Upgrading home Wifi

[vkm]

Gentlemen,

So my home wifi is pathetically only using our Rogers wireless modem (100mbps down, 10 up, Might upgrade to 250 down, 20 up), which is on the top floor, near an exterior wall in an office which is not a corner of the house.

Moving into the basement, I'm having wifi cutting in and out and its just slow. Enough that Netflix on my blueray player still works but that's about it.

 

I looked into extenders, garbage. Looked into powerline extenders, not bad, if i was going to a wired PC. But I'm not, I'm going to 2 laptops, 2 phones and a BlueRay player with Netflix.

 

I actually went out and grabbed a Netgear Nighthawk r7000 AC1900. I heard good things from many sources. BUT I haven't taken it out of the box yet because I stumbled upon Tri-band routers and wondered if it would be beneficial in my house. I cannot run wired to the basement, just not going to happen. Also not going to move the modem as new cable in will have to be punched through a wall again, not going to fly.

 

Total devices in the house:

4 modern cell phones

3 modern laptops, 2 older laptops

2 new smart TV's with netflix as main wireless usage

1 older BlueRay player with Netflix use

2 wired PC's

1 modern tablet, 1 older tablet

 

What would be your suggestions? Being the live-in "IT guy", I have a decent budget as I've managed to pry on some inconvenient Netflix buffering on a pair of brand new TV's and suggested upgrades to our "old junk" network setup.

The Critical area is the basement as that's where I'm now in with my wireless devices. My main workstation is wired upstairs in my office.

Wifi has to reach smoothly from 2nd floor to basement. The basement was actually finished with steel studs instead of traditional wood studs, I dont know how this effects signal. Rest of the house is wood studs.

Door to the room with the router/modem stays open most of the time, opening up into the middle of the house with clear shot at 1st floor. Basement does have a door to it.

[Oshino Shinobu]

My suggestion would be a Ubiquiti UniFi AC Pro AP on the ground floor. For that, you will need to run a cable to where the access point is located, but it's a better solution than trying to get WiFi to penetrate multiple walls/floors. 

 

Ideally, you want it in the middle of the house, but seeing as your router is high up, you can move the access point down a bit more to get better WiFi signal in the basement. 

[vkm]

1 hour ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

My suggestion would be a Ubiquiti UniFi AC Pro AP on the ground floor. For that, you will need to run a cable to where the access point is located, but it's a better solution than trying to get WiFi to penetrate multiple walls/floors. 

 

Ideally, you want it in the middle of the house, but seeing as your router is high up, you can move the access point down a bit more to get better WiFi signal in the basement. 

 

Can't run any wires unfortunately. And I can't move the modem as I will lose my wired connection to my main workstation which wont work.

I wish there was a damn conduit that ran to each floor in every house where you can upgrade wiring when necessary instead of punching holes in walls...

[Oshino Shinobu]

19 minutes ago, vkm said:

Can't run any wires unfortunately. And I can't move the modem as I will lose my wired connection to my main workstation which wont work.

I wish there was a damn conduit that ran to each floor in every house where you can upgrade wiring when necessary instead of punching holes in walls...

You could look into wiring up the AP using powerline. Not as good as running a wire, but still an improvement over a repeater or just crappy WiFi. 

[vkm]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You could look into wiring up the AP using powerline. Not as good as running a wire, but still an improvement over a repeater or just crappy WiFi. 

Ah now that's not a bad idea!

[Remix]

If you have coax available in your home, please consider using MoCA adapters over Powerline. Powerline will probably never exceed 100 Mbps in your home, despite being marked as Gigabit. Many variables come into play with Powerline, because it uses the existing wiring in your home. It may seem like something you don't want to do, but you should consider running an ethernet cable if at all possible. If you cannot do that, consider MoCA as an alternative. MoCA will be much more stable, and provide higher speeds.

[beavo451]

Take a look at Google's new mesh router system. 

[Remix]

26 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Take a look at Google's new mesh router system. 

If you must use wireless, do consider this type of system. MoCA would always be preferred.