[SOLVED] Is there a good way to tell if a new router would help?

[axlrose]

My router is a few years old. Wifi is meh, especially now that we added Alexa to our home over the holidays. I purchased a few hundred dollars worth of inline wall units, and they don't work in our house. Apparently our house is large and has too many circuits (phases?) so they are pretty much worthless. I'm wondering if a new router would give us any faster speeds, or more importantly, any greater coverage? Is there anything new in the last few years? Has technology increased range at all etc.? Thanks.

 

[bill001g]

The actual range of the signal is the same as when wifi first came out. The distance the signal goes most based on the output power of the radio. This is regulated by the government and has not changed. What has changed is how much data that can be send in the signal because they are using better encoding methods. Now you technically get more data at certain distances but combining the theory of signal level and the speed you get makes it almost impossible to get a consistent testing method.

Signal level is purely DB or number of bars for the uneducated.

You can look the numbers up in the documents they are required to file with the fcc but most router transmit very close to the legal maximum. Most problems are not the router anyway. End devices like cell phones have tiny antenna and transmit at lower power to save battery.

Powerline units should work well in most houses. The newest ones based on the AV2 technology tend to have much less issues with the circuit problem since they use the ground. If you are using the older av200 or av500 models they do not work as well. There are also powerline units based on a standard called g.hn instead of homeplug that people say work well also. Not sure I have never used those units.

If you have tv coax in rooms you might consider using MoCA devices.

 

[axlrose]

Thanks for the info. House wasn't wired for anything. Just ran a hardline myself from the basement to my new office on the main floor. Only internet into the house goes into the basement, which is good as the home theater is there, but not good for wifi in the rest of the house. I purchased these over the holidays with high hopes they would help out the new alexa devices we also got over the holidays. No go at all. Actually make the connection worse. I took the one out of my bedroom because I started getting things like connected but no internet, and I'd unplug them and it would work fine.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0725LPTZR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I was told out house has too many circuits and phases for these to work in our house. I am trying to figure out if a new router or a mesh system would improve things at all. The girls' bedrooms are the two bedrooms on the opposite end of the house from the router right now. I have an old router setup in the farthest bedroom as a (can't remember the term) and the signal comes off of that just fine, running through the inline adapter ironically.

Maybe I'll try to look into these mesh systems...

 

[bill001g]

Some mesh systems are better than the old repeaters but they still have 2 radio signals so you have 2 signals that can be interfered with.