WIFI / Cellular Booster

[Hallstar]

Have recently moved into a new house and am struggling with the WIFI and Cellular strength/quality.

Moved from an area that gave me full 4G on BT Mobile (UK) and sound 60 mbps on BT Broadband.

New house gives me a (weak) bar of 4G and barely 4 mbps of broadband.

This is proving difficult with many business meetings now taking place via Microsoft Teams.

Can anyone recommend a piece of kit that’s will not just extend my WiFi signal, but also improve it, and preferably the cellular signal too.

Does such a thing exist?

 

[Queen6]

Yes, I have a Huawei 4G MiFI portable router which also has a connection for an external antenna that you can attach to a window. Think that you would need to see what Huawei offers in your region as the MiFi varies and the type of connection single or dual.

Similar to this

It wont work miracles, equally I found it made a difference in some areas of poor reception.

As for the WiFi move closer to the router, invest and get a MESH type system or just use a cable. If the connection to the router itself is poor, you can only speak to the provider or try to replace them.

Q-6

 

[The_Interloper]

if you contact BT mobile about your poor signal, they should let you buy a Signal Assist box from them: https://bigtechquestion.com/2019/09/03/phones/bt-signal-assist-review/

The mesh network system mentioned by @Queen6 is the way to go to fix your Wi-Fi. I have full speed fibre in all four corners of my house plus my garden office – it really is a fantastic solution and so much better than those cheap extenders you can get.

Mine is a TP Link Deco but there are plenty of different ones available. The Tenda ones available on Amazon get good reviews and are pretty inexpensive.

 

[kazmac]

Thanks for starting this topic OP. In the US and thought we nipped our WiFi/cellular issues in the bud moving to Verizon FiOS, but nope. Waiting on the 3rd repair tech to call back.

We have one of their 1GB routers and an extender, I may have to dump those and get a more powerful WiFi system and Mesh set up. No idea what to get but I know we’ll need more coverage toward the back of the apartment (which we never needed until the outages happened).

 

[Queen6]

Thanks for starting this topic OP. In the US and thought we nipped our WiFi/cellular issues in the bud moving to Verizon FiOS, but nope. Waiting on the 3rd repair tech to call back.

We have one of their 1GB routers and an extender, I may have to dump those and get a more powerful WiFi system and Mesh set up. No idea what to get but I know we’ll need more coverage toward the back of the apartment (which we never needed until the outages happened).

Far better off with a MESH router system as extenders tend to reduce the WiFi performance as a trade off for greater coverage.

Q-6

 

[kazmac]

Far better off with a MESH router system as extenders tend to reduce the WiFi performance as a trade off for greater coverage.

Q-6

Wow. Did not know that. Thanks as always. Online technician and his team found out what was wrong, a loss of power and signal disruptions at the main box outside our house. Funny how three on-site techs did not discover this when I asked each one of them about main box.

Will investigate mesh systems further. Cannot get a mesh system here before the fourth tech comes on Monday.

 

[pshufd]

My home office has a GB Ethernet Router and that works really well. We run CAT5 to the living room with a switch and an AirportExtreme and a Powerline solution to the second floor. I have CAT6 to my home office. I always try wired solutions first. It can be a lot of work wiring up a house.

 

[weeesss]

Thanks for starting this topic OP. In the US and thought we nipped our WiFi/cellular issues in the bud moving to Verizon FiOS, but nope. Waiting on the 3rd repair tech to call back.

We have one of their 1GB routers and an extender, I may have to dump those and get a more powerful WiFi system and Mesh set up. No idea what to get but I know we’ll need more coverage toward the back of the apartment (which we never needed until the outages happened).

I have FIOS 1GB service as well. My house is small but my son complained about delays playing games and his room is right below the living room where the FIOS router is. I got a Linksys Velop AC2600 with 2 bases and it works great. It extends about 70 feet outside to my shed where he likes to hang out.

 

[grmlin]

Far better off with a MESH router system as extenders tend to reduce the WiFi performance as a trade off for greater coverage.

Q-6

Mesh WLAN is so much better than extending it the old fashioned way. Only one visible access point, much better performance. Only minor complaint is that I sometimes have to manually reconnect my devices when switching places to connect to the closest repeater.

Wow. Did not know that. Thanks as always. Online technician and his team found out what was wrong, a loss of power and signal disruptions at the main box outside our house. Funny how three on-site techs did not discover this when I asked each one of them about main box.

Will investigate mesh systems further. Cannot get a mesh system here before the fourth tech comes on Monday.

I use a Fritz router from AVM, which is a German brand and probably not sold outside the EU. Don't know. WLAN mesh works really well once it's setup.

