Speeding up WiFi signal for all tenants in a 3-story 13-room boarding house

[marko1980]

I'm a landlord that currently provides WiFi for their tenants in a 3-story 13-room boarding house. I have a router and modem on the 3rd floor, the fastest I could find.

It reaches every room but the tenants on the 2nd and 3rd floors are complaining about the speeds, and some tenants on the 1st floor are complaining about connectivity issues. (They're an international group of tenants in a college town who stream and have video conversations.)

Is there any way to improve my setup?

Router: Linksys EA6900 AC1900 Smart Wi-Fi Dual-Band Router
Modem: Cisco DPC3208 Telephony Cable Modem
ISP: Charter

Bandwidth provided by Charter: up to 100 Mbps for downloads and up to 3 Mbps for uploads

Actual bandwidth based on a speedtest:
1st floor - download 4.9 3Mbps / upload 3.43 Mbps
2nd floor - download 16.42 Mbps / upload 4.07 Mbps
3rd floor - download 26.16 Mbps / upload 5.32 Mbps

RSSI:
1st floor -85 dBm
2nd floor -75 dBm
3rd floor -65 dBm

Estimated number of simultaneously connected devices: 13 - 26 (probably one laptop / computer per tenant and sometimes a tablet)

 

[kanewolf]

You are opening yourself up to a lot of potential problems legally. Anything these tennants do, is associated with YOU since you are the owner of the internet connection. If they illegally download copyrighted material -- It comes back to you. If they peddle child porn -- it comes back to you. If it were me, I would wire all the flats so that THEY can purchase their own internet to avoid the liability.

 

[marko1980]

You are opening yourself up to a lot of potential problems legally. Anything these tennants do, is associated with YOU since you are the owner of the internet connection. If they illegally download copyrighted material -- It comes back to you. If they peddle child porn -- it comes back to you. If it were me, I would wire all the flats so that THEY can purchase their own internet to avoid the liability.

I understand. I'm taking the risk. It's a big selling point.

 

[nigelivey]

Whats the bandwidth from your ISP?

 

[cherry blossoms]

If you believe it to be house construction issues causing decreased signal and deadspots, you could always try power line adapters instead of repeaters.

Posting overall bandwidth available from ISP and hardware specs might be beneficial.

Speedtest your line to make sure it is getting the promised bandwidth (the line calibration may require tweaking from the ISP)

If they are using a lot of video chat, how Symmetrical is your up/down?

Dedicated business connection or home connection?

 

[vmfantom]

I'm a landlord that currently provides WiFi for their tenants in a 3-story 13-room boarding house. I have a rouer and modem on the 3rd floor, the fastest I could find.

It reaches every room but the tenants on the 2nd and 3rd floors are complaining about the speeds. (They're an international group of tenants in a college town who stream and have video conversations.)

Is there any way to improve my setup?

I will update make / model and speeds later.

You'd really need to provide the router make/model and the bandwidth you get from your ISP to get this discussion started. If the 3rd floor is complaining, then it sounds like it could be an issue with concurrent throughput, Quality of Service (QoS, which can prioritize real-time traffic) or WMM, the ISP's network performance or a bandwidth bottleneck, or all of the above. To rule out the possibility of attenuation driving down wifi throughput, get an app like WiFi Analyser and find out what the SSID's relative signal strength indication (RSSI) is. A good rule of thumb is to stay stronger than -65 dBm for real-time traffic like Skype and so on.

Not all routers have QoS features, many have lackluster RAM or CPUs, and relatively few routers support MU-MIMO for higher throughput to simultaneous sessions on connected devices. And MU-MIMO routers behave differently with 2 connected devices versus 12. You can read https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32975-mu-mimo-retest-six-routers-compared for an overview of a handful of these routers.

So again, to get the best help for your question, you should report back with:
-RSSI in dBm
-Router make/model
-ISP name and downstream/upstream bandwidth in Mbps
-Estimated total number of simultaneously connected devices
-Estimated total number of simultaneously connected devices requiring real-time packet delivery (for stuff like Skype, not stuff like email)

 

[marko1980]

If you believe it to be house construction issues causing decreased signal and deadspots, you could always try power line adapters instead of repeaters.

Can you explain a bit about what a power line adapter is and how to install and purchase?

Note that I updated the information in my posting.

 

[marko1980]

I'm a landlord that currently provides WiFi for their tenants in a 3-story 13-room boarding house. I have a rouer and modem on the 3rd floor, the fastest I could find.

It reaches every room but the tenants on the 2nd and 3rd floors are complaining about the speeds. (They're an international group of tenants in a college town who stream and have video conversations.)

Is there any way to improve my setup?

I will update make / model and speeds later.

You'd really need to provide the router make/model and the bandwidth you get from your ISP to get this discussion started. If the 3rd floor is complaining, then it sounds like it could be an issue with concurrent throughput, Quality of Service (QoS, which can prioritize real-time traffic) or WMM, the ISP's network performance or a bandwidth bottleneck, or all of the above. To rule out the possibility of attenuation driving down wifi throughput, get an app like WiFi Analyser and find out what the SSID's relative signal strength indication (RSSI) is. A good rule of thumb is to stay stronger than -65 dBm for real-time traffic like Skype and so on.

