Question Unstable wireless connection from my basement

[Carusoswi]

My wireless enters my home in the basement. Internet connection is fine for text, but zoom reports the connection as unstable, and often my connections to meetings is lost, although most times, zoom will reconnect. I have an inoperable (disconnected) wall phone in my 1st floor kitchen if that could be used to resolve the problem. Seeking your advice. Thanks for any help in advance.

Carusoswi

 

[bill001g]

Wifi would work great if everyone lived in a house that had one large open room

It is pretty unpredictable how well wifi will work in some houses. There are people that live in apartments that have poured concrete floors and walls. Concrete does a great job of absorbing wifi energy.

It all depends on how old your house is and what kind of wire was used for the phone. Very new houses I don't think they even install phone jacks. Houses that are say less that 30 years old they many times actually use ethernet cable. Very old houses they used the red/black/yellow/green wires.

So first you need to check the wires. The very old red/black/yellow/green wires are not twisted and have close to zero change of passing data......there are some special switch that run DSL over private phone wires.

After that you really want 4 pairs of wires this will give you the ability to maybe get gigabit speeds. If there are only 2 pair you can still get 100mbps. Although the wire could be cat3 a lot of it was actually cat5 and sometime you can get 1gbit over cat3

Next you really need a direct wire between the basement and the kitchen. Phones many times can be daisy chained room to room. For best results if you do not have direct wire remove any jacks in between and splice the wire. You also want to remove any extra wires going out of the kitchen.

If all else fails consider powerline networks. This is not as fast as wifi but you still should get over 100mbps which is good enough for most things.

Note you did not mention if you have coax cable in both location. MoCA technology can easily run 1gbit.

 

[cruisetung]

You have to describe what enter your basement wirelessly?

Is it 5G home network? What wireless ISP? What kind of data plan and subscription speed?

What router brand/model do you own/use? Did you place the router close enough to a window if there is any?

What's your client device? Smartphone/PC? What model and it's wifi capability?

Be noted that wifi signal can't turn corners. All it can do is deflection, reflection and penetration. If you have solid walls and you want to get good signals on other floors, the best chance is pull a cable to other floors and setup APs.

As suggested by @bill001g , if the inoperable phone line is cat3 then it's probably useless. If it's cat5/cat5e (8 wires) then there is some hope.

 

[Carusoswi]

In the basement, there is a little phone box wall mounted. White round wire comes to it from the garage. White wire runs from that box across the basement ceiling to the rest of the house. Basement modem/router is Verizon G3100. From outside, the white wire comes into the garage into a white wall mounted box approximately 18" x 10". Mounted outside next to electric meters is a grey box labeled Telephone Interface sni4600.

I hope you find this information useful in making suggestions to me.

Thank you for your quick response.

Carusoswi

 

[Carusoswi]

My "client device" is my Lenovo Thinkbook 16 laptop.

 

[cruisetung]

OK. So your Verizon G3100 802.11ax wifi router is MOCA capable.

So you should be able to acquire another MOCA adapter to extend the wired ethernet signal to any place where you have a coaxial cable outlet.

Then add a wireless extender or another wireless router running in AP mode.

I believe @bill001g has more experience on this.

===
More info.

Are there any moca adapters that have wifi capability?

https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg==_9d4cac19-ab94-4547-bd39-2db94fe0de0c

 

[bill001g]

I will assume the verizon box plugs into some other box that has a fiber connected.

I would open the box in the garage and look at what kind of wire that white wire really is. It might be marked on the outside of the cable. You are hoping to see something like 4 pair cat5e printed.

What you hope to find in the garage box that the wires look like ethernet cables

Going to be a pain with there is only 1 wire connected to multiple jacks. Ethernet has each jack running a separate wire back to the basement or closet.

What you need to figure out is what order the phone jacks are connected and try to disconnect all except the one in the kitchen. If the wire runs directly from the garage to the rest of the house with no phone jack in the basement you are going to have to cut the wire so you can place a ethernet jack or plug on the cable. I would inspect things carefully before you cut wires.
You want to be pretty sure you know the path to the kitchen before you start cutting stuff.

 

[Carusoswi]

My wireless enters my home in the basement. Internet connection is fine for text, but zoom reports the connection as unstable, and often my connections to meetings is lost, although most times, zoom will reconnect. I have an inoperable (disconnected) wall phone in my 1st floor kitchen if that could be used to resolve the problem. Seeking your advice. Thanks for any help in advance.

Carusoswi

I do not know how to mark this post "solved", but it turns out that my wife has two TP-Link AC1200 units. I am enjoying a very stable zoom meeting as I type this. If you are able to mark this topic "solved", please do so. Thanks for your help.

Carusoswi

 

[Ralston18]

@Carusoswi

On the right side of each post do you see a small circle containing a checkmark?

If so, you should be able to select the post that helped you the most and click the circle/checkmark icon to select that posts as Best Answer.