One of the biggest frustrations I see out there are problems with wi-fi connectivity in homes. Once you get very far from the wireless router the signal strength and speed of the connection can drop off drastically. When I use the word router throughout this page I am referring to a wireless router. Below are some of the many factors that affect wireless connectivity.
1. Type of internet service.
2. Home size and layout.
3. Wireless router location.
4. Type of connection to the router.
5. Wireless router quality.
6. The device connected to the router.
Lets clear up the confusion on the modem/router terminology. What is a modem? A modem is required to convert the type of incoming internet connection signal to one that the computer understands. Century Link uses DSL, which runs over a phone line. Phone signal language and computer language is different. The modem converts that phone signal to one that the computer understands. Sparklight uses cable to run the internet over. Their modem is a cable modem that converts cable signal language to computer language. It is simply a translator.
What is a router? The router is typically the box with antennas on it. It routes traffic in an orderly manner to the devices connected to it like computers, phones, TVs, etc. The router transmits all of these data packets to each device in an orderly manner. It’s operates like a traffic light. It keeps collisions of data packets from occurring. This makes streaming more efficient. Devices do not connect to the modem, they connect to the router through wifi or by using an ethernet cable. The modem is just working in the background.
You can buy combination modem/routers or you can get two separate devices. The first assumption is that you should buy a combination because that seems cheaper and simpler. I actually don’t recommend that because they are generally weaker as far as the wifi signal. I rarely see a combo unit that works that good, especially in a larger house.
The one thing I will say from the start is that the Sparklight and Century Link supplied modem/wireless router combos can be somewhat weak as far as the wireless signal. They have their limits. It is best to own your own if possible. That way you do not have to rent their modems for $12.50 per month. If you rent their router for ten years you have thrown away $1,500. Buying your own saves you roughly $12.50 a month in modem rental fees. In 24 months or so your modem and router are paid for and no more rental. I can sell you a good modem and router for $180-250 plus tax for a smaller home. Setups for larger homes are more expensive. I can install it if needed. The type of modem depends on the speed of the internet service coming into your house. The best part is that you have a router that actually gives you a good strong wireless signal.
When purchasing a modem you need to check your internet provider contract and know exactly how fast your connection speed is supposed to be. In essence, what speed are you paying for? This helps you determine which modem you will need as far as speed. If you want to test your internet connection speed you must wire directly into the router with a network cable for testing it. We call that hard wiring into the router. The reason for this is that wireless speeds can be notoriously inconsistent.
If you call your internet provider and tell them that your wireless speeds are slow and vary greatly they are typically not going to be of much help. This is the most important factor to understand about what you are buying in internet speed. The advertised internet speed that you see is based on a wired connection using a device that is capable of that speed. That is not to say that you won’t get the same speeds with a wireless connection but it all depends on the many factors I will discuss. My wireless speeds are the same as wired speeds because I have it set up correctly. If you think that you have a problem with your internet speed the first thing you need to do before calling your provider is to check the speed with a wired connection. In order to test the speed go to speedtest.net or fast.com and use a wired connection to test what you are getting. To have a wired connection you need a Cat 5e network cable to connect the laptop or desktop directly into the router. Typically you can look on the cable at all of the lettering and you will see Cat 5e. I can sell you one or you can buy one at Walmart. Below is what the ends of the network cable will look like. The cable is called an ethernet cable and the ends use an RJ-45 connector.
You will use this cable to plug into the back of the router. The back of the router should have 4 RJ-45 ports side by side as seen below on the left side of the router. Plug the cable into any of the four same colored ports that sit side by side. Those are what we call the LAN ports. The one port by itself is the WAN port and it connects to the modem.
Once you are plugged in to the router, test to make sure that you can go to a website with this wired connection. A lot of computers will automatically pick up the wired connection but you might possibly have to disconnect from your wireless network to get the wired connection to work properly. After you know that the wired connection is working go to speedtest.net or fast.com and check your speed. You need to do this several times and do it at different times of the day. You may just have a connection that has intermittent problems. Lets say that you are supposed to have a 20Mbps Century Link DSL connection but you check it several times a day and you only get 7Mbps. You could just have a bad connection or noisy phone line that your internet provider needs to check. Most of those types of issues are due to an issue with the internet provider.
