Your home’s Wi-Fi signal can improve with better router placement

Your Wi-Fi router should be placed centrally in your house. (Quang Nguyen Duc/Dreamstime/TNS)

Your Wi-Fi router should be placed centrally in your house. (Quang Nguyen Duc/Dreamstime/TNS)

I’ve been writing about Wi-Fi over the last few weeks, and I’ve had a lot of questions about routers and what can be done to make them work better.

Let’s talk about Wi-Fi router placement and what you can do to get the best coverage.

First, your Wi-Fi router should be placed centrally in your house.

Raise your hand if your broadband modem is stuck in a corner in the very back of a back room.

A lot of the people I know didn’t have much say in where their broadband modem ended up.

So what can you do?

Look around the room where the modem/router lives. Is it against an outside wall? Under a desk? Is there a place in the room to move the router that would be closer to the center of the house? Even moving it six or eight or 10 feet across a room can make a big difference.

Your router likely doesn’t have enough spare cable to move too far, so you’ll need to see what kind of cable it needs and add a longer one.

You will either need a coaxial cable or an Ethernet cable and any appropriate connectors.

You’ll want to place the router out in the open and as high up as you can get it.

I helped a friend install a new Wi-Fi router this week. The modem was in an office at one end of the house, and it did give a stronger signal than the old router.

But when my friend raised the new router two feet off the desk, the signal improved again.

If you have a two-story house, I’d try to get the modem up as high as possible.

If your modem has external antennas, play with the direction. Try the antennas oriented vertically and horizontally and see how the signal changes.

I’ve been using an app called Netspot (www.netspotapp.com) to check the Wi-Fi signal around my house. It’s a free app, but there are Pro and Enterprise versions that add more features.

The free version should be just fine for most people. Load it on your Windows or Macintosh laptop, and you’ll see a comprehensive list of every available Wi-Fi network and all the stats you need to check your router’s signal strength.

Finally, I had a few questions about Wi-Fi range extenders. I’ve tried a few extenders that say they work to extend any Wi-Fi signal.

I have not had great luck with them, but I’m not telling anyone not to try them.

If you’re thinking about an extender, you may be best served by saving your money for one of those mesh Wi-Fi systems like Eero, Netgear Orbi, or Linksys Velop with two or three access points. They do a much better job.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Jim Rossman writes for The Dallas Morning News. He may be reached at jrossman@dallasnews.com.