We need better connectivity.
December 8, 2021 8:06 AM Subscribe
Help me decide between a range extender and a mesh network.
Since the pandemic started, my wife and I have both been working from home. We have been largely technology-problem free until about three weeks ago, when my wife started having all sorts of connectivity problems with her work laptop in her office. She streams audio through a Sonos and often streams through a TV in there with no problem, even as her laptop started having problems staying connected to our network. She, like I, am on wifi, not ethernet.
Nothing of note changed at that time - we've had the same router and modem for at least a year, her work machine didn't update/reconfigure, nothing obvious has happened that might make her machine drop a connection repeatedly that we're aware of.
Her work gave her a new laptop, and that worked for about a day, but now it's back to dropping the connection to her laptop pretty regularly, and it's highly unlikely that her work will now give her a second new laptop, and they'll probably say "it's your connection".
I can connect in another room to my work laptop without an issue, and of all our wireless stuff (two work laptops, two sonoses, an iphone, a Pixel, and a Chromebook), her work machine is the only one with problems staying connected.
So I think we need to expand our network somehow, to more effectively reach her office, but I don't know whether to dig into the settings of our current router to adjust it somehow (nor do I know what "somehow" entails, but I'm comfortable digging around in the router if need be), whether getting a range extender for our current router for my wife's office is sufficient, or whether we should go to a mesh network. Here's our specs:
- We live in about 1100 SF of space, and her office is not in line-of-sight to the router, nor can it be based on the ethernet/cable ports we have
- There are no ethernet ports in her office, and we cannot add ethernet ports to our condo for a few different reasons, so we're dependent on wireless connectivity
- Our router is fairly new - it's an ASUS RT-AC3100 bought, I think, about a year ago? Maybe a bit more? But it does the job well most of the time
- Modem is also less than a year old, it's a Motorola Docsis 3.1 bought in February of this year.
- We have Xfinity gigabit internet and, as mentioned, no real issues connecting with any other device, even as we have 6-7 things actively consuming our wireless at any given time
I'm also open to other solutions if there are any, but the choice of extender v. mesh seems to be where I should start, so here I am starting there.
Since the pandemic started, my wife and I have both been working from home. We have been largely technology-problem free until about three weeks ago, when my wife started having all sorts of connectivity problems with her work laptop in her office. She streams audio through a Sonos and often streams through a TV in there with no problem, even as her laptop started having problems staying connected to our network. She, like I, am on wifi, not ethernet.
Nothing of note changed at that time - we've had the same router and modem for at least a year, her work machine didn't update/reconfigure, nothing obvious has happened that might make her machine drop a connection repeatedly that we're aware of.
Her work gave her a new laptop, and that worked for about a day, but now it's back to dropping the connection to her laptop pretty regularly, and it's highly unlikely that her work will now give her a second new laptop, and they'll probably say "it's your connection".
I can connect in another room to my work laptop without an issue, and of all our wireless stuff (two work laptops, two sonoses, an iphone, a Pixel, and a Chromebook), her work machine is the only one with problems staying connected.
So I think we need to expand our network somehow, to more effectively reach her office, but I don't know whether to dig into the settings of our current router to adjust it somehow (nor do I know what "somehow" entails, but I'm comfortable digging around in the router if need be), whether getting a range extender for our current router for my wife's office is sufficient, or whether we should go to a mesh network. Here's our specs:
- We live in about 1100 SF of space, and her office is not in line-of-sight to the router, nor can it be based on the ethernet/cable ports we have
- There are no ethernet ports in her office, and we cannot add ethernet ports to our condo for a few different reasons, so we're dependent on wireless connectivity
- Our router is fairly new - it's an ASUS RT-AC3100 bought, I think, about a year ago? Maybe a bit more? But it does the job well most of the time
- Modem is also less than a year old, it's a Motorola Docsis 3.1 bought in February of this year.
- We have Xfinity gigabit internet and, as mentioned, no real issues connecting with any other device, even as we have 6-7 things actively consuming our wireless at any given time
I'm also open to other solutions if there are any, but the choice of extender v. mesh seems to be where I should start, so here I am starting there.
