The NBN box is in the garage. How do you get the internet to the rest of the house?

The NBN installer came, drilled through the garage wall where the cable comes in, and left. The box is on the garage wall, the router is plugged in beside it, and the WiFi in the lounge room and the bedrooms is somewhere between poor and nothing. The good news is that the box itself rarely needs to go anywhere. This is how we rank the fixes on the phone, cheapest and most reliable first, and when it really is a job for NBN box relocation, or one cable instead.

Why did the NBN box end up in the garage?

The NBN box usually ends up in the garage because that is where the cable comes into the house. On fibre to the premises the lead-in from the street ends at the grey box on the outside wall, and the quickest install is a hole straight through that wall to the inside box. On HFC, and on older houses where the phone line always came in at the garage, the logic is the same.

Some people choose the garage on purpose. The inside box is large, its lights are on all night, and our technician has suggested the garage himself to people who did not want it on a living room wall, with a cable run from there to wherever the router should go. The trouble only starts when the router is left out there with it.

nbn’s own fact sheet for the fibre connection box (opens in a new tab) says the box should not go in a garage or a bedroom unless one of three things is true: you asked for it, there is existing ethernet cabling from that spot to a better place for the WiFi, or it is the only safe or feasible place for it in that house. It also says the box should be within a 12 metre radius of the outside box. How closely that is followed depends on who turns up on the day.

Why is the WiFi so bad with the router in the garage?

The WiFi is bad because the router is making its signal on the far side of a garage wall, and much of that signal is lost before it reaches a room anyone uses. In our technician’s words, you are losing half your signal before it even gets to where you want it.

What is in the way decides how bad it is:

• Brick and double brick between the garage and the house.
• A concrete floor upstairs. A timber floor lets WiFi through to the level above far better than concrete does.
• The garage itself: a car, a metal door, shelving and a fridge, all between the router and the house.
• Distance. A single-storey house with the garage at one end puts the far bedrooms a long way from the router.

Before you blame the garage, check it is the WiFi and not the connection. Plug a laptop into the router with a cable and run a speed test, then run one on WiFi in the room that is bad.

Check your speed first On a cable at the router in the garage, then on WiFi in the room you use most. Good on the cable and poor in the room is the garage, not the NBN.

If it is slow on the cable too, the garage is not the problem, and why your NBN is slow is the place to start.

What are the options when the NBN box is in the garage?

There are four, and our technician ranks them the same way on nearly every call: run one cable to a router in the middle of the house, use mesh starting from inside the house, use data points that are already in the walls, or move the box itself.

The four ways to get the internet out of the garage, best first

Option	What it involves	When it is the right answer
One cable to the middle of the house	The box stays; a data cable runs from it to a socket where the router goes	Almost always. It fixes most garage installs
Mesh, starting inside the house	One cable into the room next to the garage, the first mesh unit there, more units through the house	Big or two-storey houses, and slab houses where a long cable run is hard
The data points already there	Patch the router, or a switch, in the garage to a point in the room that needs it	Newer houses and duplexes with data points that run back to the garage
Move the NBN box	The inside box goes to another room on a new fibre lead or coax	When you want the box itself out of the garage, or nothing else reaches

Pick a setup

Router in the garage Mesh from the garage One cable to the middle

1. NBN box Router Mesh unit

   Garage
2. Family room
3. Mesh unit

   Kitchen
4. Router

   Lounge
5. Bedroom

Router in the garage

The router is on the far side of the garage wall, and much of its signal is gone before it reaches a room anyone uses.

Mesh from the garage

A mesh unit in the garage has the same wall to get through as the router. The units further in can only pass on what reaches them.

One cable to the middle

The box stays in the garage. One cable takes the connection to a router in the middle of the house, and the WiFi starts where the rooms are.

One cable to a router in the middle of the house

The best fix is to leave the NBN box in the garage and run one data cable from it to a socket in the middle of the house, then plug the router in there. The WiFi then starts where the rooms are, at full speed, and the box stays out of sight.

Where the socket goes matters. Our technician’s general advice is the middle of the house on the ground floor, so the signal spreads evenly, and in a lot of homes that means behind the TV, which also lets the TV plug straight in. A home office is the other common choice. A Cat6 cable carries more than any NBN plan sold today, so the cable will not be the bottleneck; Cat5e vs Cat6 vs Cat6a explains the difference if you are choosing.

How the cable gets there depends on the house. With a timber floor it can go underneath. On a concrete slab there is no underfloor, so it goes up through the roof or along the outside wall in a neat conduit, and in through the wall where the router will sit. If a cable is going in anyway, our technician usually suggests pulling a second one through at the same time: it takes the same time as one, and it covers the next thing you want plugged in. That is data cabling from the garage to the room, and you can price the run with our data cabling estimator.

Mesh, with the first unit inside the house

Mesh works in some garage houses and not others, and the difference is usually where the first unit goes. A mesh unit plugged in beside the router in the garage has the same problem the router has: it is pushing its signal through the garage walls. Our technician puts it plainly: you do not want the first unit in the garage, because you are just wasting a unit.

