Weak Signal at Back of House

[xrMike]

We recently moved into a 2800 square foot home that is shaped like an "L".

Our Service Provider is "Etheric Networks". They have a tower on a peak that's about a mile away that beams our interwebs into a small dish on the roof above our master bedroom.

They highly recommended this mesh system to me (the one with 3 routers):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WMLPSRL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Their technician came out and installed and configured them also, at the same time he installed the dish on the roof. It's been very nice, worked without a hitch so far for 3+ months, with zero input from me. It just works. Gamer son is happy (biggest data hog) and rest of family says it's much faster than the service we had in previous home, through our cable TV company.

I had the guy put 1 router at each end of the "L" and the last router at the middle, where the 2 "lines of the L" join. Everybody in our house has a smart TV in their room, is constantly on their laptop, boy gaming all the time, everybody's happy.

Oh, I also bought these for a cleaner installation of the routers:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08D613BG5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

No visible wiring this way.

[xfer42]

Gamer son is happy (biggest data hog) and rest of family says it's much faster than the service we had in previous home, through our cable TV company

Thats the real test.
I put computers in both of my kids rooms. They can only play games on the weekend, during a small window. It was sad seeing them get all excited to play Fortnite just to have to both wait for a 4GB+ update over wireless.

Then they would get kicked for high latency. When I would check in on how many kills, they were always at 0. Dad cant let that happen.

We were using ethernet over power, then switched to netextenders. Single computer performance was ok, but once the traffic picked up, packets would just get dropped. I was considering doing some mesh, but didnt want to take a risk as its still half duplex over wireless. Good to hear it passes the gamer test. Running cables sucks.

[xrMike]

When I would check in on how many kills, they were always at 0. Dad cant let that happen.

Good Dad.

My wireless provider (I guess that's what you'd call them, there are no wires involved, just their tower and my small dish/antenna) guarantees 50mbps with a 2.5 TB data cap. I pay $180/month for that level of service. I don't know if that's good or bad, relatively, but everybody at our house is much happier now.

I'll do a speed test occasionally and I'm usually getting 75mbps rather than 50, so I'm happy too, getting 50% more speed than promised.

And the mesh system has been flawless, no dead or weak spots like the old house with a single router...

[crufflers]

OMG, just toss in a $40-$50 RE450... why would anyone spend $850 or whatever?? Because it sounds cool to say "MESH"??

"2400 SQ FT" !!!!

[Gun Kraft]

I guess I'm old school (but then I'm an old fart who does his own Cat5e 568B wiring) but when I moved into my current place I hired a contractor to run cable to three different living areas, the master bedroom and garage. Four lines to each location, all terminating in a closet where the internet comes in from my provider. 20 lines total because cable is (relatively) cheap but contractors are expensive.

When I first started doing this 10Mbps ethernet was standard. Then 100Mbps, and now gigabit connections are becoming common. Each step along the way it was easy for me to swap out the router in the back end to boost the connection speed of hardwired components like computers, streaming boxes, etc. Wi-Fi traffic is relatively light and easily handled by the base station and UniFi access points. As more things need internet connection it's easy to plug in without having to worry about crowding Wi-Fi bandwidth.

My suggestion is to echo hermosabeach's first option: crawl under your house and run several cables (because cable is cheap) from your current wireless router's location to another closet at least 2/3rds of the way across your house and stick an access point there. I like Ubiquiti's UniFi product since it's easy to configure and works well.

Or do what I did and hire a contractor to run cable from a central location to multiple spots throughout your house for hardwired connections so intranet data transfers can happen really fast (game consoles, printers, shared media servers, NAS, etc) and bandwidth hogging computers have dedicated connections. That leaves wi-fi for guests, phones and tablets.

[crufflers]

Wifi and powerline (for wired connections) both work in every room in my house... 3400 sq feet. Powerline is more stable than wifi, similar to dedicated ethernet for internet access IMHO. I use one RE450 because I had some outside cameras that had weak wifi signal.

But OP had a weak signal in part of a 2400 sq ft house... I assume it is working even though the signal is weak. A booster is cheap and effective. Why make him feel like he needs to scrap everything to get his 400 Mbps to the last few rooms??? He already has a router that does Simultaneous 2.4GHz 600Mbps and 5GHz 1300Mbps connections for 1.9Gbps of total available bandwidth.

Come on.

[xrMike]

OMG, just toss in a $40-$50 RE450... why would anyone spend $850 or whatever?? Because it sounds cool to say "MESH"??

"2400 SQ FT" !!!!

I'm guessing you don't mesh well with others. In fact, you sound like a hot mesh to me...

