best way to increase household wi-fi coverage

I can't agree with this enough. I have the AC1900 version and it's smokin' compared to what I was used to. Three floor house and I had various issues with coverage. Then I installed the NightHawk in the basement. I get coverage everywhere now, even in the yard outside. Had it for a few years now, so I'm sure they're available cheap or newer models are even better.

 

I love my nighthawk. All my problems went away when I bought my alien-spider router.

 

Good router fixes many problems. I use an Asus AC-5300 Tri-band 2.4Ghz/5Ghz/5Ghz router. I get speeds over 1Gbps over the air. It covers about 8000sqft of house plus the entire lawn and road infront of the house. I connect to the Wifi from inside the car on the road by the driveway. This thing never needs rebooting, but can automatically do it.

Didn't look like a spider to me. More like a fortress of doom... I paid full MSRP when it came out, worth every penny. Now you can find them used on ebay for under $100 if you look. Put one in my mom's house too (eBay find) and she has stopped having problems with the printer on the other side of the house "not working" i.e. disconnecting from the previously super old router I installed in 2008...

 

Thanks for posting this. Yep, some might no know what a mesh network is.

Anyway, the OP wanted something for coverage that is reasonably priced. A mesh network fits that category perfectly.

You can find three node google Wifi setup for reasonable prices. Alternatively, you can buy a single node and then add nodes as needed. There are some great prices on single nodes on Ebay. I think folks buy the three node package and split them up for sale on Ebay.

 

I would actually recommend against a mesh setup in this case. From her previous comments and just being around a while I imagine she lives in a smaller house. Having 3 APs in a small space will cause all sorts of contention and depending on where your device connects it might make lots of wireless hops to get to where it's going. Additionally, lots of devices today have a type of WiFi algorithm that basically is always looking out for the next best thing. It connects but then actually disconnects briefly, scans and tests other networks, especially those it is authorized to. So having 3 competing signals in a small space, lots of newer device might hop around all the time. This breaks streaming and speeds. Of course there are techie solutions to all these problems, but given the level of questioning I would say setting up these solutions like a true commercial property would be out of line. Therefore I would say just blast the area with a super strong single access point. Simple solution.

 

Google Wifi mesh nodes have no traditional 'contention' in the sense you are thinking of. They do NOT act as 'separate access points'. Instead, they all work together as a single access point. As for the external channel you connect to...it automatically seeks out the best external channel. Trust me, I live in an area with lots of channel contention and the Google Wifi network has been absolutely rock solid. Believe me, I was very skeptical at first and have had very powerful single access point routers as mentioned above...but have always had issues with reduced signal strength in the far reaches of the house. The mesh network solved all of that. As for performance, we have many high definition video streams going at once in all areas of the house without any hiccups whatsoever. Our other routers would hiccup every now and then with multiple streams going on. On top of that, Google Wifi has been the easiest network to manage. The Google Wifi app is great and makes setting everything up incredibly easy. It also has built in internal (mesh) and external bandwidth testing built in.

 

Depending on how old your house is, it could get interesting. At work we had to provide Wi-Fi access to an old stone mansion that was being converted into a mini B&B. Due to the stone & metal lath under the plaster, we needed to put a small wireless access point in every room to get decent coverage with our enterprise Wi-Fi system.
The metal lath acts like a Faraday cage screen, blocking the signal.

 

Interesting. Yeah, I'll admit that while our google wifi mesh netwok works better than anything we have had previously, we don't have masonry or metal, etc...so YMMV.

 

FYI - back when I was shopping for them I could get a node for around $90-$100.

 

As I have stated in an earlier comment, I really think your bottleneck is DSL. If all you want is to be able to receive signal downstairs, rather than spending hundreds of dollars on a new router, mesh or else, which will not increase the speed or bandwidth, you should try moving current DSL modem to a downstairs telephone jack. That would cost you zero dollar. If that doesn't work, you can try other things. Just my two cents.

 

That's just a splitter. You can use a cheap splitter like this ACCL Phone Splitter (Straight) RJ11 6P4C Male to 2 RJ11 6P4C Female, 1pk - Walmart.com on downstair phone jack to keep your phone and modem connected at the same time. But again, if moving DSL modem downstairs makes your upstair computer not be able to connect, that would not work for you.

 

The modem can connect directly to the other outlet as far as I am aware, if that helps any. You must keep the phone connected to the “filter”, then connect the other end of the filter to an outlet.

DSL requires a low pass filter to any telephony devices, ie phone and fax machine...

 

Is your phone plugged into a filter(an electronic widget all non modems plugged into a DSL home's phone jacks need) before it is plugged into the outlet? If not the jack labelled "phone" might have a filter built in. Otherwise, the two jacks are identical, and the labels are there because the company got tired of service calls about which jack the modem needed to be plugged into.

Moving the modem is the no cost thing to test first. If it works for your needs, then you can decide on how to get the desk top connected. There are three options for doing so that don't involve fishing cables through walls.

1. Give the desk top wifi, if signal reaches it. There are wifi dongles that plug into USB ports, and they have to be cheap because the FiOS installer just gave one at the time.
2. A long ethernet cable. Unslightly, and potential trip hazard, but cheap. I'm currently doing this. Learn from my mistake, if you go this route; don't get the cheapest cable. It worked fine, but the outer sheath was thin and soon breaking. Plus the cats found it somewhat appetizing. No such issues with the upgrade.
3. 'Install' a powerline network. The finger quotes is because installation involves plugging the nodes into a power outlet, and then plugging the modem and computer into the node. Instead of running a set of ethernet lines through the walls, powerline networks use the home's electrical wiring for transmitting the signal. A basic kit with two nodes can be had for less than $50, TP-Link TL-PA4010KIT AV500 Nano Powerline Ethernet Adapter Starter Kit - Walmart.com There are nodes that still allow use of the outlet if need be, and ones that are wifi hot spots if you need to expand wifi coverage later. The only downside I consider is that the nodes consume electricity. Which is only a con in comparison to a wired ethernet network or unslightly cable; wifi extenders and mesh wifi nodes probably consume more.