My home office has a GB Ethernet Router and that works really well. We run CAT5 to the living room with a switch and an AirportExtreme and a Powerline solution to the second floor. I have CAT6 to my home office. I always try wired solutions first. It can be a lot of work wiring up a house.

I use a wire from the basement into the living room, and use a WLAN repeater as a network bridge, also as a mesh repeater. I had no luck with powerline though, terrible connection problems in my house. Will sell it now :/

 

[pshufd]

I use a wire from the basement into the living room, and use a WLAN repeater as a network bridge, also as a mesh repeater. I had no luck with powerline though, terrible connection problems in my house. Will sell it now :/

I looked at PowerLine ten years ago and the throughput and reviews was poor. PowerLine is far better today in terms of specs. The models I got were spec'd at 2 Gb but the reviews I saw said that it depends on your wiring, distance, and even your appliances. I think that it's best when you need to go vertically when it's too hard to do the wiring. It took me about 8 hours to put in CAT5 from the basement to the living room and there was no way I'd do that from the living room to the second floor.

To some extent you just have to try a few things out to see if they work.

One approach for wiring is to use cable conduits if your home is wired for cable.

 

[kazmac]

I have FIOS 1GB service as well. My house is small but my son complained about delays playing games and his room is right below the living room where the FIOS router is. I got a Linksys Velop AC2600 with 2 bases and it works great. It extends about 70 feet outside to my shed where he likes to hang out.

Thanks. Appreciate the tip. I will definitely look into replacing Verizon’s router and extender after I replace my Mac. Fourth tech replaced everything but the router yesterday (which was swapped last Wednesday), so our WiFi internet is fine now.

 

[grmlin]

I looked at PowerLine ten years ago and the throughput and reviews was poor. PowerLine is far better today in terms of specs. The models I got were spec'd at 2 Gb but the reviews I saw said that it depends on your wiring, distance, and even your appliances. I think that it's best when you need to go vertically when it's too hard to do the wiring. It took me about 8 hours to put in CAT5 from the basement to the living room and there was no way I'd do that from the living room to the second floor.

To some extent you just have to try a few things out to see if they work.

One approach for wiring is to use cable conduits if your home is wired for cable.

Powerline sucks in my house. Looses connection all the time, is really slow. Disappointed.

Old coaxial cable for cable tv is the only cable laid through the whole house. I can use that as a lan cable?

 

[pshufd]

Old coaxial cable for cable tv is the only cable laid through the whole house. I can use that as a lan cable?

No. I was talking about threading CAT6 through the cable boxes in the room where there is existing cable so that they can follow the cable through the floors. I was going to replace the cable wall plate with a cable and CAT6 wall plate if the threading worked.

There is enough bandwidth on COAX but I don't know if there are point to point products that run over it.

 

[grmlin]

No. I was talking about threading CAT6 through the cable boxes in the room where there is existing cable so that they can follow the cable through the floors. I was going to replace the cable wall plate with a cable and CAT6 wall plate if the threading worked.

There is enough bandwidth on COAX but I don't know if there are point to point products that run over it.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Queen6]

Mesh WLAN is so much better than extending it the old fashioned way. Only one visible access point, much better performance. Only minor complaint is that I sometimes have to manually reconnect my devices when switching places to connect to the closest repeater.


I use a Fritz router from AVM, which is a German brand and probably not sold outside the EU. Don't know. WLAN mesh works really well once it's setup.


I use a wire from the basement into the living room, and use a WLAN repeater as a network bridge, also as a mesh repeater. I had no luck with powerline though, terrible connection problems in my house. Will sell it now :/

My mesh is a Huawei system, never drops drops out, similar is very likely country/region specific. The main router has a fair amount of processing power to keep up with everything as it autonomously switches radio bands, access points for the devices. System is good enough not to need any wired connections as it delivers full speed from the ISP. The system also utilises the houses powerlines to boost the performance of the satellite routers which in this case works really well, with my corner being the furthest away from the primary router

Q-6

 

[grmlin]

My mesh is a Huawei system, never drops drops out, similar is very likely country/region specific. The main router has a fair amount of processing power to keep up with everything as it autonomously switches radio bands, access points for the devices. System is good enough not to need any wired connections as it delivers full speed from the ISP. The system also utilises the houses powerlines to boost the performance of the satellite routers which in this case works really well, with my corner being the furthest away from the primary router

Q-6

I also heard very good things about the Google Router/Mesh.

I have a 1000/50 cable connection and only a cable can somewhat saturate that. Wifi 6 is great, too. But my repeaters don’t support WiFi 6.

not that many endpoints in the internet support a 1000 download anyway lol