WiFi for Home

Most home WiFi problems come down to one of a few causes: a router in the wrong place, a signal that cannot pass through stone or thick walls, or a fault further up the line with your provider. A short survey establishes which it is before any equipment is bought.

WiFi surveys and heatmaps

I take signal readings in every room and outdoor area and turn them into a heatmap showing strong, weak and dead zones. The result is a clear picture of what is causing the problem and what will resolve it — often a single additional access point in the right place rather than a full replacement.

A heatmap survey also gives you a written record of coverage before and after any work, so you can see exactly what changed.

Mesh systems — wired and wireless

Mesh systems come in a range of types to suit the property and the budget:

• Simple wireless units that plug in around the house — quick to fit, good for smaller or open-plan homes.
• Business-grade access points linked by network cable — higher speeds and far more stable, ideal for larger or older properties.
• A mix of the two, where cabling some of the route is practical and the rest is bridged wirelessly.

Where the layout allows, a wired backbone is always the more reliable choice, and I will usually recommend it.

Garden offices and outbuildings

A fast, reliable connection can be extended to a garden office, studio or outbuilding over a wide range of distances. Options include buried network cable for maximum speed, or a high-bandwidth wireless link where digging is not practical. Almost any distance can be covered.

Where there is no mains power at the far end, battery and solar-powered options can be considered so the outbuilding still gets a proper connection.

Security

Every connected device in the home is a potential way in. As part of an installation I set up separate networks for guests and for smart-home devices, and configure the router's firewall sensibly. Network security is becoming steadily more important — see the Network Security page for more detail.

Troubleshooting a poor connection

Troubleshooting a slow or unreliable connection is frustrating, and it is often hard to prove where the fault lies. Sometimes it is simply WiFi range, which is usually a quick fix. Sometimes it is a fault with your provider.

For intermittent problems I can set up monitoring that logs exactly when and where the connection fails — at your own router, or on the line into the property. That log is usually enough to get the provider to take the issue seriously and act on it.