One of the unexpected issues we had after upgrading to smart phones was that we suddenly wanted WiFi Internet access everywhere in our house and property. With our laptops we had specific places we sat to use them, and the access was fine in those places, but with our smart phones we were up and wandering everywhere. Suddenly we were discovering all the dead zones in the house. For example, when I tried taking my phone to the backyard in the summer with Bluetooth speakers to play music, I found I had to stay within ten feet of the house to maintain access to the local WiFi network. We also found ourselves getting disconnecting upstairs and in the farther end of our living room. Sometimes it depended on which direction we faced. Since our phones have data limits we wanted to save the 4G data use for when we were away from home. It was time to change-up the WiFi.
I loaded up a WiFi signal detector app on the phone and wandered the house. Not only was the signal dropping far from the router, but in the living room our neighbor’s WiFi signal was actually significantly higher than ours. At the time, our router was located in a corner of the basement. That was where the cable company had installed the cable modem. To get better coverage of the entire house I decided to move the router to the very center of the house on the main floor.
It just so happened that the center of our house is a hall closet. I had our entertainment system in this closet with long wires connecting it to the TV and speakers in the living room. I put it there because when I was a kid we pulled the channel knob off the TV (yes, it was long enough ago that we had knobs) and dropped paper clips inside, shorting the TV out. I’ve watched little kids try to put all kinds of objects into CD and DVD players. When our daughter, Coral, was born I moved our entire entertainment system to a top shelf in the hall closet to keep it out of her reach. Being eight years old now, I actually want her to be able to reach the Blu-ray drive on her own.
So, I moved the receiver and media PC to a cabinet in the living room, and moved the router into the closet. This did the trick. We now had WiFi coverage all through the house.
Of course, I couldn’t just stop there. My neighbor’s router was still stronger than ours in the living room! Looking online, I found they now had higher-powered and faster routers. I upgraded. My laptop can now connect at nearly Gigabit wired speeds. I walked our property from the street to the back fence: we have an excellent signal everywhere on our property. We’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and we don’t even think about WiFi access anymore because it’s always connected no matter where we are at home.
Next summer I suspect we’ll enjoy sitting outside in the yard with our networked music or radio streaming, checking mail, and posting to Facebook. We won’t have to limit ourselves to ten feet from the house. Having access to streaming radio and music will also make it much more enjoyable when I finally get around to cleaning out and repairing our old garage. It really needs it. Luckily it’s winter right now, so I won’t think about that chore any further.