The version that works is a short cable first. Run one cable from the garage into the room next to it, put the first mesh unit there, and spread the others through the house, one or two per floor. The mesh then starts inside the house at full speed. It is often the cheaper answer on a two-storey slab house, where getting cable to every room means conduit up the outside and through the roof.

Plain WiFi extenders are not the same thing. Our technician’s view of them for a garage house is blunt: they are pretty rubbish for this, because they repeat a signal that is already weak by the time it reaches them. Do WiFi range extenders really work explains why, and the best mesh WiFi for Australian homes covers choosing a system.

The data points that are already in the walls

Many newer houses and duplexes already have the answer in the walls: data points in the bedrooms and the living room, with every cable running back to the garage. In that case the box belongs in the garage, and the job is connecting what is there, not running anything new.

If one room needs the WiFi, patch the NBN box to the garage end of the cable that runs to that room, and plug the router in at the room end. If several rooms need a cable connection, the router stays in the garage with a network switch beside it, patched out to each room’s point. Our technician’s advice when every cable already comes back to the garage is to keep the box there with the switch: moving the box upstairs and feeding the whole house back down one cable puts everything through that one cable. Setting up a wired home network walks through the patching.

Moving the NBN box

Moving the box is the biggest of the four jobs, and our technician’s advice is not to do it unless you really want the box out of the garage. On fibre to the premises the grey box on the outside wall stays where it is and the white box inside is what moves, on the existing fibre lead if it reaches and a new one if it does not, because fibre cannot be spliced and its connectors do not survive being pulled through walls. On HFC it is the black box on the coax that moves.

The new spot needs a power point, has to be inside and dry, and the route there is the same question as for a cable: under the floor, through the roof or along the outside wall. The full detail, including the copper connections where there is a wall socket rather than a box, is on the NBN box relocation page, and the quote covers both ways, the box moved or one cable instead.

For the mesh option, a three-pack is usually enough. For a temporary run across the floor until a cable goes in the wall, a long flat lead does the job.

We earn a small commission if you buy through our Amazon links, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Gear mentioned here, on Amazon Australia

Product	What it is for	Link
TP-Link Deco X55, 3-pack	WiFi 6 mesh for most homes	View on Amazon for the TP-Link Deco X55, 3-pack (opens in a new tab)
UGREEN flat Cat6, 10 m	Under a rug or along a skirting	View on Amazon for the UGREEN flat Cat6, 10 m (opens in a new tab)
TP-Link TL-SG105	5 ports, plug in and go	View on Amazon for the TP-Link TL-SG105 (opens in a new tab)

What will the NBN installer do on the day?

On installation day the installer will often put the inside box where you ask, if you ask before anything is drilled. What actually happens depends on who turns up. Once the box is in, moving it is not part of NBN’s job, and it becomes a job for a cabler.

Our technician’s advice before the install is the same every time:

• Be there on the day, and say where you want the box before the drill comes out.
• Mark the wall with an X where it should go, with a power point within reach.
• Ask for the box where the router should live, or in the garage with existing cabling to that spot.
• If they will not, let it go in the garage for now. It can be moved later, and one cable may turn out to be all you need.

nbn’s fact sheet says the technician will assess the premises and take your reasonable preference into consideration, and that a spot outside the 12 metre radius needs a cable pathway you have put in. If you want the box somewhere specific, the cabling can go in before the install: that is pre-wiring for the NBN box, done before the installer arrives.

Not installed yet? Plan the spot and print a sheet for the installer.

Is the garage a bad place for the box itself?

Once the box is there, the garage is fine for it as long as it is dry, has air around it and has a power point nearby. nbn’s fact sheet asks for a cool, dry, ventilated spot out of direct sunlight, within 1.2 metres of a power point.

Heat is the one to watch. A garage in summer, shut all day, gets very hot, and our technician’s advice about routers in confined, hot spaces is to give them air: electronics last longer and run better when they are not cooking. If the box or the router in the garage loses power, check the garage power point first with an extension lead from a point you know works, before anyone is booked.

When to call a technician, and when you don’t need one

You do not need anyone yet if the box is not installed: ask the installer on the day. You also do not need anyone to find out which option your house needs. Our technician’s tip is to try it first with a long network lead: run it across the floor from the box to where you think the router should go, plug the router in there, and walk the house with your phone. If the WiFi is good everywhere with the router in that spot, a cable to that spot is the fix.

Call us when the cable needs to go in the wall:

• One cable from the garage to the router’s new home, through the roof, under the floor or along the outside wall. That is running the data cable and it is the first option on every quote.
• The box itself moved to another room.
• WiFi that still will not reach, even from the middle of the house: that is a WiFi technician’s job, mesh wired in or an access point.

Send us three photos, the box, the router and the room you want it in, with a rough distance in metres: send them through the contact page and the quote comes back with both answers, the box moved or one cable, so you can choose on price.