How to Get Wireless Internet in Every Room of Your Home

Nothing’s worse than a Wi-Fi dead zone. If you have issues with spotty Wi-Fi, there are tons of options for boosting your signals, including mesh routers, Wi-Fi extenders, access points, and powerline network adapters.

Our home networking experts compiled this simple list of solutions to make sure you stay connected in every nook and cranny of your home.

Optimize your wireless router

Your Wi-Fi router is the heart of your home network. It manages all the data and makes sure everything gets to the right devices. It also creates your Wi-Fi network.

Different routers have different Wi-Fi ranges depending on their hardware and the tech used to direct signals to specific devices—like beamforming, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA. Most routers are good for an apartment or home under 2,000 square feet. And some long-range routers can boost Wi-Fi signals even further.

The location of your router can also make a big difference. Wi-Fi signals are just radio waves, and if you’ve ever tried to adjust the rabbit ear antennas on an old TV, you know how big of a difference a slight adjustment can make.

To get your Wi-Fi signal to every room in the house, try to put your router in a location where you can draw the shortest, straightest line to it from every room. Wi-Fi signals can be absorbed or deflected by large obstructions but do a good job of passing through walls and floors, especially if they hit them straight on.

You’re often somewhat limited in your router locations based on where your internet connection enters your house, but if you find you have a dead space in a nearby room, moving your router just a few feet might make all the difference.

How to get the most out of your router’s Wi-Fi signal

• Put your router in a central location.
• Position your antennas up and down to get wide coverage and sideways to get vertical coverage.
• Periodically reset and update your router to keep it running efficiently.
• Make sure it has up to date technology—anything older than AC1200 Wi-Fi is old tech.
• Keep it away from electronics that can interrupt Wi-Fi signals—like Bluetooth speakers, cordless phones, or microwaves.

Mesh Wi-Fi

Mesh routers and Wi-Fi systems are specifically designed to cover your whole home with a consistent Wi-Fi signal. A mesh system is made up of one primary router and one or more mesh extenders. All the mesh devices in the network communicate to create one cohesive Wi-Fi network with customizable coverage.

Mesh routers work in any situation, but they work best in certain situations:

• Covering very large homes
• Customizing coverage for homes with complex layouts
• Extending Wi-Fi to a garage or patio area

Another factor in favor of mesh Wi-Fi is that most mesh systems—particularly the Google Nest Wi-Fi system—are really easy to set up and manage via app.

Wi-Fi extenders

If you don’t want to upgrade to a mesh system because you have only one or two weak Wi-Fi spots, a network extender is a good option. These come in two forms:

• Wi-Fi extenders
• Powerline extenders

Wi-Fi extenders capture your existing Wi-Fi signals and rebroadcast them to extend your Wi-Fi range. Buying a Wi-Fi extender is way cheaper than getting a whole new mesh system—but still stretches your network to cover dead zones. However, Wi-Fi extenders can use only the signal you already have, so there’s a chance that you’ll just end up extending a weak Wi-Fi signal.

Powerline extenders use your home’s electrical wiring to carry internet signals from one adapter near your router to another in a different part of your home. Not all powerline adapters have native Wi-Fi compatibility, but many do—like the inexpensive TP-Link AV600.

Ethernet cables

Wired internet connections are inherently faster and more reliable than Wi-Fi, so using wired connections can improve your internet experience—especially for high-traffic devices like PCs, gaming consoles, or smart TVs.

If you’re looking for some hardcore internet coverage in your home, you can run Ethernet cables through your walls. Then you’ll have Ethernet jacks throughout your home so you can plug in computers, gaming consoles, Wi-Fi access points, or whatever else into a wired connection.

When purchasing Ethernet cables, you should look at the category, especially for distances longer than 150 feet. Anything labeled Cat 3 through Cat 5 are obsolete at this point.

Cat 6 Ethernet cables are relatively inexpensive and can handle internet speeds up to 10 Gbps. So that’s what we’d recommend for most people—although, Etherent categories now go up to Cat 8, which can transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps.