So I am trying to help out my father-in-law here with a Wi-Fi coverage issue.

He lives in a home that has very thick stone walls, his windowsills are like 20 inches deep.

He’s got a Comcast router in his living room, and has good coverage in that side of the house, but is complaining about poor coverage in the kitchen. I’m trying to explain to him that the best thing to do would be to move the router to a more central location like the main hallway and then maybe add some extenders. Another idea I gave him is to hardwire an extender out to the kitchen, basically attach a network cable to the main router and run that to the kitchen and then attach another router there, essentially a sub-router I guess it would be considered?

So far he doesn’t seem interested in doing any sort of rewiring of coax or running network cable. I’m not sure this is going to work with the way his house is built. Are there any network extenders out there that would work for him? He has a house built in 1950, so no open floor plan, lots of walls and very thick and not helping with the Wi-Fi signal.

Doesn’t Comcast make their own network extenders now? I really don’t know anything about them, maybe he should just try those?

What’s the existing coax wiring like? Is it run through an attic or a basement? Is it run to another location in the house?

Ran into a similar issue with a smart TV installed in the master bedroom on the top floor of a 3 floor (finished basement + main + master bedroom on top). Lousy WiFi connectivity. Main router (LinkSys AC1200 Dual band) is in the basement kittycorner from where the master bed's TV is upstairs. Looked at a bunch of options (Nest was way too spendy) and opted for a range extender (LinkSys AC750) which has worked just fine for the last 2 years.
FWIW we're using a NETGEAR CM1200 DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
What’s the existing coax wiring like? Is it run through an attic or a basement? Is it run to another location in the house?

I think it runs to the living room and then splits off to the basement.

I’m trying to tell him that moving the router to a central location would be the most logical and easiest way to go about this but he doesn’t want to do it. The router sits in the corner of the living room and is basically the other side of the house from the kitchen which is exactly why the Wi-Fi reception is poor there.

Any interest on his side for a Powerline adapter?

Easy installation, and he can leave his equipment where it is for workable internet in another part of the house.

--K

I’ve got the older version of one of these Netgear extenders. It works ok. Keep your receipt and try it.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/n...1bc4baa&gclsrc=3p.ds

Any chance you could go to a MESH wifi setup. I installed an eero 6 router and one eero extension. No loss of internet speed across the system.

I have this one. Works well. 5 bars everywhere. No wiring required.

Netgear Plug in Wifi Extender





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Think of WiFi extenders like a person with two walkie talkies relaying messages from one walkie talkie to the other. The WiFi extenders can only listen then talk. They can work if he has slow internet. If he has fast internet, a wire will be better.

So the existing coax was added after the house was built. It probably goes to a wall plate and probably isn't attached inside a wall. I would find it in the basement and use it to pull a fish tape from the living room into the basement. I'd then use the fish tape to pull the coax and an ethernet cable into the living room. I'd replace the coax wall plate with one that had both coax and RJ-45 jacks. I'd run the ethernet cable in the basement over to the other side of the house and mount a Wireless Access Point (WAP) there. Plug a patch cable into the switch built into the cable modem and the wall plate and Viola, problem solved. That assumes it's not a finished basement and the floor joists are exposed. That's about $150 worth of materials including the WAP.

If he can't be convinced to let you run one wire:

Better than powerline adapters assuming he isn't using an xfinity DVR with XiD boxes on other TVs is Multimedia over CoAx (MoCA). A pair of MoCA adapters will let you run TCP/IP over the existing coax cable. One way speeds up to 2.5gbps. In the living room, you'll run the coax that's feeding the cable modem into one of the MoCA adapters. Then run a coax from the MoCA adapter to the cable modem. You'll also run a patch cable from the ethernet jack on the MoCA adapter to the switch on the cable modem. In the basement somewhere on the other side of the house where the coax hopefully is, you'll install the other MoCA adapter. You'll cut the cable coax, install two connectors and hook these to the MoCA adapter. You'll run and ethernet patch cable from the MoCA adapter to the WAP you'll install there as well. You'll install a MoCA Point of Entry filter here as well. Not on the coax section between the two MoCA adapters, but on the other coax. There shouldn't be any signal loss because you aren't using any splitters. This will be roughly $300 in materials.

Since he has a Comcast (Xfinity) router, and assuming it is recent enough and he or you have a Smart phone (you need their app to set it up), you can get an Xfinity Pod extender for $100. I haven't seen any problems with speed and it's helped my WiFi coverage in the house considerably.

Update:

He has 300 Mbps Xfinity service, the speedtest app on my phone gives me 225-250 Mbps at the router.

He went and bought an Xfinity xFi pod and plugged it into an outlet in the front hallway about midway from the router in that direction and midway to the kitchen in the other direction. They helped him get it configured and working and I'm getting 200 Mpbs in the kitchen now and he's happy.