[crufflers]

I'm guessing you don't mesh well with others. In fact, you sound like a hot mesh to me...

Say MESH again

[BinaryGeek]

Look up power line Ethernet. You can run internet over the copper powelines in your house, and then you can hook up a router at any outlet in you home.

It works pretty well. With your modum, it should easily support your internet speeds.

[crufflers]

Look up power line Ethernet. You can run internet over the copper powelines in your house, and then you can hook up a router at any outlet in you home.

It works pretty well. With your modum, it should easily support your internet speeds.

They even have combo products where the powerline carries the internet access and also has a radio to cover the area where it sits in an outlet, and provides wired connection in that area.

Powerline connections are not as stable as wired via a good switch, but they are my preferred method for internet connecting things like crypto miners, consoles, smart TV's, Roku, Shield, etc... easy way to put a NIC socket anywhere there is an outlet temporarily.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AV600-Powerline-WiFi-Extender/dp/B00HSQAIQU/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=powerline+wifi&qid=1636558250&sr=8-3

[theLBC]

i ran a cable downstairs and hooked it up to a router/extender and although the cable give 100mb, the wireless still sucks, lol.

[crufflers]

i ran a cable downstairs and hooked it up to a router/extender and although the cable give 100mb, the wireless still sucks, lol.

What speed do you pay your ISP for? What average download speed do you get with speedtest.net on four test runs on a few different geographically near sources? Run some tests from right next to the Cable modem on a wired pc and run some on a PC on the wifi.

[Goldencat33]

Well, here is my 5c, And I'm doing this for leaving

Can You or can't you run the wires, wires always the best

Terminology:
Any or absolutely most of the home networks consist a
1.Modem. Device with one input(coax or Phone jack) and one output (Sometimes more outlets for Phone connection)
2.Router. Classic Router has nothing to do with Wi-fi, even though now days most people think so, it is OK, these people don't have to fix someone else's home network. And for a better and easier life NO MORE THAN ONE ROUTER ON THE NETWORK.
3. Switch. 4 port switch built into most consumer end routers. or it is an extra device sitting in the line after the router

4. Wi-Fi. At least 1 AP (Access point) built into most consumer end routers.
Now it gets interesting.

There is Wi-Fi AP and there is a Wi-Fi extender(mesh is a smarter version of extender)
Wi-Fi AP creates Wi-Fi signal and as anything with radio involved it is radio circle sort of speak, so the next AP can be outside of the first circus, while the extender has to be inside.
Don't get surprised by $$, Ubiquiti is the one of most trusted, would set You $80-180+ per piece, for the typical house I would put 3.
You can use Google Wi-Fi and for that matter any well marketed up until their limits. Do You have a camera You would want to access outside...It can be done, I've done it, didn't enjoy it.

So my conclusion: For basic networks any brand name Wi-Fi mesh SYSTEM (Google Wi-Fi. EERO, Arlo) All of them have a router build in, And Yes Costco comes to mind. Return policies and I've seen Google on sale. Did I mention the return policies?
My choice for step up would be Ubiquiti Edge Router or Unifi Gateway. Access points Ubiquiti UNIFI. HD or higher.
Again it is my experience, And I agree Tp-link is worth to look at, they got much better

[Robotron2k84]

If the WiFi signal sucks, mesh isn’t going to do a whole lot and be pricey, to boot.

Running Cat 6A is the best for remote APs.

However, what you may be encountering is crosstalk from an adjacent AP, or other source of interference. Get a good WiFi analyzer program for your computer and check out the competing signals in your area. Once you know what you’re up against, there are some settings to check to make your signal more robust, such as distance and ack timing, signal power, differential antenna settings, QAM and protocol handshake speed. Some or all of these may not exist as exposed settings in your device’s firmware.

What the expensive mesh setups are doing behind the scene is running that analysis between the modules to optimize the radios. This can be done manually, for much cheaper.

And, as for mesh being so great, please remember that 99.9% of the ability to roam between hotspots rests with the station (client), not the AP. Mesh protocols such as 802.11k/r/v only inform the client, but the best roaming experience will be using the chipset manufacturer (eg. Broadcom) in the BSS as is used in the client. Don’t mix and match BSS chipset vendors without knowing a bit about how they interact for seamless roaming.

That’s the only real benefit to the uber expensive mesh setups, that all the BSS modules are from one chip vendor and are bundled as a set so the primary BSS knows for certain the capabilities for 802.11k/r/v and can interrogate them for data.

Otherwise, client bridging and RFC 3378 tunneling over 802.11 gets you star-topology mesh and WDS gets you true mesh. Without paying $800 for a set.