Need help figuring out new WiFi system for mum

Sfariah D

My mum's current WiFi sucks.  Not sure if it is the fact the type of ISP service she subscribe or if it is because she has an old router.  I do know that the current router does not have coverage over the whole house.  What is a good but not too expensive WiFi sytem that will cover the which would cover her whole house.  Any ideas?

Lord Theros

You could probably get some signal repeaters, to increase the coverage. What you gotta keep in mind is that wifi signal was initialy to use in open office spaces, so house wall tend to damp the signal quite a lot.

kenshaw011267

It is a fairly complicated issue. Unless her house is huge a single hotspot should provide full coverage.

So if it doesn't there are factors that need to be investigated.

How congested is the 2.5 Ghz band in the area. You can get an app for your phone to measure that. If it is heavily congested you may need to manually configure her router and devices to use portions that are less congested.

If the material of her house are actually blocking the signal you can get extenders to provide full coverage (if you do she will likely benefit from using 5Ghz rather than 2.5).

She could just have a terrible wifi router and replacing it might do the trick.

Sfariah D

Her WiFi router is like about 13 years old or fast approaching that age.

kenshaw011267 said:

It is a fairly complicated issue. Unless her house is huge a single hotspot should provide full coverage.

So if it doesn't there are factors that need to be investigated.

How congested is the 2.5 Ghz band in the area. You can get an app for your phone to measure that. If it is heavily congested you may need to manually configure her router and devices to use portions that are less congested.

If the material of her house are actually blocking the signal you can get extenders to provide full coverage (if you do she will likely benefit from using 5Ghz rather than 2.5).

She could just have a terrible wifi router and replacing it might do the trick.

How do I find that app that measures the speed?

nonesuch00

You don't give the sq ft of the house for us to guess.

1) She has weak signal?

     a) Switch from 2GHz to the 5Ghz band of your Wifi router.

     b) Buy a reasonable cost new WiFi router

2) She can connect easy enough but sometimes her connection is dropped?  

     a) Switch from 2GHz to the 5Ghz band of your Wifi router.

     b) Buy a reasonable cost new WiFi router

3) The data throughput is slow.

      a) That's almost certainly not the WiFi router but your ISP. Upgrade the bandwidth of your subscribed service if possible.

      b) Can't upgrade bandwidth? Buy a 5TB Seagate USB and a multiple video downloader app to download in quantity the videos she wants to watch from YouTube, Amazon, and so on.

      c) She can't do 3) b) because Netflix or Amazon Prime or who ever don't allow downloading for offline viewing? There is not anything I can recommend there, however those paid streaming services are supposed to degrade the stream resolution gracefully such that it doesn't look too bad with smaller bandwidth. If it does, it's your ISP. I get about 22mbps on my cable ISP since theyt upgraded the bandwidth and I can watch all ROKU channels that have good streaming servers (eg ROKU, TUBI, CRACKLE, and others - bad ones: eg Gumby Remolded). 

       d) There is a small chance the server that serves the data your mother streams is very slow. Eg, the DAZ 3D servers we know are slow and it has nothing to do with our WiFi or ISPs. Nothing you can do except tolerate it, file a help request with the business, or don't visit that site.  

 4) Avoid WiFi problems all together and just route ethernet cable directly from the ISP router modem to the various ethernet port equipped devices you use. Means no WiFi for your iPhone / Android phone to use though although you can always at one to you modem & route ethernet cable to TVs & desktop computers & printers..

5) Here is a reasonable price WiFi cable modem but check with your ISP to make sure it works with your ISP and that you do the correct ISP modem switchover procedure. They have to be added to their allow devices list and registered by your ISP your your new modem to work.

     a ) https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0787TRNMH/

Often 2GHz bands on WiFi are congested by neighbors and their signals intefere with yours sometimes causing your signal to drop. 2GHz goes much further than 5GHz so the solution to that type of interference is to switch to 5GHz where their signals will be too weak much more often to interfere with yours & cause it to drop. 

kenshaw011267

Miss Bad Wolf said:

Her WiFi router is like about 13 years old or fast approaching that age.

kenshaw011267 said:

It is a fairly complicated issue. Unless her house is huge a single hotspot should provide full coverage.

So if it doesn't there are factors that need to be investigated.

How congested is the 2.5 Ghz band in the area. You can get an app for your phone to measure that. If it is heavily congested you may need to manually configure her router and devices to use portions that are less congested.

If the material of her house are actually blocking the signal you can get extenders to provide full coverage (if you do she will likely benefit from using 5Ghz rather than 2.5).

She could just have a terrible wifi router and replacing it might do the trick.

How do I find that app that measures the speed?

On Android look for WiFi Analyzer. It doesn't measure speed but analyzes the Wifi spectrum for what specific frequency bands are most congested.