Upstairs is fine, downstairs gets nothing. A WiFi technician who fixes the house, not the plan.

Sound familiar?

“Upstairs is fine, where the modem is. Downstairs we don’t get any WiFi”

Fine next to the router. Nothing in the back room, upstairs or out in the granny flat. And the extender made it worse.

A faster plan won't fix that. Putting the signal where the rooms are will: the router moved, mesh wired in, or a cable run, cheapest first. We do it for homes right across Sydney.

1. Find out if it’s the NBN or the WiFi. Plug a laptop into the router with a cable and run a speed test while the problem is happening. Fast on the cable, slow on WiFi: it is the WiFi, and we can fix it. Slow on the cable too: it is the connection, and that is the NBN Technician page. Here is how to test your NBN speed properly.
2. Reboot everything once, properly. Router off, mesh units off, thirty seconds, router on first, then the units. Factory reset the mesh if it will not rejoin.
3. A faster plan won’t fix coverage. Upgrading from 50 to 100 does nothing for a bedroom the signal cannot reach.
4. Extenders halve your speed. Mesh doesn’t. A three-pack of mesh units fixes most double-storey houses; we have had better results with TP-Link mesh than with some others. If you have bought an extender that did not work, return it. More in why mesh WiFi keeps disconnecting.
5. Try the router in the middle of the house before you buy anything. A long network cable from a hardware shop, run along the floor from the NBN box to where the router ought to be, for a day. If the house works with the router there, the fix is that cable made permanent, not a mesh system.
6. Look for data points already in the walls. Many newer houses have them, often wired for phones and never used, and we have found a cable to the living room sitting unused behind the cupboard the router was locked in. A mesh unit plugged into one, or the router moved to one, beats anything talking over the air, and checking costs nothing.
7. Send photos first. Where the router is, the rooms that drop out, and anything between them. We can often tell you what you need from the photos without a visit.

Recognise it?

WiFi not reaching upstairs, the back room or the granny flat

The usual suspects

WiFi dead spots: what’s usually wrong

From the diagnoses we give on the phone, the same handful of causes come up on nearly every WiFi call.

• The router is in the garage, the cupboard, or at one end of the house.

  In the garage or a cupboard at one end of the house, because that's where NBN put the box.

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  Because that is where NBN put the box. One caller had the router locked in a hallway cupboard with a data cable to the living room already in the wall and unused.

• Double brick, concrete slab, sandstone.

  Double brick, a concrete slab, sandstone. The walls that keep a house quiet stop WiFi too.

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  Or a new apartment block next door soaking up the signal. The walls that make a house quiet make it hard for WiFi.

• An extender.

  It halves the speed and drops every device each time it loses the router. It comes out.

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  It is halving throughput and dropping devices every time it loses the router. It comes out, and what replaces it is usually the cheapest part of the job.

• Too many devices on one old router.

  An old router choking on every phone, TV and camera in the house.

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  The old router is choking under the load, and the colorbond roof and the distance to the shed finish it off.

• A granny flat, studio or shed twenty metres or more away.

  Twenty metres of yard and a concrete wall. Mesh won't cross it on its own.

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  With concrete in between, mesh will not cross it on its own.

• Powerline adapters.

  Unreliable, and worse when the flat is on its own circuit.

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  In a basement or on a different circuit: very unreliable, and worse for a flat on its own circuit.

• Not enough mesh, or mesh that can’t hear itself.

  Two units for a big double-storey, or units that can't hear each other: an expensive extender.

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  Two units for a large double-storey house, three left to relay each other wirelessly across three floors, a unit that never stays connected. Mesh placed where the units cannot hear each other is an expensive extender.

• The device, not the WiFi.

  An old laptop's adapter, a printer that won't pair, or devices killed by a surge.

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  An old laptop’s WiFi adapter, a printer that will not pair with one brand of mesh, cameras and a doorbell killed by a surge from a new solar or battery install while the network kept working. A cabled test tells the device from the network before anyone buys anything.

No mobile signal in the back room either? WiFi calling only works where the WiFi reaches, so the dead spot is costing you calls as well.

How it works

What a WiFi installer actually does: the four fixes, cheapest first

One visit, four steps, and the rooms that were dead working before we leave, or a quote for the cheapest thing that will make them work. The connection is tested only as far as the network boundary, because we are not NBN and their side is theirs to fix; everything from the NBN box to the back room is ours.

1. 1
   

   Find out if it's the NBN or the WiFi.

   A laptop on a cable into the router, a speed test, then the same test on WiFi from the room that drops out. If the cable is slow too, the visit becomes a fault call and the connection is tested to the boundary. If only the WiFi is slow, the connection is cleared and the house is the job.

2. 2
   

   Walk the house and find where it stops.

   Room by room with the signal on a phone, noting where it falls away and what is in the way: the floor, a double-brick wall, the slab, the distance to the flat. Then the cabling the house already has, because a data point the builder left in the wall is the cheapest fix there is.

3. 3
   

   Pick the cheapest fix that works.

   Move the router: one cable from the NBN box to the centre of the house fixes more houses than anything else we do. Mesh with wired backhaul where the house has data points. A cable to an access point on each level for big houses and three-level townhouses. Two wireless bridge dishes on the roofs for a flat or a shed.

4. 4
   

   Do it on the spot, or quote it as two options.

   A router moved or a mesh unit set up, done in the visit. Cabling or mesh to buy, quoted as two options first.

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   Where the fix is the router moved onto a cable that already exists, or a mesh unit placed and set up, it is done in the visit. Where cabling or mesh has to be bought, the quote comes as two options, mesh only or mesh plus cabling, so you choose on price; the cable runs are a data cabling job. Every fix is tested from the rooms that were dead before we leave.

A real job from the field

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Vaucluse, NSW · Home network · Filmed on site, 18 min

Paying for 100/20, getting 5 megabits in the rumpus room.

Three ceiling access points, all lit up, so nothing looked broken. The tester said otherwise: an open circuit on the rumpus room cable, a second run through an old Hills Hub, and a patch panel terminated to the wrong pin order. Fixed run by run, and every level now runs at the speed the plan allows.

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Vaucluse, a large house paying for 100/20 and getting about 5 megabits in the rumpus room. Three access points, the ceiling units that give each level its WiFi, all had their lights on, so nothing looked broken.

The tester said otherwise. The cable to the rumpus room had an open circuit, a break in one of its pairs, so the lit access point was passing nothing. A second cable ran through an old Hills Hub in the basement; bypassing it onto a proper data socket brought that level back to 109 Mbps. In the gym, the power the access point draws down the cable had dropped too far over the distance, so a powered switch went in.

The patch panel had been terminated to the wrong pin order. Every level now runs at the speed the plan allows.