This article was written to accompany a presentation done on 22nd January 2023. All the videos embedded in the post were current at that date. They could be removed from YouTube, or replaced by later ones, at any time.
The presentation built upon one that Paul de Geus did and which is included below. I’m indebted to him for pointing me to the video from RSAweb, which is a really good and short introduction to improving Home WiFi signal, and also including at least one video in the show from PowerCert. They are so good, I’ve used them as the basis of this presentation.
I’ve also written a couple of articles that you might find it useful to refer to …
“Improving home network performance“, and
Also, remember there’s a “Network issues” Forum that has several Topics relating to Home Networking, and if you have discovered a really good bit of technology, or you want help with the kit you’ve got, that would be a great place to look, or contribute to.
First however take a look at Paul’s presentation, of 2019 – yes five years ago, I can’t believe that! You can scroll through the slides using the arrow keys at the bottom of the window and make the text bigger using the +/- keys.
U3A-Cardiff_-Computer-GroupI suppose we should start with perhaps the main problem – a poor WiFi signal – and then work back from that to see whether we can improve our understanding of how networking works and how we can improve our Home Networking experience.
A more detailed look at possible quick wins are detailed in this article, and again some of the suggestions it mentions are covered later.
You might be able to improve your home WiFi by following the advice in that video and the article; indeed WiFi Extenders could do the trick (see later), but it’s probably better to understand a little more about the devices you’re using. So we start with Modem and Router. Almost always in new installations combined into one device called a Super Hub, or Smart Hub. Often an Internet Service Provider (ISP) will package that with a streaming TV service which includes the capability of recording TV channels and this will use the Hub to transmit by ethernet, or WiFi, to the TV.
So we have a device – a modem, that is connected to the internet by either a fibre-optic cable (eg VirginMedia), or DSL copper/fibre connection (eg OpenReach); it will almost always have a router with both WiFi and Ethernet ports included in it. The WiFi will normally offer two bands (wireless frequencies) at 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz. These two bands have different characteristics which are explained in the following video. [NB It’s important to note that Smart Devices mostly seem to prefer to operate on the 2.4Ghz band, so if you’re having difficulty connecting them, it might be prudent to check you have enable that band.]
Older WiFi devices will tend to use the 2.4GHz frequency and newer ones the 5GHz frequency. If you were experiencing poor WiFi on the 2.4GHz frequency it used to be recommended that you checked the channels that were being used in the neighbourhood and for you to change to a different one, usually 1 or 11 – the default is often 6. This is easily done by logging into your router (hub) and configuring a default channel.
However another possibility is to install a WiFi Extender. This device, as it suggests) accepts a WiFi signal from your WiFi Router (hub) and extends the signal to a part of the house where the signal is not so strong.
One of these devices may well suit your purposes and you may well be able to get one that has auto-sync that enables the network name (the Service Set Identifier or SSID) of your router to be used on the WiFi extender, but not always, and you may find yourself with two WiFi networks – one SSID for the router, another SSID for the extender, and you will have to choose your network depending upon the area of the house you are in and seamless roaming between the two will not be possible. Examples of WiFi Extenders (or Boosters) are listed here.
A different approach is to use the electric power circuits in your house to extend an ethernet network from the router (hub) to a power outlet on the same electric circuit. [NB This is the only configuration I’m happy to recommend. If you have more than one ring main, you may find that you don’t get good results when trying to connect between the two.] This technology is called Powerline and you can purchase devices that have both ethernet and WiFi capability. Again, look for ones that have auto-sync that will extend the SSID of the router to provide a single WiFi network. The video below explains how Powerline networking works.
One of our members (David Hughes) has recently installed this system, a TP-Link AV600 Powerline system which he is happy with. There are a couple of videos on that page which demonstrate how easy these new Powerline systems are to setup.
However, for some people (me included) the houses we live in are not well suited to any kind of WiFi (or ethernet) networking, and so Mesh wireless may be the solution. Interestingly most mesh systems use a dedicated 5GHz channel to let the devices “talk” to each other. In routing terms these are therefore tri-band routers. One example of a Mesh solution is the one offered by Google.
A popular Mesh solution is the one offered by BT …
… whilst Renee Martin has recently installed a TP-Link Deco E4 Mesh WiFi system. However, not all mesh systems are alike; some appear to work seamlessly behind your router in Access mode, others like mine require you to switch your hub into modem mode so that the main mesh hub works in Router mode. For the TP-Link system the difference between Access Mode and Router Mode is described here.
Should you be considering a Mesh system here are a some reviews – here, here and here. My system is a Netgear Orbi RBK53 one and I’m including a few screen shots from the app that you use to manage the network to describe what it does.
You have a main hub device, connected to the internet through a modem (my VirginMedia SuperHub – configured to be in modem mode), it then has two satellite hubs, one connected by an ethernet cable to my office, the other using WiFi to the back of the house which provides a WiFi facility to the upstairs, kitchen and garden. [I have tried connecting it using Powerline but there doesn’t appear to be any benefit from doing so.]
The devices connected to the satellite hub in my office at the time I took a screenshot were …
The devices connected to the satellite in the back of the house (when this map was created) were …
There are then a number of devices also connected to the Main Hub with one port being used to connect the ethernet cable to the Orbi in the office, one port connecting to a switch behind the TV (to connect the TV, HiFi etc), one to Powerline (not being used currently), and of course one to the VirginMedia Hub.
Looking at the configuration of the Orbi in the Office, you can see that it has an IP Address which it has obtained from the Main Hub. All IP addresses within the home network will always start 192.168.1.xxx – the individual devices being recognised by unique MAC addresses which are held against the IP address in the hubs.
… so when you look at the router settings on the Main Hub you can see it’s IP address is 192.168.1.1
Looking at the internet port settings of the router you can see that it has an external IP address of 86.29.24.114. This is effectively the IP address of my house. I am extremely lucky that this IP address does not seem to change – a VirginMedia “bug”, or is it because my VirginMedia Superhub is now just a modem?? This then makes it possible for me to host a server on my network, because I have a quasi-static IP address. Normally the external device is dynamically set so that when there is a power outage you may find you have been given a different external IP address.
The other setting that is interesting is the DNS server. Your ISP will have setup your router to point at their server, but these servers will usually be based in the area that it provides service to. So, it is often a good idea to change the defaults to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), or Google (8.8.4.4, or 8.8.8.8) because their servers are worldwide and so should provide quicker lookup of the directory. [NB what we’re talking about here is the translation of a friendly domain name eg google.com, to a set of four digits.] When your router is given a domain it has to look up it will look first at the the first one in your list; if it’s very busy, it will drop to the second, etc. So My router will look at Cloudflare first, then Google before dropping to VirginMedia.
That’s about it. I haven’t covered a number of topics that you might be interested in, eg
A few more refs. that you probably don’t need to know anything about:
Subnet mask explained
DHCP Explained – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
WiFi (Wireless) Password Security – WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPA3, WPS Explained