One quick and dirty solution might be a powerline adapter - she can plug into it via ethernet for just the laptop. Longer term, probably a mesh.
posted by crocomancer at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by crocomancer at 8:24 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mesh network (I'm partial to the Google Nest wifi network stuff) or a power line adapter (I've had some trouble lately out of my Netgear ones, going to switch to TP-Link and see if things get better). Extenders just complicate things and usually run poorly.
posted by deezil at 8:37 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by deezil at 8:37 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
My experience with a TP-Link in both my house and my then girlfriend's was that it was worse that useless - it degraded the overall experience. My Synology mesh setup has been pain-free.
Depending on how locked down her work machine is, if everything else works fine, the easiest solution may be to add a small USB wireless adapter to it.
posted by Candleman at 8:55 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Depending on how locked down her work machine is, if everything else works fine, the easiest solution may be to add a small USB wireless adapter to it.
posted by Candleman at 8:55 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wifi performance can and often does change, sometimes dramatically, over time, due to changes in the RF environment. If a neighbor happens to spin up a new radio (the generic term for a wifi base station of some sort), this can lead to significant impairment.
Wifi repeaters and mesh networks are similar things from the point of view of the RF environment. Both are terrible devices, because they allocate additional channels and create more contention for the available spectrum. RF devices are expected to "scale back" their signal strength to a level that does not interfere with neighboring devices. With the advent of mesh devices, what tends to happen is that your neighbor is unhappy with wifi, gets a mesh system, is now running four or six radios in close proximity to your lone access point, and then you find your wifi performance significantly impacted.
Repeaters and mesh devices can both double the amount of performance loss, because they do their trick wirelessly, repeating the traffic over ANOTHER RF channel back to the "base" station. While easy to deploy, these are rarely a good idea in areas where you've noticed what seems to be a sudden change in the RF environment. You're just going to end up fighting with your neighbor's radios.
Unfortunately, the correct answer to this, especially as we move on to WiFi 6 and 6E, is to have a larger number of radios all talking at a very low signal strength. 5 and 6GHz bands are not great for wall penetration anyways, so the ideal situation is to place a wired access point in every room where someone is likely to be working. Generally speaking, this creates the best results.
A "mesh" system that has wired backhaul capability is probably easier for end users to set up than actual true access points, and you may find that you can use powerline as a way to do the backhaul.
posted by jgreco at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Wifi repeaters and mesh networks are similar things from the point of view of the RF environment. Both are terrible devices, because they allocate additional channels and create more contention for the available spectrum. RF devices are expected to "scale back" their signal strength to a level that does not interfere with neighboring devices. With the advent of mesh devices, what tends to happen is that your neighbor is unhappy with wifi, gets a mesh system, is now running four or six radios in close proximity to your lone access point, and then you find your wifi performance significantly impacted.
Repeaters and mesh devices can both double the amount of performance loss, because they do their trick wirelessly, repeating the traffic over ANOTHER RF channel back to the "base" station. While easy to deploy, these are rarely a good idea in areas where you've noticed what seems to be a sudden change in the RF environment. You're just going to end up fighting with your neighbor's radios.
Unfortunately, the correct answer to this, especially as we move on to WiFi 6 and 6E, is to have a larger number of radios all talking at a very low signal strength. 5 and 6GHz bands are not great for wall penetration anyways, so the ideal situation is to place a wired access point in every room where someone is likely to be working. Generally speaking, this creates the best results.
A "mesh" system that has wired backhaul capability is probably easier for end users to set up than actual true access points, and you may find that you can use powerline as a way to do the backhaul.
posted by jgreco at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Nthing that extenders are unreliable and kind of a pin to use. I tried one before just updating my ancient router (which don’t sound like your issue).
posted by jeoc at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2021
posted by jeoc at 8:56 AM on December 8, 2021
I have the Orbi mesh system and am very happy (Costo, 3 unit system got on sale). I had been running on Powerline for years, but it slowly was overwhelmed as data requirements got higher and higher. I would not recommend Powerline for backhaul, either.