Not all routers have QoS features, many have lackluster RAM or CPUs, and relatively few routers support MU-MIMO for higher throughput to simultaneous sessions on connected devices. And MU-MIMO routers behave differently with 2 connected devices versus 12. You can read https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32975-mu-mimo-retest-six-routers-compared for an overview of a handful of these routers.

So again, to get the best help for your question, you should report back with:
-RSSI in dBm
-Router make/model
-ISP name and downstream/upstream bandwidth in Mbps
-Estimated total number of simultaneously connected devices
-Estimated total number of simultaneously connected devices requiring real-time packet delivery (for stuff like Skype, not stuff like email)

Thank you. I updated the information in my posting.

 

[vmfantom]

I'm a landlord that currently provides WiFi for their tenants in a 3-story 13-room boarding house. I have a router and modem on the 3rd floor, the fastest I could find.

It reaches every room but the tenants on the 2nd and 3rd floors are complaining about the speeds, and some tenants on the 1st floor are complaining about connectivity issues. (They're an international group of tenants in a college town who stream and have video conversations.)

Is there any way to improve my setup?

Router: Linksys EA6900 AC1900 Smart Wi-Fi Dual-Band Router
Modem: Cisco DPC3208 Telephony Cable Modem
ISP: Charter

Bandwidth provided by Charter: up to 100 Mbps for downloads and up to 3 Mbps for uploads

Actual bandwidth based on a speedtest:
1st floor - download 4.9 3Mbps / upload 3.43 Mbps
2nd floor - download 16.42 Mbps / upload 4.07 Mbps
3rd floor - download 26.16 Mbps / upload 5.32 Mbps

RSSI:
1st floor -85 dBm
2nd floor -75 dBm
3rd floor -65 dBm

Estimated number of simultaneously connected devices: 13 - 26 (probably one laptop / computer per tenant and sometimes a tablet)

Thanks for adding the stats! Anything below -65 dBm is likely inviting packet loss, and would modulate very low throughput (maybe QPSK 3/4 or lower). You can also see from Skype's recommendations that the upstream bandwidth from Charter is too low to be split by so many Skype sessions. Plus, if the router's on the 3rd floor and your results are still -65 dBm on that floor, the walls or distances must be attenuating the signal by much more than in the average drywall style US house. So there are two things you can do - upgrade to a commercial account and get 300 Mbps down/20 Mbps up, and distribute the signal over cabling. Do you have any Ethernet or coaxial cabling in the walls that can reach more of the rooms on those floors?

 

[marko1980]

The rooming house is from the late 1800s and is of plaster and wood. There is drywall here and there from repairs or slight modifications.

There is no ethernet cabling but there was coaxial cabling to the rooms at one point in the distant past.

 

[vmfantom]

The rooming house is from the late 1800s and is of plaster and wood. There is drywall here and there from repairs or slight modifications.

There is no ethernet cabling but there was coaxial cabling to the rooms and one point in the distant past.

Is there still coax in the walls? If so, one of the few options that comes to mind without cutting up the wall would be wifi over coax, and according to https://www.coaxifi.com/routers your EA6900 would be compatible. How you might distribute the wifi signal over coax depends on whether the coax in the boarding house is daisy chained versus 'home run,' but it might be cheaper than using a half dozen meshed Orbi range extenders to compensate for the wall thickness.

 

[marko1980]

"Is there still coax in the walls?"

Yes, some rooms have coax but some do not. What adapters or electronics would I need to use the coax? Would it compromise speed? If I needed to install coax would it be better in that case to just install ethernet cabling which I believe is cat5?

"... using a half dozen meshed Orbi range extenders to compensate for the wall thickness."

Is the Netgear Orbi system dependable? Is it better than a Linksys meshed system? I think each floor is at least a thousand square feet, so I'm guessing the three floors is about 3000 - 4000 sq. ft. of space. How much would such a system cost? Would it then be fast enough for Netflix and Skype?

 

[vmfantom]

"Is there still coax in the walls?"

Yes, some rooms have coax but some do not. What adapters or electronics would I need to use the coax? Would it compromise speed? If I needed to install coax would it be better in that case to just install ethernet cabling which I believe is cat5?

"... using a half dozen meshed Orbi range extenders to compensate for the wall thickness."

Is the Netgear Orbi system dependable? Is it better than a Linksys meshed system? I think each floor is at least a thousand square feet, so I'm guessing the three floors is about 3000 - 4000 sq. ft. of space. How much would such a system cost? Would it then be fast enough for Netflix and Skype?

The thing about installing Cat5e is that your tenants want wifi, so you'd need to install a bunch of Power over Ethernet access points to deliver that wifi, plus a gateway controller. And exactly how many you need without creating destructive interference (from places where the APs can't 'hear' each other but can still interfere with each other's channels) would take professional RF hardware to evaluate. If you think you'd need to distribute more than 300-500 Mbps aggregate downstream bandwidth for all tenants at a given time, though, you might need to use these.

