The Ultimate Guide to Achieving Whole-Home Wi-Fi Coverage

By Harry Guinness

When you’ve got a fast fiber connection, you want your Wi-Fi signal to reach every corner of your home. Here’s how to optimize your home Wi-Fi coverage and make sure your whole home is covered with a superfast network worthy of your high-speed home broadband.

Why isn’t my Wi-Fi everywhere?

Your Wi-Fi router uses radio signals to connect all your devices to your internet. These radio signals have a limited range and can be blocked by some materials, like concrete and steel. And no matter the size of your home, the walls, halls, levels and number of devices you’re connecting may mean a single router might not be enough to provide whole-home Wi-Fi.

The other issue is that Wi-Fi operates on three different frequency bands: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz. The 2.4 GHz band has the longest range but the slowest speeds, while the 6 GHz band has the fastest speeds but the shortest range. Even if your Wi-Fi network does reach your attic or basement, the signal might not be strong enough for the high speeds a fiber connection provides.

How to check for Wi-Fi dead spots

You probably already know if you have any Wi-Fi dead zones. They’re the awkward corners of your upstairs bedroom where your connection is always slow, or the basement rec room where the smart TV struggles to stream Netflix in HD.

Even still, it’s worth taking a few minutes to check your Wi-Fi network’s range and performance. Here’s how:

• Grab a laptop (one that’s not hard-wired to your router) and head to Speedtest.net or Fast.com. These websites will tell you how fast your internet connection is at any given moment.
• Stand next to your router and do a speed check. This will be the strongest signal in your home, so you should get the fastest Wi-Fi speeds here. Keep in mind that any older devices or an older router could be slowing down your speeds.
• Now go to every room and do a speed check. This will tell you how much the signal drops off around your home. If your laptop can barely connect to the internet, you’ve found a real dead spot!

If you want to do a really accurate speed test, you should make sure that no one is streaming or downloading on your network. But even if you don’t, you should get a good idea of how your network works throughout your home.

How to get whole-home Wi-Fi coverage

Achieving Whole-Home Wi-Fi isn’t hard. Here are two important things to consider:

Where should I place my router to improve Wi-Fi coverage?

Ideally, your router should be placed:

• As centrally as possible, so it’s covering your home with Wi-Fi, not the street out front.
• Away from thick walls, large appliances and other objects that can block Wi-Fi signals.
• At least five feet off the ground, so it can broadcast over furniture and other potential obstructions.

Should I use a mesh Wi-Fi network?

If you can’t get whole-home Wi-Fi with a single router, don’t worry. You can still do it with a mesh Wi-Fi system. A mesh network is a single Wi-Fi network that consists of a main router, which connects directly to your home router, and a series of extenders that are placed throughout the house.

These extenders are designed to broadcast a Wi-Fi signal to devices throughout your home. Each extender is wirelessly connected to the router and broadcasts the same Wi-Fi network and intelligently controls which devices connect to it.

The beauty of mesh networks is that all the extenders and the router in the same system broadcast the same SSID and share the same password, and you can jump between nodes as you traverse your home without having to log in to a new network or enter a different password.

Mesh extenders operate like Wi-Fi routers, so you should follow the same rules when placing them. The only caveat is instead of placing them centrally within your home, you should mentally divide it into zones and place them centrally within each zone. For example, you could place one extender in the middle of your upstairs and the other in the middle of your downstairs, or one extender at the front of your house and another toward the rear.

Most homes can be covered with two extenders, but if you need to, you can easily add a third.

Range extenders are also an option, but they aren’t as effective as a mesh system. If you want a great whole-home Wi-Fi network, a mesh Wi-Fi network is more reliable than a Wi-Fi extender and a straightforward way to achieve it.

Don’t settle for less than a whole-home network

If you’re paying for a fast broadband connection, it’s important to take the time to set up a Wi-Fi network that can extend it to your entire home. With mesh Wi-Fi routers available and easy to use, anyone can set up a great Wi-Fi network in just a few minutes.

Frontier Fiber is built for the way you live today—and tomorrow

If you’re still on the lookout for the right ultrafast internet connection for streaming, gaming, working from home and running your smart home—all with enough bandwidth for everyone—find out about Frontier Fiber. Frontier Fiber is available in select areas—check here to see when it’s available at your address. Talk to us about Whole-Home Wi-Fi to make the most of your internet connection.

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