Bear in mind that if you are checking the speed on a 100Mbps connection you need to know for a fact that the device(laptop/desktop/pad) you are using to test this connection is capable of that speed. There are older and slower laptops and desktops that are not that fast. The same goes with a 200Mbps connection or faster. If your computer is only capable of downloading at 100Mbps you cannot use it to test that 200Mbps connection. All of this will be discussed below.
1. Type of internet service.
There are several ways to get internet service into your home. The ones I will discuss are the ones most common in our area. The two most common are DSL and Cable but you can also find some smaller wireless services. T-Mobile and Verizon now have cellular internet. I have used both DSL and cable and am not affiliated with either one in a financial capacity. I prefer cable by far. T-Mobile and Verizon home internet runs off of cellular. They are pretty good but there are no guaranteed speeds there. It can be up and down. This is a good option though when you are out away from town and don’t have any options.
DSL – DSL comes into your home on your ordinary phone line. The provider here is Century Link. There is a theory that DSL will give you faster speeds because it is a “dedicated line” but that depends on you having a fast speed to begin with. Most of their speeds here are 7, 12, 20, 40 and some 80Mbps. They are starting to get some gigabit speeds in newer neighborhoods. If you have that it will entail installing fiber optic. You will have to use their modems when using fiber optic.
Cable – Cable internet service here comes from Sparklight. Their normal speed is 100Mbps but they do have a slower cable lite at 15Mbps and are now offering 600Mbps as well as gigabit speeds. Their service is quite good and I find that you will actually get more than than their advertised speeds with a wired connection. A good wireless router will give you the same.
This is very important to understand. When you check your internet speed with a wired connection that will help you know for sure that you are getting the actual speed that you are paying for. If you were paying for 100Mbps service through Sparklight but were only getting 50Mbps with a wired connection then call them and have them check the speed. They can do quite a bit of testing remotely on their side of things. The other thing to remember here is that if you do have a good wireless router and a good computer you can actually get at or over 100Mbps. I have a good Netgear Orbi router and can get 690Mbps on a wired connection. Another thing to bear in mind is that you don’t always need 100Mbps. It all depends on what you want to do with it. If you are just doing email, surfing the net and watching a few you tube videos then speeds as slow as 10Mbps will work just fine as long as you get a consistent spped. If you are a family that is streaming movies, gaming and listening to music on several phones then get a faster service that has a higher data limit.
2. Home Size and Layout
This is probably one of the bigger factors in the whole wi-fi signal/speed issue. You will have to buy a router based on the size of the house you live in if you want it to get good signal strength throughout the entire house. Remember that with wifi signal strength is king. You cannot buy a $75 router and expect it to give you good coverage in a 3,000 sq.ft. house. It just will not work. The further you get from that router the more the signal strength will drop and when that drops the speed will drop.
The biggest problem I see with both Century Link and Sparklight routers is that they are notoriously weak. They use combo Modem/Wireless Routers. The modem and router are one unit. I don’t like doing that. As I said earlier, I would rather break them out separately and put most of my money into the wireless router.
Typically routers by a company like Netgear can be sorted on their website by the size house. They will use categories like small house, medium house, large house and very large house. I would always go one size over because I find that router companies over estimate their routers’ capabilities. If you had a 2,500 sq. ft. house I would buy a router for a very large house.
Another factor that people do not take into account when working through all of these variables is the footprint of the house. There are large houses that are two-story and single-story. A 3,000 sq. ft. two-story house will typically be two 1,500 sq.ft. boxes on top of each other whereas a single-story 3,000 sq.ft. house will be spread out over a much larger footprint. This makes it a bit more challenging in a large single-story home to get good wi-fi coverage throughout the house.
Fortunately they have come out with mesh type systems that serves that purpose well. From what I have found most regular wi-fi extenders don’t work that well. I don’t even sell the basic wi-fi extenders. Bear in mind that with typical wi-fi extenders there is a drop in signal strength from the router to the extender and then more drop from that to your device. Many of them are almost worthless. You can also use Powerline adapters. Powerline networking is a concept that has been around that sends the internet signal over the electrical wiring in your house. By doing that you don’t get all of the signal drops that you would normally get when using regular wi-fi extenders. You could have an 80Mbps signal coming out of a powerline wi-fi extender on the other side of a single story 3,000 sq.ft. house whereas with regular extenders it might be down to 15Mbps. Let me know if you need info on those.
