Neighbor's Google Homes are hogging the WiFi

[Corndawg]

So, I've got a relatively harmless problem.

 

Short story is:

 

Our apartment's WiFi is shared by 4 apartments and it gets really slow sometimes and loses connection constantly. The router and modem are very high end and I suspect our neighbors with 5 Google devices are causing problems.

 

Long story is:

 

About a year ago my wife and I moved into these apartments her uncle owns. It's 4 apartments stacked 2x2 and we live in the top right. 

 

Our neighbors in the bottom left are the ones with the WiFi modem and router and the WiFi comes in in the very bottom left of their apartment, basically the furthest away from our apartment. The modem and router are both very high end and hypothetically should have no problem handling 4 small families at a time, however...

 

Randomly through the day, wether it's while watching videos, scrolling social media, or working on homework, our devices will have a hard time communicating with the router for a few minutes. Not to mention loading times are terribly slow at full to 80% signal strength constantly. I've had to diagnose internet problems for the apartments multiple times, a few have been on the ISP side, but through it all my uncle gave me the login credentials to the router so I can better diagnose problems in the future. 

 

Our neighbors that have the router and modem in their apartment are not there most tech savvy. But they do have 5 Google devices. One Google home mini in every room and a TV (I can see them all in the Google Home app). On my Android phone I constantly get notifications about their speakers playing, casting, etc. I constantly hear a little devil on my shoulder telling me to turn them off when I see the notifications.

 

My intuition says the constant upload and download the 5 Google devices produce are what's slowing down our router. I would have no problem approaching them about decreasing their Google home usage, but I'm not sure if they really are the culprit. I'm thinking of asking my uncle to run Ethernet cables to put the router closer to center of this problem persists, but I'm not sure if that would help either. 

 

I don't know if there's anything more I can do in our router settings. I've switched to the most open channels on 2.5 and 5 GHz and have reserved the Mac addresses for important devices. Let me know of any suggestions.

[Geoff35674567]

you have maxed out your wifi capabilities. You need to run ethernet to every apartment, or give each apartment their own ISP connection. 4 families is a lot of devices.

[NumLock21]

How about telling each of the tenants to get their own internet service and there problem solved.Running ethernet cables isn't going to work, since you only have a single ISP connection.

[SpookyCitrus]

Personally I'd get my own separate service, 4 families is a lot for one router and modem, especially with how many devices connect nowadays. You have TV's, computers, cell phones, consoles, assistant devices, tablets, smart watches. Hell even fridges, pretty much everything is connectable now, you're 100% overloading your equipment. You have two options you can revamp the equipment and run ethernet to each apartment and set up individual access points, or you can get separate services for each unit(how it should of been from the start).

[Alex Atkin UK]

Well firstly, if its one AP for all the apartments then having it in one corner is a bad idea - it needs to be central to the four apartments.   Is there not a central communal corridor you could ceiling mount an AP?  This is exactly how I've seen hotels do this.

 

Secondly, having four apartments all on the same network segment is a bad idea in itself.  It means there is zero security to stop people from one apartment from messing up the hardware of people in another.  You absolutely should NOT be getting your neighbours smart devices showing up on your phone, that's a horrible idea.

 

I'd be wanting each apartment to have its own SSID or login, isolating all their clients to their own VLAN.

 

The fact you mention the router and modem are "high end" sets off warning bells to me, as for a setup like this you should be using a dedicated business-grade WiFi Access Point.  The only combined router/AP I'm aware of that might be high-end enough for this setup would be the Ubiquiti Dream Machine.

[Corndawg]

I should clarify, we're all mostly college students so I really shouldn't use the word family. The 4 families are 2 newly married couples, one family with 2 small kids, and one single mom with one small kid. So it's really 7 adults and not 4 typical size families. But I agree, that's too much for one access point.

 

These apartments are pretty old and the internet only comes in at that one access point. Would it work to run a separate router out of the modem to each apartment or have one router for two apartments? Would you have to get a specific modem to handle extra routers? I think the modem he has right now is rated for 10 gigabits

 

I'm also not sure how much my uncle(landlord) is willing to invest in extra access points because he might be selling soon. But I can still talk to him. There is an old coaxial cable under our air conditioning but I don't think it goes to anything working now.

[Alex Atkin UK]

The router may be fine, its the WiFi Access Points that generally struggle, especially if its combined in the router.

 

If its genuinely a business-rated device, it should handle hundreds of clients, whereas consumer routers WiFi can fall over at 20 or even less.

[dalekphalm]

21 hours ago, Corndawg said:

I should clarify, we're all mostly college students so I really shouldn't use the word family. The 4 families are 2 newly married couples, one family with 2 small kids, and one single mom with one small kid. So it's really 7 adults and not 4 typical size families. But I agree, that's too much for one access point.

 

These apartments are pretty old and the internet only comes in at that one access point. Would it work to run a separate router out of the modem to each apartment or have one router for two apartments? Would you have to get a specific modem to handle extra routers? I think the modem he has right now is rated for 10 gigabits

 

I'm also not sure how much my uncle(landlord) is willing to invest in extra access points because he might be selling soon. But I can still talk to him. There is an old coaxial cable under our air conditioning but I don't think it goes to anything working now.

What is the make and model number of all the network gear?

 

If the “router” is high end enough you could do VLAN’s and then run access points to each apartment (or even just one per floor) and give each apartment their own SSID and segmented security. 
 

But your router would need to support that.