Best location for router and extender
Question
I have a router in the basement and an extender on the main level in the den next to the garage. There are cameras inside and outside the home. The cameras in the back yard are in the yard from 20-40ft away from the home. There's 2 ppl working from home on teams and another "taking classes" but really streaming movies, YouTube and gaming all day.
There are 6 smart tv's and at least 2 of them are on most of the day and sometimes 3. Streaming tv gets pixelated a lot and the camera feeds outside are hit or miss. I'm not sure if it's the placement of the devices or the bandwidth isn't good enough.
If the issue is placement, it would probably mean we need another extender located at the back of the house. Since the only thing wired are the 3 desktops on the upper level, maybe putting the router up there rather than in the basement would help but I'm building a gaming PC for the basement.
Although the router is in the basement, I have a cat5/6 going from that to the upper level to a hub which supports the 3 desktops and 2 IoT hubs.
How do I get better performance from the internet/wifi?
Answer
You won't get any good coverage with WiFi.
In a commercial setting, you would find wireless access points in every room. This is not economically feasible in residential settings.
For outdoor cameras, the majority of the mid-atlantic region houses have metal-plated siding material to reflect heat, which also reflects wireless radios. I learned this the hard way and ended up pulling Ethernet wires to all cameras.
Smart TVs should still have a 10/100 Ethernet port for hardwiring too.
If you have a CAT5e wire coming from the basement, you can relocate the router to the main floors. The argument against it is if you also have coaxial TV service and the house is not wired for Coax in each room.
Solution provided by Cang_Household.
