Hello Lemmy,

We finaly moved to a new place with fiber connection woop! ISP installed ZXHN F670L FTTH next to entrance door where electronic cabinet is. Appartment is just 60 m2 and we have issues with wifi signal.

Tv (Xiaomi TV stick) is mounted on the wall just 4-5 m from the router (no door, just corner of the wall is barrier from the line of sight). I can see 2.4 GHz wifi at 50% signal and 5 GHz takes like 30 sec to even show on TV menu. 5 GHz wifi is at 20-30% only and when I connect its unusable.

PC in next room is losing connection all the time and thats behind 2 walls.

If Im not just next to a router, I have better signal from 2 neighbours that use same ISP (I can tell from SSID).

I called them and they said techician will come on monday to check and possibly replace router with some Huawei model.

I still have old (coax cable) router from old place, I placed it in same spot for testing and signal is much better. Still not perfect, but TV has 80-90% and PC in next room is almost the same.

Do I just have crappy router or my walls are wifi unfriendly what do you think? I dont need super high speed on wifi, but I need stable connection (2 android phones, 1 work laptop, 2 smart switches and few smart appliances). More important devices like server and main PC are using cable connection. This router has 1GB LAN ports and Im fine with that since my speed is 300/100 only. 100 Mbps would be plenty for Wifi.

Should I stick with 2.4 GHz and fight with neighbour routers? Can I expect better signal from Huawei (sorry dont know exact model yet)? What if ISP cant provide proper solution, what wifi AP would you recommend? I could place AP in another room and connect to a router via UTP cable.

Thx in advance

  • ElderWendigo
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    1 year ago

    Combination wifi & router devices are notoriously unstable. Those provided by ISPs are particularly bad. If you have the ability and the funds, spend a little more to get a prosumer router and wireless AP as separate devices that connect to your modem in bridge mode. In the long run, for me anyway, the stability and reliability of this kind of setup paid for itself quickly in less of my time wasted. My setup: my own cable modem per the specs my ISP provided, a unifi edge router X, and a unifi AP. I already had a server so I installed the AP management software on it, but unifi also sells a single board device to run that. Everything except the AP live in a little electronics cabinet tucked away. The AP gets it’s power over Ethernet, so it can be mounted to a better placement with regard to walls, doors, pipes, etc. on a wall or ceiling with only a length of Ethernet cable running to the router. The AP itself just looks like a hand sized bump of white on the wall. I turned off the AP’s status lights once it was setup so that it remains as discreet as possible. Adding a WiFi repeater from unifi nearer to the one room I still had a little trouble with was almost as easy as plugging it into the wall outlet.

    Not everyone can or should go this route, and it was a learning experience for me with some growing pains, but in the end it was worth it to me. UniFi isn’t the only game in town either. Either way separating your network devices so that each only does one job (the modem connects, the router routes, and the AP does wifi) means that one underpowered chip isn’t being crushed under the weight of too many tasks at once.

    • rambos@lemm.eeOP
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      1 year ago

      Thank you for detailes answer. I might go that route, but need to find slsuitable device(s). Ill check what unifi sells on our market