With coax, you can create a distributed antenna system like in this L-com application diagram. A simple way of using common coaxial cable to deliver wifi is described on this setup guide. The adapters don't cost much and you could use them with your EA6900. If that fails, there's always amplifiers you can put between the router antenna port and the antenna. This should be fine for distributing 300-500 Mbps from a single router to multiple rooms.

Orbi extenders seem to be the best for transmit power, but I take back my comment about "half a dozen" as it seems that they max out at 4 when meshed together. Hard to say how many it takes to solve the problem versus how many it takes to make it worse (via interference). Orbi outperforms the Linksys
Velop as well as the Luma, eero, and Amplifi, and actually the Velop is among the worst mesh systems for throughput (at 1/10th the Orbi's throughput when tested). Still, any meshed extenders will deliver less throughput than the router alone.

 

[marko1980]

"... Cat5e ... so you'd need to install a bunch of Power over Ethernet access points to deliver that wifi, plus a gateway controller."

Where do I get that stuff? I'm not extremely savvy technically.

"And exactly how many you need without creating destructive interference (from places where the APs can't 'hear' each other but can still interfere with each other's channels) would take professional RF hardware to evaluate."

Does RF = Radio Frequency? Where do I find such equipment, or are there companies that can install this stuff for me?

"With coax, you can create a distributed antenna system like in this L-com application diagram. A simple way of using common coaxial cable to deliver wifi is described on this setup guide. The adapters don't cost much and you could use them with your EA6900. If that fails, there's always amplifiers you can put between the router antenna port and the antenna. This should be fine for distributing 300-500 Mbps from a single router to multiple rooms."

Are these amplifiers offered by the same company you linked to with the setup guide? Is that the company you recommend?

"Orbi extenders seem to be the best for transmit power"

So do you think then that using the Orbi extender system is the best option so far? And this wouldn't require a change in service from Charter?

 

[vmfantom]

"... Cat5e ... so you'd need to install a bunch of Power over Ethernet access points to deliver that wifi, plus a gateway controller."

Where do I get that stuff? I'm not extremely savvy technically.

"And exactly how many you need without creating destructive interference (from places where the APs can't 'hear' each other but can still interfere with each other's channels) would take professional RF hardware to evaluate."

Does RF = Radio Frequency? Where do I find such equipment, or are there companies that can install this stuff for me?

"With coax, you can create a distributed antenna system like in this L-com application diagram. A simple way of using common coaxial cable to deliver wifi is described on this setup guide. The adapters don't cost much and you could use them with your EA6900. If that fails, there's always amplifiers you can put between the router antenna port and the antenna. This should be fine for distributing 300-500 Mbps from a single router to multiple rooms."

Are these amplifiers offered by the same company you linked to with the setup guide? Is that the company you recommend?

"Orbi extenders seem to be the best for transmit power"

So do you think then that using the Orbi extender system is the best option so far? And this wouldn't require a change in service from Charter?

Just to sum up, your potential options for improving wifi signal strength would include:
-Adding amplifiers to your EA6900
-Adding higher gain antennas to your EA6900
-Distributing the wifi signal to other rooms' cable outlets via WoCA (wifi over coax), maybe with an amplifier if needed
-Using MoCA (Ethernet over coax adapters) to connect a LAN port of the EA6900 to a WAN port of additional router(s), and setting the routers to bridge mode
-Running new Ethernet cabling to different rooms, and installing EnGenius or Ubiquiti PoE (Power over Ethernet) access points in those rooms, plus a PoE switch/controller that would replace your EA6900
-See if meshed range extenders improve signal strength enough to compensate for the reduction in Mbps they cause

In terms of easy and cheap options, you could see whether this WoCA adapter works with the coax cable you already have in your walls. The coax run would probably need to be a straight shot, router antenna port->outlet 1 -> cabling run -> outlet 2 -> wifi antenna.

From what I've seen, the most affordable amplifiers are made by Sunhans. There are some dual-band models, but most are designed for drones. Otherwise, you can find single-band 2.4 GHz amplifiers for under $40, one amplifier per antenna port on your EA6900. So if nothing else, I'd expect the 3rd floor RSSI to improve from -65 dBm to maybe -32 dBm in the same testing location.

RF=radio frequency. EnGenius and Ubiquiti does have local distributors that might be able to point you to an installation company.

Orbi might work, or might not. It depends on the distances, thickness of walls/I-beams/floor joists/etc., and layout of the rooms.

So from the looks of things, WoCA is the cheapest option to just test out, buying higher gain antennas is second cheapest, and amplifiers are third cheapest, buying MoCA adapters and a second router in bridge mode is fourth cheapest, Orbi is fifth cheapest (probably - depends on how many is enough/too many per the earlier message), and EnGenius/Ubiquiti APs + PoE gateway + running Ethernet cabling would be the most expensive option.