Ask HN: How to improve terrible home WiFi?

3 points by edscho 2 years ago | 7 comments

For the last 7 years the WiFi reception in my home has been very poor. I am curious how others have gone about troubleshooting and solving WiFi reception issues.

More details: I pay good $$$ for a business-grade fibre (FTTP) connection (500 Mbps down / 200 Mbps up). I have a direct Ethernet connection to my main work computer, and from there I do actually get these advertised speeds and low latencies (a few milliseconds) to my local AWS data centre, and life is good. But whenever my wife or I try to use our laptops (both Mac and Windows) or iPhones in the home, the WiFi reception is intermittent and often unusably slow from most rooms. For example, here's what I see right now on my MacBook Pro (2021):

``` $ networkQuality -s ==== SUMMARY ==== Uplink capacity: 0.000 bps Downlink capacity: 349.330 Kbps Uplink Responsiveness: Low (10 RPM) Downlink Responsiveness: Low (18 RPM) Idle Latency: 220.875 milliseconds ```

In other words, the downlink capacity is 1000 times worse with WiFi than with Ethernet.

I have tried a DLink COVR mesh network with multiple access points (and am using it now), but WiFi speeds in most rooms are woeful either way. The house is not large (130 m^2 or 1400 sq feet). I've tried some WiFi scanning tools and there's no significant WiFi interference from the neighbours (it's a low-density area). Signal strength to my nearest COVR mesh router is apparently -59 dBm, with a SNR or 36.

Perhaps the exterior fibro walls are to blame (good old asbestos cement sheeting) but that's just guessing; WiFi speeds are often terrible even from rooms adjacent to the router with only flimsy interior walls in between.

What I really want is a recommendation for a systematic approach to identifying the real cause of the abysmal WiFi, along with some troubleshooting tools (preferably open source). Or some success stories about how you overcame crap home WiFi!

PaulHoule 2 years ago |

The best cure to bad WiFi is Ethernet.

There are only 3 usable channels in the 2.4 GHz band and that is nowhere near enough. Much of the 5 GHz band is unavailable with cheap access points because it competes with weather radar.

Any traffic you get onto Ethernet is not going over WiFi and it is freeing up capacity for devices that do use WiFi.

Mesh WiFi is a scam and it is just common sense that it is. If you have multiple network hops you use more frequencies, not less, you get more latency, not less, you get more packet loss, not less. How could it be any other way? It doesn’t help that the meshing happens over 5 GHz which goes through walls much less than 2.4 GHz.. People want to believe in mesh WiFi but check any forum and you will find people who are struggling with mesh WiFi but stubbornly insist on using it. Don’t be that guy.

In my old farmhouse where the walls are full of little nails I use this stuff

https://ui.com/wi-fi

I have four access points connected with Ethernet. At times I’ve had one in the wood shed with a power line Ethernet adapter connected to it which is fine for a point-to-point link but not if you have more than two devices plugged in. I watched them redo the wall between the a kitchen and that shed and it is a radio dead zone because there is a metal foil vapor barrier in it.

If you were designing a building for optimal WiFi and didn’t mind the cost you would have radio opaque walls to cut interference and maximize privacy and an access point in each room.

thfuran 2 years ago | |

>Mesh WiFi is a scam and it is just common sense that it is. If you have multiple network hops you use more frequencies, not less, you get more latency, not less, you get more packet loss, not less. How could it be any other way?

For one, the mesh back haul could use a different frequency band than the WiFi network. The cheapest WiFi extenders and mesh systems don't do this, but some do. But it still would be better to have wired back haul.

PaulHoule 2 years ago | | |

In larger scale systems (say ham radio or commercial radio or cellular telephone) there is some network planning involved. A ham radio repeater on a mountaintop can “network” with another repeater 70 miles away if there is a good line of sight. Similarly cell phone towers use millimeter wave and other radio backhaul but once more there is a carefully planned line of site. That isn’t what is happening with mesh WiFi.

edent 2 years ago |

Here's the system I used.

How are the WiFi speeds when you're stood next to the router? If they're slow, your router is to blame.

How about the room next to your router? If they're slow, your walls are to blame.

In the first case - buy a better router.

In the second case - buy access points and run Ethernet to them.

WiFi isn't some magic, esoteric, unknowable force. It is radio waves.

You can get WiFi scanners for Android which will let you map your house, see signal strength, and SNR. But that won't give you much more information than the above two steps.

PaulHoule 2 years ago | |

… to be fair in the typical cheap setup people set up the WiFi router in the corner of the house that the cable comes in and wonder why the reception is bad on the other corner.

The minimum amount of Ethernet you can lay to improve performance (get over the idea that running Ethernet is something your grandad would have done back in the war) is from the place your network comes in to the center of your home, which increases the signal strength to the far corner 4x if you do the math.

pestatije 2 years ago |

hows your mobile phone reception inside the house? what about good old UHF tv reception with an indoor antenna? i think a wifi mesh is overkill for a 130sqm area...im a bit imaginative here: put your router outside (lets say in the garden) and try checking from a distance with no walls inbetween)