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      06-09-2017, 05:04 AM   #5
zx10guy
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What's your physical housing situation? One level? Multi-level? Lot's of close by neighbors running their own wireless networks? Building wall material type?

These are all important considerations when dealing with wireless performance. The first thing I would do is download a WiFi sniffing app for your smart phone; making an assumption you have a smart phone. An app I use is WiFi Analyzer for Android. Running this app will give you a quick and dirty look at your RF space around you. It'll tell you what wireless networks can be seen by your phone/app, the signal strength, operating channel, SSID, 2.4 or 5, and manufacturer info of the wireless device. You want to see what channel your wireless network is operating on and if other neighboring wireless networks are also operating on the same channel. If you have a lot of wireless networks using the same channel with high signal strengths, you're going to have issues with interference. So the first thing is to check this and if this is the case, change the operating channel of your wireless network to another channel which isn't overlapping and has less traffic on it. For 2.4 GHz, the non overlapping channels are 1, 6, and 11. I forget the ones for 5 GHz. I would do this first before spending any money on new hardware. If you have a PC laptop, you can download a free copy of Xirrus WiFi Inspector which will present things in a better graphical format.

If you are still having problems and again depending on your physical layout, I agree about the suggestion that a better system is to get a dedicated AP system. Ubiquiti is a good option. But seeing reviews of systems like the Netgear Orbi seems to be a good alternative for home users. The Orbi supports wireless mesh deployments where you can place APs around your home without having to run wires between them. The system uses wireless mesh technology to establish the backend network connection. The advantage of a system like this is the APs work as one virtual AP. This facilitates cooperative operation between APs and gives you the ability to roam seamlessly around your home. You won't get roaming by putting a bunch of independent APs together.

The key for good wireless performance is understanding that having a single AP being able to blast the strongest signal possible is meaningless when the typical return signal from a wireless client is many times much weaker than the AP. I can get into a whole discussion about wireless network theory and proper design.

If you still want to dig into a new wireless router option, this site has some pretty well done reviews on wireless routers:

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

Because this is one of the things I do for a living, I've been blessed to have access to SMB/Enterprise grade wireless equipment. I have wireless equipment from 3 different manufacturers running. But the main system has 4 access points spread all around my home broadcasting 4 SSIDs.
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