, not dB degrading repeaters. That's another thing you can check, with the wifi analyzer check your signal strength in each room with the app. Your signal needs to be negative 75 or higher meaning the closer to zero the better with around negative 35 being the very best to get maximum performance out of each device.
Note sure why you think it is fiber.

He very clearly posted his router/modem

ARRIS NVG468MQ

That very much is a device that is hooked up via coax cable.
 

bgphilbin

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Appreciate the response. It is advertised as a fiber-optic service, but it is, indeed, connected by coax. I'll be using extension cables for the existing external antennas that came with my newly-installed networking card, but will be looking for superior external antennas (some of which come with the cables, although I need to do research to find out what antennas are decent). I get the issues with cable length, so will limit that And I'll look around for potential bridge hardware & see what I can find. Thanks.

And I do understand that there's cable coming into the east side of the house. It's obvious & I can see it entering the house from the outside and coming up to the router. It's just that none of my existing cable outlets reach the east side of the home. The attic - where the cabling terminates/reaches its source - is only on the west half of the home and has no access to the wall interiors on the east side of the house. So there's no way to connect the existing cable outlets to the east side where the router's cable runs into the home. Getting it to the other side would be a lot of unnecessary work and I don't want to run cable, ethernet or any other kind of wired connection under carpet and across the walkways and door openings.
 

USAFRet

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Frontier is not a cable company so no, there's no coaxial. It'll be fiber to home to "ONT" from ONT to router via cat6 or cat 6e.
My Verizon FiOS (fiber) "router" (G1100) has MOCA built in.
I have a single MOCA device upstairs, to provide a wired connection to those rooms.

Fiber to the house.
Coax from the ONT a splitter.
One leg to the G1100, one leg to the STB, one leg to the upstairs MOCA.
MOCA to a 5 port switch, then ethernet, upstairs for those devices.
Cat5e from the G1100 to a 16 port switch, to provide ethernet to all devices downstairs.

From the ONT it could be either coax or Cat5e.