3. Wireless Router Location:
Another issue that can cause some challenges is the location of the modem and router. Typically your DSL or Cable come into the side of the house by the garage. Because of that most of the time the router will be located on one side of the house. This means that you will have to push a wireless signal all the way to the other side of the house. If you have a two-story house it can work well to get the router installed on the second floor. Having that router up higher helps. Also, if it is on the first floor of a house try to put the router on top of a shelf if you can. You do not want it sitting down low on a small shelf or on the floor. That degrades the signal. The higher the better.
Another positive of using a separate modem and router is that the modem can be installed on the side of the house where the cable comes in and the router can be placed elsewhere. Remember that modem location is not an issue. It is where the wireless router is installed that makes a big difference. That router will have to push the wireless signal throughout the house. If needed you could easily run a network cable from the modem to the router through the crawl space in order to place the router in a better location.
The main issue to stay away from is making sure that you don’t have a wireless router sitting behind a wall that is near a kitchen full of appliances. If those metal appliances are between the router and the rest of the house it can severely cripple the signal. DO NOT put a router in a metal cabinet in a utility room. Metal cabinets absolutely cripple wireless signals
4. Type of connection to the router.
There are a number of ways to connect to the router. If you have a desktop computer sitting right by the router you can hard wire it with a network cable. If a desktop is a good distance from the router and you want to wire it in you can often times run a cable through the crawl space or use powerline adapters. You can connect to it with a wireless connection. Many new desktops have wireless built in now and you can get USB wifi adapters to use with desktops. You can connect a wi-fi extender to the router and then connect to the extender. You can use a powerline wi-fi extender. A great way to connect an HD TV far away from the router is through hard wired powerline adapters. Those are a great way to stop buffering issues with your TV.
5. Wireless router quality.
Under the home size and layout section I stated that you have to make sure that you buy a router that matches up with the size of your house. Many of the manufactures and websites will allow you to sort the routers based on the size of the house. That is very important. Always buy one size larger than what you think you need. I would say that if you have a 2,000 sq. ft single story house then buy a router for a large house. If it is two-story you can probably get one for a medium sized house. If you have a 3,000 sq. ft house get one for a very large house.
When you look at the newer routers you will often see the prefix AC or AX. AX is just the new class of routers. In the past we had B, G, N, AC and now we have AX. There are still lots of N and AC class equipment out there and a lot of it works just fine but most of your routers will now be AC or AX class. If I am not mistaken all of the AX and AC class routers are dual band.
When I say dual band I mean that the router will broadcast the wireless signal on 2.4Ghz(gigahertz) and 5Ghz(gigahertz) . The 2.4Ghz is the old standard. You will know that it is dual band because you will see that your router gives you two possible wireless networks to connect to. Let’s say that you have named your wireless network CharlieBrown. With an AC dual band router you will see a network named CharlieBrown and another one named CharlieBrown-5G. The 5G network is just about always the best one to connect to. By the way, the 5G in network routers is not the same as 5G in cell phones.
What I have seen in the various tests that I have run using wireless network software is that the 5Ghz network is the best to connect to. With the old 2.4Ghz the signal strength tends to oscillate up and down quite a lot. The problem there is that the further you get away from the router the oscillations get worse and as the strength also decreases the connection can drop out at the bottom of the downward oscillation of the signal. With the 5Ghz network the signal stays smooth in a flat line across. It will weaken as you move away from the router, which is perfectly normal. The good part is that it stays steady and does not bounce up and down like the 2.4Ghz wireless signal. Your wireless speed will decrease but it will not disconnect as long as you are within a reasonable distance of the router.
As you look at routers there are also other features that are available. I won’t get into all of that in this tutorial. We are just trying to stick with the basics here.
6. The device connected to the router.
When I use the word device, I am referring to a laptop, desktop, tablet, TV or phone. You will remember above that I was saying that if you want to test your wired or wireless connection you have to have a device that will download faster than that connection. In essence, you can’t test a 100Mbps connection speed with a device that is only capable of 50Mbps download speeds. I have a Lenovo tablet that is only capable of 30Mbps or so sitting right next to the router. You can’t use that to test a 100Mbps. On the other hand, my iPhone SE will get around 500Mbps out of my Sparklight 600Mbps connection. My phone is not capable of 600Mbps. As I said, I have found that Sparklight performs better than advertised.
