Which of these solutions do I need to solve wifi problem?

Best wishes to all!

Hoping to get some advice on a wifi problem.

We have 6 adults in our house, with lots of stuff!

In total there are:

6 iPads
6 iPhones
3 Apple TVs
2 Smart TVs
1 Xbox One
1 Xbox360
2 Samsung BluRays
1 Canon Printer
1 Internet Radio
1 Apple iMac
4 Windows PCs
1 iPod Touch
2 Sky On Demand boxes

We have a very good broadband service (most of the time) yielding
over 100Megs.

The router is a Cisco EPC3925 provided by the ISP and is attached by ethernet
cable to a desktop in a downstairs room at the back of the house, which is built of heavy concrete block.

The service is fine in most parts of the house except for one bedroom upstairs at the front of the house.
The service is either slow or non existent in that room.

I asked my ISP for tech support, but they're useless.

I got a powerline adapter,and it marginally improved things, but not nearly enough.
Unfortunately, both ends of the powerline adapter system are plugged into extension
cables (which I know is not ideal), not the wall plugs, but given the nature of our
furniture arrangement, the wall plugs are not an option.

I asked some friends for advice, thinking I might get a solution, but unfortunately
I'm more confused!

One was certain that a wifi booster would sort things.

Another said I should change the router to a dual band simultaneous.

Yet another said I only needed to set my existing router to 'n'.

I'm wondering if I should do all of these things, some of these things or none of these things.....
or something else!!!

Any advice deeply appreciated.

Kind wishes to all

Jim

I would suggest the most likely solution to work is a WiFi extender. Enabling n is fine but if some of the devices only support g then it won't help them. Also, n is such a wide range of standards and is also reliant on the quality and number of antennas at both ends.

You may also find looking at some reviews of wifi equipment will give an idea of distance and pentration of wifi signals. Some routers are very much better than others when it comes to wifi (there are some reviews on this site on wifi routers that will give an idea). Just upgrading the router to one that has better wifi power might actually fix the issue.

In the end there are many solutions and you may have to try a few to get one that works in your situation. If there are things you can try that don't cost anything (like enabling n on the existing router) then no harm in trying. Replacing the router may be the easiest solution but could be expensive. Putting in a wifi repeater will be a bit cheaper and may actually give better options anyway (not the least of which multiple wifi antennas spreads the limited bandwidth of wifi over a number of devices - although be careful as too many wifi routers/repeaters and they will potentially start interfering with each other - 2 or 3 should be fine).

And actually, there is an even cheaper option. You may find things improve by just changing the channel the wifi is on. Trial and error will be needed to see if it helps or hinders.

Dual band for the devices that support 5GHz is a good start, and then an extender, or wireless access point on the end of Ethernet cable to reach the harder to reach places.

One trick if going down the wifi access point per room route is to reduce the output power so that the walls around a room block the signal, but leave enough so it works in just that room.

I don't know directly of a solution; but it may help others to help you, if you identify the particular equipment that you want to use in that front bedroom.

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I have been experimenting with CONNECTIFY-LITE, providing a WiFi Hot Spot from an ASUS Eee Netbook, acting in effect as a repeater, to extend my own WiFi..

This would allow you to experiment at least, running it on a suitable PC or Laptop already functioning successfully on your existing WiFi in an adjacent room.

My concern over 5Ghz is the OP was asking for additional reach. 5Ghz in a house with thick walls is likely to fall off much more quickly and actually cover a shorter distance than 2.4Ghz. 5Ghz certainly would help with congestion but unlikely to reach further?

My suggestion is that anything that can be linked with Cat5e/Cat6 is linked that way and then asses any remaining problems. If necessary add another WiFi hotspot (linked with Cat5e/Cat6) to fill in any dead spots.

Yes running cable is disruptive, but that much stuff an WiFi is never going to give an optimal experience.

As others have said, multiple ways to solve this problem.

We have a similar issue in some parts of our house, fairly big with lots of solid brick walls, router not in a very great location at one end of the house.. I use a Wireless Access Point connected via ethernet cable to the router (via a network switch and some devious cable routing., mounted up under the stairs as high as I can get it (so almost at ceiling height and roughly in the middle of the house).

This gives us wifi all over the house, and I don't need to bother with the router wifi. at all.

I think a wired connection is preferable to a wifi conenction as that will jjust put more demand on your poor old wifi

Hi everybody,
Wow! these responses are brilliant!

I'll go through them in detail and decide how to proceed.

In the meantime, I just wanted to express my sincere gratitude for
all the time and effort everybody has given!

kindest wishes to all

Jim

you have 2 probable problems - range and congestion.

I had a set up where I wanted to restrict access times to stop the kids accessing the internet after a certain time of night, so had a set up with the ISP based modem/router with WiFi turned off and a DDWRT based router just attached to this to provide the WiFi in the home, but this was just wireless G, and while coverage in the home was fine, the devices using this started to multiply as 6 people started to use more devices (PC's, tablets, phones) to the point where the router started to fail to be able to register new connection attempts.

I think I'd recommend trying a powerline adaptor with WiFi access - this would create an AP (Access Point) separate to your ISP router (with a separate SSID - network identifier) that ultimately plumbs into an Ethernet connection on your ISP router - this pushes some of the traffic off the ISP router's wireless connection, which should make access there easier for the ones still using it. My only note of caution would be if the electrics are old, & the circuits are separated out as this might prevent the the base powerline unit communicating with the extender - which would rather negate the point.

If you're worried about the electrics, then the other best option would be to a basic wired Ethernet connection - you could tack something like that (the cabling) the the skirting board & it not be too obtrusive & then pop a TP-Link WDR3500/3600 on the end (we've found them a good balance of price to functionality at work) on the uplink port thereon. This would leave you with a couple of potential Ethernet ports (if you feel like doing some more wiring) to use with... say an Xbox in someone's room) and and a further wireless connection being distributed (and providing more potential WiFi connectivity).