Do you need help picking a brand-new router?
Do you need help picking a brand-new router?
Hey there, thanks so much in advance! I'm looking for a new router because our old Apple Airport Extreme keeps having trouble getting signal to every part of the house and it's been way too long. We need something that covers a big area about 3,000 square feet. Our whole home is pretty full of Apple stuff like MacBooks, iPads, and iPhones, so we need WiFi for everything. I also want this new router to handle our wireless printer well. We even have a server that connects to security cameras wirelessly. We get Spectrum internet which probably matters a little bit. With the current plan, we get 450 Mbps down but only 23 Mbps up. In the future, my wife is going to download medical stuff from work, so she needs faster speeds. So what router gives good reach and fast speed? It also has to be super easy to set up because I'm not very tech-savvy. Thanks again!
There isn't a magic router with more coverage than what's already there. Most routers just transmit at their legal limit, so nothing beats that. Even if someone tried to turn it up illegally, the connection would only get half as good. Your device needs to send a signal back to the router too, and sometimes those devices just can't go full power because they want to save battery or lack big antennas. Now maybe you could find something faster running, but the signal won't go farther. This depends on how old your apple router is. They change the hardware often but keep the name the same for years. Just like that, your device gets half the connection so buying a new wifi6e router would just make it slower anyway. Most people get about 300mbps right near the router and 100 to 150mbps further away. This assumes common radio chips, but you can do better if both devices have high-end radios. Even with huge money, you won't reach more than 600 or 700 mbps. Pretty much all routers come out of the box and they work fine. Most have unique names and passwords on a sticker that came with it. Too many lazy people wouldn't bother to change them when they used the same one on every router before. It is still recommended you change them so you don't have to run over and check the sticker because you can't remember the password anymore. Wifi printers and cameras don't care which brand of router you use, luckily apple never made those wifi chips themselves. If your printer was physically connected via a USB cable then the router must support that feature too. Anything fast you want connects best via ethernet cable. There is no real fix for coverage problems. Don't get tricked by marketing claiming "mesh" garbage as a good last choice. Your neighbors buying mesh systems is likely part of your own coverage issues. It's not like the signals don't cover your house; they do and even go to your neighbor's house. The problem is that you have too much interference so the signal gets unusable. So now every house sends out a bunch more signals instead of just the ones from your main router. The best solutions involve putting an AP or a cheap router acting as an AP in the remote room. Best if you have ethernet cables to the remote room. Next is if you have coax cable, you can use MoCA, and modern moca gets full 1gbit speed. Then you would look at powerline networks. This uses electrical wires like ethernet but it's limited in speed, maybe around 130 mbps. It also depends on the quality and distance of your wiring as it must pass through them. ...............and then very last when none of these work you look at mesh. If you actually check mesh buy the more expensive devices that have dedicated wifi chips to talk to the main router and different ones for end user devices. The key to mesh working is placement though. You can't just stick it in a remote room where it gets the same bad signal from your main router; it needs to be placed where it gets good signal from your main router but still sends signals to the remote room. This is very tricky when walls or ceilings are absorbing the signals.
Thanks for taking the time to explain all of this. I admit that some parts sound complicated, so maybe it's best just to buy another router and stick with it like an access point? Will that work if I pair my Apple router with another device? The other problem I don't get is this: when I take my laptop into a quiet room far from the Wi-Fi source, the download speed drops way down to under 300 Mbps, but I can still connect. However, when I try using my iPhone in that same spot, the internet won't come through at all. This new problem started just a few days ago. Also, even though my Wi-Fi printer is only about 30 feet away and in a different room, it refuses to get connected. Do you think the issue comes from Spectrum rather than the router?
You can plug any router into your phone to act as a hotspot (AP). Most routers today have this built-in feature, but you might not see it on the screen. Just search online for how to turn one off and use it as an AP instead. It's hard to tell just by looking because so many factors affect how things work here. I think the main difference is that some radios use 2.4GHz while others use 5GHz. You should probably pick a different name (SSID) or setting for each radio if you want your devices to connect to the strongest signal available. Generally, 2.4GHz will move slower than 5GHz, and it has more trouble when you are far away from the router.