There are other factors that affect the speed you get. All of these devices that connect wirelessly have a built in wireless adapter. That is the hardware portion of your device that makes it possible for you to have wireless capability. Those adapters are of different quality. Some are very good quality and some are quite weak. My tablet and phone are prime examples in this variation in quality. The wireless adapter in the tablet is very weak but the adapter in the phone is quite strong. Depending on the quality of that adapter you will have to settle for what you get unless it is a laptop or desktop that the adapter can be upgraded to something better. On desktops you can buy USB wireless adapters that can help a lot.
The other factor here regarding your device is whether or not it is capable of dual-band connections. You can easily know because if it is dual band you will see the two different networks in your list of available connections. Having that 5Ghz connection helps. I had a customer the other day that I installed a new modem and router for and we tested his various devices. His wife’s laptop was just a single band and it would only get around 45-50Mbps download speeds but that was more than sufficient.
Another question you have to ask is this. Does a device you are using need to be tuned up? I have seen computers loaded down with adware that are very slow. That makes it impossible to get decent internet speeds. A computer that is downloading has to process what you are downloading. If it is balled up in a knot due to viruses or adware it will not give you good download speeds. Those slow loading web pages just might not be a result of a your internet provider. They could be the result of the computer needing to be tuned up or upgraded to make it faster.
All of these factors combine to determine the quality of your internet connection. If you have everything working together as it should there is no reason that you can’t have a reliable and consistent internet connection, whether it is wired or wireless. You also have to be willing to accept what you can’t change. If you have a slow device with a weak network adapter sitting a good ways away from that router you will not get a full 100Mbps out of the 100Mbps connection. The key there is what are you doing with the device and is the speed you are getting sufficient for your needs. If you are on a tablet looking at Facebook and getting 25Mbps in the process that is more than sufficient.
I have not given specific products in all of this because you have to tailor those products to what you have. Every situation is different. If you need some help let me know and I will be glad to assist you. I charge a house call fee and a per hour charge while there but I think it is worth your time and money. I will help you get what you need and I will not oversell you products in the process.
Over Selling:
Do you really want to spend more money for nothing? What I am about to say here is not to simply bad mouthing another business but I do want to share what I have seen time and again. Most people will just say that I will run down to Best Buy and get what I need. Unless you know exactly what you want I can promise you that they will send you out of there with your wallet several hundred dollars lighter than it should be. There is nothing wrong with buying it from them if you want. I buy computer equipment from them when the price is right but as I have observed their salesman while I was in there, they always tried to sell people way more than they needed. For instance, a while back when I was in there a salesman was trying to sell a lady a modem and router combo. He was absolutely correct in telling her to buy them separately. But, he tried to sell her a $300 gaming router before he ever asked her what size the house was. It wasn’t until well into the conversation that he asked her about that and the house was only 1,100 sq. ft. A $100 or so router would have been more than sufficient. That is a lack of integrity no matter how you put it.
Remember that I said that AC is the new class of wi-fi routers. You will see routers listed as AC1000 or AC1750, AC1900, etc. That 1000 number means 1000Mbps or gigabit speeds. The 1750 means 1,750Mbps and the 1,900Mbps means 1,900Mbps. That is the speed they are capable of. We call that throughput. If you have 100Mbps speed coming into your house any of those are way more than you need as long as the router signal strength is good enough. Typically the 1000Mbps router would not have as strong a signal strength as the others but would work fine in a smaller house. This is where salesman will get you. You might decide to buy one that is listed as AC1750 but the salesman will say that the more expensive AC1900 is faster. That is theoretically true but it is worthless if you only have 100Mbps coming into your house. You are just wasting money.
The other thing I see in places like that is that they typically try to sell you more than you need. The cheapest modem you will find at the store is typically a $75 Netgear cable modem. I can sell a good new cable modem for $55. Quite often the salesman will try to sell you a higher end modem that costs $80-90 that is capable of a 600Mbps connection when you only have 100Mbps coming in. The $55 cable modem I sell is capable of 340Mbps. There is no reason to buy more than that.
If you need help with wi-fi issue give me a call, email or text and I will be happy to help you put together a set up that will fit your needs and your budget. I can even set things up so that you can take it home and install it yourself if you want to.