[SOLVED] Verizon fios signal is very weak upstairs

[tezarin]

Hi all,
i have Verizon Fios in my house and the signal is only good on the first floor and when I go upstairs, the signal becomes really weak. With kids being out of school and constantly playing in the downstairs living room, I need to attend my meetings right next to them which is not working out too well!
is there any way I could make the signal stronger upstairs?

Thank you

 

[tezarin]

Using an ethernet cable will only test the maximum theoretical potential that wifi extender could be capable of. However, wifi has more variables involved, so you may not see the max theoretical speed using wifi.

Easiest way to test the upstairs access point is to get a large metal mixing bowl or large metal box and place it over the downstairs access point. Then go upstairs and connect to your network, you'll know for sure that you're connected to the upstairs access point, and you can do your speedtests from there. You'll want to make sure everyone else has their phones, tablets, computers and consoles turned off.

No equipment provided by your ISP will have advanced QOS algorithms like cake. I haven't seen that in my experience, in fact most ISP routers will have a bare minimum of software on them. This is because the simpler the software, the less that can go wrong. When being responsible for large deployments of equipment, you want to keep everything simple so the on-site techs and phone tech support have less to troubleshoot. Most of the time, a simple reset will fix issues.

For something with more advanced software, you have to buy your own router, set up, and maintain your own equipment. This is only recommended for people that are tech savvy.

Thank you so much for your help. I have been in the IT field (software/Cloud) for around 23 years, don't do networking though but I can figure things out. I am more of a system engineer/AWS person but I would love to see if I can do the same CAKE setup you have at home so I'll start googling

 

[gggplaya]

Thank you so much for your help. I have been in the IT field (software/Cloud) for around 23 years, don't do networking though but I can figure things out. I am more of a system engineer/AWS person but I would love to see if I can do the same CAKE setup you have at home so I'll start googling

Cool, I'm an electrical engineer. With the work from home situation last year, I helped a few coworkers set up FQ_Codel/CAKE in their homes as well. It has worked out really well for them. It won't solve all the issues with teams, even with gigabit internet at my house and no one else in the house and everything thing else turned off. Plus my docking station being hardwired with ethernet, the Teams server will still flake out for some reason. Nothing you can do when it's server side lag. But if everyone else is having a great meeting and you're the only one lagging, it's likely a problem in your home.

For my house, I built my own x86 router using some old computer parts, and run OpenWRT software(free). This was the only way to get enough processing power to shape gigabit internet. Most off the shelf routers, even super expensive ($400) routers can only shape up to about 300-400mbps. I installed the router downstairs and I use 2 ubiquiti access points for wifi access for my devices. This setup has been super stable and served me well for about 2 years now. I've yet to ever reboot any of my equipment due to any kind of problem.

I've tested the CAKE QOS algorithim in my house by artificially limiting my bandwidth to a lower speed (30mbps) and then using various laptops, game consoles, ipads, and smartphones to download as much as they could and stream netflix at the same time. The Netflix streams worked great without any buffering and the download speeds for the xbox and laptops were exactly what I expected if you were to share the bandwidth equitably(equitable is the perfect word here, not equal). No one device could hog the bandwidth for themselves and the internet bandwidth was used to its full potential. I was insanely impressed with how well it worked.

If you do plan to work from home permanently, it may be worth the investment to get good equipment for your house.

 

[tezarin]

Cool, I'm an electrical engineer. With the work from home situation last year, I helped a few coworkers set up FQ_Codel/CAKE in their homes as well. It has worked out really well for them. It won't solve all the issues with teams, even with gigabit internet at my house and no one else in the house and everything thing else turned off. Plus my docking station being hardwired with ethernet, the Teams server will still flake out for some reason. Nothing you can do when it's server side lag. But if everyone else is having a great meeting and you're the only one lagging, it's likely a problem in your home.

For my house, I built my own x86 router using some old computer parts, and run OpenWRT software(free). This was the only way to get enough processing power to shape gigabit internet. Most off the shelf routers, even super expensive ($400) routers can only shape up to about 300-400mbps. I installed the router downstairs and I use 2 ubiquiti access points for wifi access for my devices. This setup has been super stable and served me well for about 2 years now. I've yet to ever reboot any of my equipment due to any kind of problem.

I've tested the CAKE QOS algorithim in my house by artificially limiting my bandwidth to a lower speed (30mbps) and then using various laptops, game consoles, ipads, and smartphones to download as much as they could and stream netflix at the same time. The Netflix streams worked great without any buffering and the download speeds for the xbox and laptops were exactly what I expected if you were to share the bandwidth equitably(equitable is the perfect word here, not equal). No one device could hog the bandwidth for themselves and the internet bandwidth was used to its full potential. I was insanely impressed with how well it worked.

If you do plan to work from home permanently, it may be worth the investment to get good equipment for your house.

No wonder you are very experienced with these projects, love the field you are in BTW but try to stay in DevOps as I really don't like networkin (well, except for AWS virtual networking/VPC stuff). I remember tomatoing (!) a router many years ago but can't remember how it went since were with Comcast back then and switched to Fios shortly after. If hopefully kids go to school (after getting vaccinated) I can just work downstairs. If I can figure out how to verify that the new extender that I bought is working, then I guess I can dare to take my google meet meetings upstairs.