But, do be sure to get a system that supports backhaul. I have been happy with the responsiveness of the Orbi wireless backhaul.
posted by rich at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
But, do be sure to get a system that supports backhaul. I have been happy with the responsiveness of the Orbi wireless backhaul.
posted by rich at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
In my experience this often means that your Wi-Fi router is using default settings, and your neighbor turned on a router also with default settings, and now they're fighting on the same frequency. (It also happens with not-default settings, but not as often)
So if you haven't already, change the wifi to a different channel. The improvement should be instant.
The best way to do this is to find a channel with nothing else already using it. I use an Android app "Wi-Fi Analyzer" that listens for all the Wi-Fi signals and displays them all by channel by signal strength, making it easy to see which channel has the least competing signal strength.
posted by Cusp at 9:23 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
So if you haven't already, change the wifi to a different channel. The improvement should be instant.
The best way to do this is to find a channel with nothing else already using it. I use an Android app "Wi-Fi Analyzer" that listens for all the Wi-Fi signals and displays them all by channel by signal strength, making it easy to see which channel has the least competing signal strength.
posted by Cusp at 9:23 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I have to ask the obvious: you've rebooted your wireless access point, right?
They're supposed to automatically choose what wifi channel to use based on signal strength, but it sometimes it doesn't work. And it continues to use a known busy wifi channel. Rebooting the access point often makes it choose a different one. I've wasted more than one afternoon figuring this out.
posted by meowzilla at 9:25 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
They're supposed to automatically choose what wifi channel to use based on signal strength, but it sometimes it doesn't work. And it continues to use a known busy wifi channel. Rebooting the access point often makes it choose a different one. I've wasted more than one afternoon figuring this out.
posted by meowzilla at 9:25 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Our living room is separated from the modem by a wall which seems to be especially hard or get a signal through (it's more sound-blocking than any other wall in the house as well). Extenders did nothing, and actually made it worse in one case. But we've had success with a mesh network since the beginning of quarantine, we just had to place the unit in the living room to have line-of sight though the doorway up the hall to where the main unit is plugged into the modem.
We did get some improvement by changing the wifi channel to be different from neighbors but the real key was having that mesh unit sitting on the other side of the bottle-neck to provide coverage to the entire living room/kitchen end of the house.
posted by buildmyworld at 9:31 AM on December 8, 2021
We did get some improvement by changing the wifi channel to be different from neighbors but the real key was having that mesh unit sitting on the other side of the bottle-neck to provide coverage to the entire living room/kitchen end of the house.
posted by buildmyworld at 9:31 AM on December 8, 2021
Our modem is on a different floor/opposite side of the house and the extenders basically add another hop in the system which actually leads to depreciated performance (weaker signals/more drops, slower speeds). I had the best success with changing the channel and moving the modem off the floor onto a higher surface.
posted by sm1tten at 10:34 AM on December 8, 2021
posted by sm1tten at 10:34 AM on December 8, 2021
Historically, I loved the powerline adapters - but - in the last 6-7 years, even the fastest are not as speedy as modern WiFi. People seem to swear by how well "meshes" work. But - check your channels - you might also be able to do a wireless scan and see what channels your neighbours are using. Disconnect from your wifi, there are likekly many apps on your phone to find - alternatively your router device may have the ability to perform a scan from it's web interface.
Myself - I am about to embark on getting a new router (Asus), then taking the older router (also Asus), turning that into a "mesh-AP", to get better coverage in the top-half of the house - but we had renovations done last year, and I was able to run a couple ethernet cables upstairs - so, I have the luxury of the backhaul being actual wired etherned.
posted by rozcakj at 11:00 AM on December 8, 2021
Myself - I am about to embark on getting a new router (Asus), then taking the older router (also Asus), turning that into a "mesh-AP", to get better coverage in the top-half of the house - but we had renovations done last year, and I was able to run a couple ethernet cables upstairs - so, I have the luxury of the backhaul being actual wired etherned.
posted by rozcakj at 11:00 AM on December 8, 2021
In addition to powerline, Moca is something to consider. Moca can support over 1gbps, and will be much more reliable than either an extender or mesh (but an extender is the absolute last resort). Also more reliable and faster than powerline in my experience.
posted by primethyme at 11:23 AM on December 8, 2021
posted by primethyme at 11:23 AM on December 8, 2021
In order, I would try:
posted by sourcequench at 11:57 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
- Run wired Ethernet to everything where it's practical to do that. This will always be better than 802.11 wireless, and will reduce congestion for your remaining wireless devices.
