Finding the best spot for a router

Hey gang!

Couple of things. Finally made the jump away from Smarty (now on EE). Dramatically more stable (ie it actually is stable) and generally pretty fast, but I want to try and find the best spot in the house to get the best signal, up my speed a bit. Where it seemed to work well for Smarty isn't nearly as good for EE, but moving the router about the house is a little bit of a pain.

I'm using a TP-Link TL-MR6400, and I've also got a new phone with an EE sim. Can I just use that to get a rough idea of where is going to work better, or is the fact that the hardware is different going to skew the results? While I'm at it, any tips on settings that I should be aware of with the TP-Link to get anything more from it? Just a factory settings at the moment

Cheers!

First, have a look at https://www.cellmapper.net/ to find your local masts. Then just put the TP-Link in a window that faces the mast.

However, even a window will attenuate the signal dramatically, so if you don't get 5 bars indoors, then you need an external antenna and remove the TP-Link's rabbit ears.

It all depends on whether you have line-of-sight and how far away that mast is from your house:
- If have line-of-sight and quite far away, then you should go for a directional antenna like the Poynting XPOL-2-5G. Line of Sight is the best option, even if it means choosing a mast that's up to a mile further away than the closest.
- If you need to receive 'reflections', i.e. no line of sight to the mast, then it's probably best to go for an omni-directional antenna like the Poynting XPOL-1 V2 5G, as that will be better for receiving reflections. Try ensuring it's on a pole with a 365 degree view, and allow the TP-Link's modem to beamform onto the best reflection.
- If you have line of sight and the mast is close, you should be able to continue with the rabbit ears, but the omni antenna won't hinder you either.

In general though, it's even better just to run a CAT6 cable to your TV pole and put an outdoor modem on the pole, that way distance between modem and antenna is reduced.

I'm pretty much equidistant between three different ones by the looks of it, and fairly rural so I might have line of sight to at least one. Even just moving the router upstairs made a jump up to 50Mbps and that's right in the middle of the house, in a terraced house, so I suspect I'll get something good even with just wandering around the house and plugging the router in random spots! Cheers for the recommendations, I'll give those a look for a future upgrade.

Don't neglect the fact that your wifi performance inside the house is also very delicate. Moving the router or your device a couple of centimetres or rotating them a few degrees can have a dramatic effect.

So you need to balance raw signal strength with overall wifi performance throughout.