Got the wireless blues? Cheer up: here’s how you can eliminate them
Wireless black spots are a problem in a huge number of homes. According to Arris’ 2015 Consumer Entertainment Index, nearly 30% of people are forced to use wireless range extenders to cover their entire home, and more than half (54%) want better coverage for Wi-Fi in their home.
So let’s talk about how to fix those black spots. In our guide to setting up your network, we talked about router positioning. at should be your first port of call — just moving your router to a position that’s more central or avoids the particular signal impediments can do the job.
But that doesn’t always work. Perhaps moving your router creates all new Wi-Fi black spots, which will be a common problem in multi-storey homes. Perhaps extending your phone or coaxial cable isn’t feasible. en you have to look to alternate solutions.
Below we’ve looked at three such solutions, from our least favourite to favourite. You can pick whichever one suits your budget and home setup.
RANGE EXTENDERS
Range extenders are definitely our least favourite solution, and that’s because, in general, they’re not great. They can dramatically slow down your connectivity and add signi cant lag to the internet connection.
A range extender works by connecting to your main wireless network as a client device. It then creates a second Wi-Fi network, centred on its own location and usually with its own unique ID, that devices can connect to if they can’t reach the primary Wi-Fi network. For any devices connecting to the range extender, it then forwards the data back to the main Wi-Fi network. e idea is that you put the range extender roughly half way between the main router and the black spot you want to cover, and it bridges the distance by resending the data.
Obviously, in order to work the range extender has to be close enough to the original network to receive a signal. e performance of the extender is essentially determined by the signal strength between it and the main router, divided by two (since it has to both receive and retransmit the data on the same channel, doubling the bandwidth usage).
Range extenders have their uses. If you don’t care that much about performance and just want some kind of coverage they can get the job done. If you have a tricky surface (like a wall or mirror that’s creating a wireless shadow) that you need to corner around, they can do that too. And of course their biggest bene t is that they don’t require wires at all, and so are relatively convenient.
We will say that if you do want to go the range extender route, we’d highly recommend getting a high-performance freestanding extender with 802.11ac support rather than one of “wall-plug” options. e wall plug extenders may be pleasingly discrete, but the antennae in those things tend to be very weak, and in most of our tests we’ve seen very poor performance from them.
We should also note that many range extenders make capable wireless access points. Any range extender with at least one Ethernet port can serve as a stand-alone wireless access point, which could be very useful for implementing some of our alternative solutions listed below.
SECOND WIRELESS ACCESS POINT OR ROUTER, CONNECTED BY ETHERNET
A much more powerful option than using a range extender is to set up a second wireless access point in your home. is wireless access point could be a dedicated wireless access point, a router with Wi-Fi capabilities (you just don’t plug anything into the WAN port) or a wireless repeater as noted above (you don’t use it as a repeater — you just use it in AP mode without bridging to the main Wi-Fi network). You set up the device with its own unique SSID, distinct from your main network (it can use the same password, however). To set up the device initially you may have to connect to it directly with your PC or mobile to run the supplied configuration wizard or setup routine.
Using an Ethernet cable (which can be up to 100m long), you connect any LAN port on the wireless access point with any LAN port on the primary router. is way, the access point becomes a “client” of the primary router, but instead of using wireless to transmit data back to the primary router, it uses the Ethernet cable. Wired Ethernet is much more reliable than wireless, and you won’t find your wireless bandwidth halved or a notable increase in lag.
As with a range extender, you find yourself with two wireless networks in your home, each with their own SSID. Your mobile devices will automatically connect to whichever one has the strongest signal — which will generally be the one closest to them.
The obvious downside of this solution is the need to run an Ethernet cable between the primary router and the secondary wireless access point. For many people that’s a showstopper, since they don’t want to be running cables across their floors. With a bit of home handy work, however, you can absolutely run cables through ceilings, under the house, through the basement or even outdoors if you need to run it down to a granny at, for example (apart from the terminators, Ethernet cable is waterproof, though it’s best to try and protect it at least a little bit, or get special outdoor Ethernet cable).
Our third solution fixes that problem too, however.
SECOND WIRELESS ACCESS POINT OR ROUTER, CONNECTED OVER POWERLINE
Powerline networking devices, a.k.a. HomePlug gear, lets you use your home’s internal electrical wiring to transmit data. They typically come with two small boxes that t snugly to a power point (though more can be added) and each has at least one Ethernet port.
With this solution, instead of an Ethernet cable, as in option 2 above, we use the powerline adapter to bridge the gap between your primary router and a secondary access point.
The configuration will look like this:
You plug in one of the powerline adapters near the primary router, and the other near the secondary access point. en you grab a couple of short Ethernet cables and connect them to any LAN port on the nearby router/access point.
A couple of notes for this solution: powerline is more reliable and lower latency than wireless, so you shouldn’t see any major performance issues. You do need to make sure that you get good powerline adapters (look for 500mbps+ devices) and don’t plug them into power boards. They need to be connected directly to wall sockets.
With that in mind you should be all set. Most powerline devices require zero configuration, and once the Ethernet cables connect them to the router/access point, the two should be bridged. You now have a working second access point that should be able to communicate freely with your primary router.