Wireless Signal Boosting Recommendations

satsol

Honorable
Dec 3, 2012
30
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10,530
A co-worker of mine has Xfinity phone/internet bundled, so he has a modem/wireless router/etc. in one main modem unit. His WiFi signal doesn't reach every part of his house and I really don't have that much knowledge in these multi-units.

I'm looking for recommendations to increase the strength of his WiFi. Repeaters are the only thing I want to avoid because he does not want to manually switch back and forth between "networks" if he gets out of range of one of them. He just wants a strong signal throughout the house if possible.

Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
Consumer WIFI hardware doesn't support roaming between signals very well. It is a crap shoot at best. You could create a new WIFI signal with all the same info (SSID, password, encryption etc) as the primary. The phone might choose to stay connected to the primary even though the signal is much weaker.
Cat5 connectivity back to the primary router with an access point will provide the best performance. After that, powerline networking in place of the cat 5 is the next best choice.
Consumer WIFI hardware doesn't support roaming between signals very well. It is a crap shoot at best. You could create a new WIFI signal with all the same info (SSID, password, encryption etc) as the primary. The phone might choose to stay connected to the primary even though the signal is much weaker.
Cat5 connectivity back to the primary router with an access point will provide the best performance. After that, powerline networking in place of the cat 5 is the next best choice.
 
Solution
Is it even viable to buy a nice beefy router and use the wireless capabilities of that instead of the mediocre built-in modem unit he's already using? Or is that not an ideal solution?
 


I don't know for sure with Xfiniti. The problem is that more and more features are tied into the ISP provided hardware (VOIP, video on demand, program guide, etc) it gets harder to get around it. You can always disable the WIFI on ISP hardware. That is what I do with FIOS. I have an ethernet connected access point in my living room and don't use the FIOS provided WIFI.

An expensive router doesn't guarantee any more WIFI coverage. It might have more features or more WIFI bandwidth but coverage isn't a given. Routers with external antennas can be updated with higher gain antennas. Than can improve WIFI coverage. Usually it requires adding access points to get acceptable coverage.
 
Interesting. I'll have to check if he's even in a situation where he can run some network cable for an access point.
There are a lot of wireless devices in the house being used by his family.
 


That is even a better reason to have multiple access points. You can split the load. Put some on one frequency/access point and others on a different frequency/access point.