Home router - sick of sending the wrong one.

[rsutoratosu]

So I have to deal with a lot of "home" users now. Everyone seem to have their router in the basement and they want to access internet 3 floors above.

So i'm kinda sick of sending routers that may or may not work, I think its worth investing in some sort of wifi analyzers.. I can either have the tech check the signal levels and see if certain wifi router are better or not.

Instead of saying hey go buy this $300 router that may or may not even cover the house. Its better to have some data backing this up

So i dont want to spend too much, if there is a free one you guys use or recommend, let me know.

http://www.metageek.com/products/wi-spy/

https://www.acrylicwifi.com/en/wlan-software/wifi-analyzer-acrylic-professional/

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well if you've got a smart phone just use google play store search for wifi analyzer and you can find all kinds of analyzers to show signal strength to get an idea of how effective your network is. With that kind of range involved it might be better to have a wap near the top of the structure to insure a strong signal to the upper floors.

 

[JackMDS]

Your own Laptop (or a small Windows Tablet) with a collection of free Network/Wireless Apps from here would be the best.

http://www.nirsoft.net/network_tools.html




😎

 

[Cerb]

Well if you've got a smart phone just use google play store search for wifi analyzer and you can find all kinds of analyzers to show signal strength to get an idea of how effective your network is. With that kind of range involved it might be better to have a wap near the top of the structure to insure a strong signal to the upper floors.

Yup. I use Wifi Analyzer quite often. Being able to move around and see the dBm rise and fall can be very useful. Plus, you can wave it around when in iffy areas, to find dead spots and such.

In general, though, if someone has a 2-3 story home, there will be some areas that get poor signal, and depending on how the home is made, some whole dead rooms. A large home really begs for a well-placed router and then an AP far away.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yup. I use Wifi Analyzer quite often. Being able to move around and see the dBm rise and fall can be very useful. Plus, you can wave it around when in iffy areas, to find dead spots and such.

In general, though, if someone has a 2-3 story home, there will be some areas that get poor signal, and depending on how the home is made, some whole dead rooms. A large home really begs for a well-placed router and then an AP far away.

Or even a small->medium sized home, depending on what the walls are made out of. D:

 

[Cerb]

Ugh, yeah. Been there.

 

[ArisVer]

There is also this tool.

http://www.inssider.com/

 

[13Gigatons]

A lot of solutions:

1. Wifi Extender

2. Second Wifi router setup as a access point.

3. Powerline adapters

4. Ethernet cable

 

[PliotronX]

Yup. I use Wifi Analyzer quite often. Being able to move around and see the dBm rise and fall can be very useful. Plus, you can wave it around when in iffy areas, to find dead spots and such.

In general, though, if someone has a 2-3 story home, there will be some areas that get poor signal, and depending on how the home is made, some whole dead rooms. A large home really begs for a well-placed router and then an AP far away.

Same here! My favorite app is WiFi 360 Overview for this feature of among others:

It will grade the absence of APs on channels so you can quickly identify which channel to set your AP to for the best performance (that is until some dickscarf neighbor just leaves their POS router on auto).

@OP I'd look into either running ethernet or a PowerLine connection to a secondary AP upstairs. There is just no getting around physical limitations, end users will never understand this. Which is partly why Wi-Fi is the bane of my existence.

 

[rsutoratosu]

Thanks for the tips, so for this particular person we just did. He had an airport extreme, unfortunately he doesnt know what model, they had like 1-5 gen with the same square shape.

Turn out to be the first gen. We bought in the new cube one and he was getting full bars on 3rd floor, with streaming when it was only 1 bar before.

Sort of got lucky

I really hate using extenders just because i never tested the new ones. For peoples house, its usually hard to run a wire for access point.. something you dont want to get into yourself

 

[azazel1024]

It is easy enough to run a couple of powerline adapters or MoCA bridges though. Between the two you can get an access point just about anywhere (within reason). Neither is necessarily ideal, but in a lot of cases, if someone is low down enough on the tech savy scale that they are having someone else recommend stuff for them, they are probably fine if all they can manage is 40-60Mbps, which is probably better than the wireless performance they were getting before in far away rooms.