- Check channel assignments. "It was working fine then stopped and we didn't change anything" is classic symptoms of a new nearby network using channels that overlap yours. Consumer WiFi gear often does a poor job of automatic channel selection.
- Consider using 2.4GHz for devices far from the access point or where there's a lot of intervening building structure. The 5GHz spectrum is often less congested, but it doesn't propagate as well through interior walls. Consumer devices often don't do a great job at automatically choosing the best band.
- Is your AP firmware up to date?
- Pull wired Ethernet to areas where you have coverage problems, and set up additional access points (same SSID, different -- and non-overlapping -- channels).
- Move and/or re-orient your AP antennae to get better propagation.
- Try gain antennae on client devices which can use external antennae.
- Try a gain antenna on the AP.
- If you don't care about latency, and you know your problem is inadequate coverage (as opposed to co-channel interference) consider a mesh system. Mesh adds hops. Hops add latency. Latency is death.
- Give up all technology and go live in the woods as a hermit.
- Deploy a broadband RF jammer (aka "extender" or "powerline adapter").
posted by sourcequench at 11:57 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I agree with everything sourcequench said above with the exception of #9.
I have an Asus ZenWiFi AX with the main router in my living room and the node over 60ft away across my driveway in an apartment above the garage which has foil insulation. My MiL uses that node in her apartment exclusively and she is a heavy Second Life User and does live Internet radio broadcasts. She never has issues with latency. So, um not all routers? ;-)
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2021
I have an Asus ZenWiFi AX with the main router in my living room and the node over 60ft away across my driveway in an apartment above the garage which has foil insulation. My MiL uses that node in her apartment exclusively and she is a heavy Second Life User and does live Internet radio broadcasts. She never has issues with latency. So, um not all routers? ;-)
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2021
Mesh is a gamechanger. We have the Linksys Velop system, which is tri-band, was very easy to set up, and works well. We've got about a half dozen nodes now and we never have trouble, even if kiddo is online gaming while both parents work from home. We actually had great coverage in our home (about 1800-ish sq ft) with just three, but the nodes come with ethernet plugs and it has been useful to be able to plug in certain devices.
Interestingly, when I went to add another node recently, I found there were plenty of the model we use (Linksys Velop WHW03 Whole Home Mesh Tri-Band AC2200) on eBay for ~$25-35. That was great, so I bought two. So if cost is a factor, maybe consider a couple of cheap nodes and a download of the manual from online to get started.
If you're able to spend a bit more, the Asus ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is gigabit ready and I have heard terrific things about it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:10 PM on December 8, 2021
Interestingly, when I went to add another node recently, I found there were plenty of the model we use (Linksys Velop WHW03 Whole Home Mesh Tri-Band AC2200) on eBay for ~$25-35. That was great, so I bought two. So if cost is a factor, maybe consider a couple of cheap nodes and a download of the manual from online to get started.
If you're able to spend a bit more, the Asus ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is gigabit ready and I have heard terrific things about it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:10 PM on December 8, 2021
We tried several range extenders over the years with very unsatisfactory results. Switching to a mesh network (2 Nest Wifi Routers) connected to our cable modem (Arris Surfboard) with Xfinity gigabit internet has dramatically improved stability and range throughout the house.
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2021
posted by TwoWordReview at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2021
This shouldn’t be the case for a laptop, but my desktop pc had crappy WiFi speed and connectivity in the corner office so I bought this $29 USB wireless adapter and it made a huge difference. I like this one because it has a cable and I can move it around to find the best spot. Long shot maybe but cheap to try.
posted by freecellwizard at 9:25 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by freecellwizard at 9:25 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I am your wife and my bedroom is her office. I complained for years about connectivity in my room (specifically to my laptop, the TV and smart speaker usually work fine) and extenders didn't help no matter how many different ones we tried. Mesh solved it, and had the bonus of getting wifi to reach the studio in the back yard which never had reliable signal before.
posted by assenav at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2021
posted by assenav at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2021
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posted by Tomorrowful at 8:20 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]