How to Boost Your Home Wi-Fi

Are there parts of your home where the Wi-Fi doesn't reach? Consider a Wi-Fi booster or extender.

Every house has one. It's a room, or a corner of a room, that your Wi-Fi signal doesn't quite reach. There might be a dead zone in the bathroom or a patchy spot in the bedroom... Wherever it is, it's a huge irritation – especially when you're working from home and you need full coverage.

When you have high-speed fibre internet piped into your property, you want to make the most of it. If the Wi-Fi signal keeps dropping or you can only get one bar of signal in some rooms, then you need to take action.

Weak Wi-Fi doesn't only happen in huge houses. Smaller homes can also have dead spots, and it could be a simple case of there being too many walls in the way. You're not going to knock down walls just to get better reception in your loo, but there are other, more sensible solutions to the problem.

Check your router

Slow or patchy Wi-Fi? First, check your router. The fibre provider that installed your FTTH (fibre to the home) line would have provided you with this little gizmo. It's the hub that receives your FTTH connection and distributes it around your home – either via cable through a wired local area network (LAN), or by antennas through a wireless local area network (WLAN).

If your home fibre Wi-Fi drops suddenly, try the old "switch it off and switch it on again" trick. Unplug the router, wait a minute, plug it in again, wait for it to reboot, and hopefully you'll be good to go.

Install a Wi-Fi repeater

If you find that there's no signal in your back room no matter how you wiggle the wires, reboot or reposition your router, you may need a Wi-Fi booster. Your first option is a basic Wi-Fi repeater: a wireless device that you install somewhere in between your router and the part of your home that needs a signal boost.

A Wi-Fi repeater will pick up the wireless signal and rebroadcast it, giving you a stronger signal at the far end... but – and it's a big "but" – a wireless repeater will only give you half the potential connection speed. These devices are pretty basic, and they alternate between receiving the signal and transmitting it. If you're checking email, you won't notice the difference. If you're lying in bed watching YouTube, you will.

Install a Wi-Fi extender

If you want super-fast internet in all corners of your home, you'll need a Wi-Fi extender. Here you could run an ethernet cable from your router up into your roof and across the house; or (as a more affordable option that won't leave holes in your ceiling), you could go completely wireless. Either way, you'll have a device that picks up the signal from your router and relays it to the hard-to-reach parts of your home.

Some extenders include Wi-Fi boosters, which receive a weak signal and then amplify it before relaying it to wherever it's needed. The exact device you end up using will depend on your needs and your budget. If you have a fairly compact space, most basic Wi-Fi extenders (like a TP-Link TL-WA855RE 300 Mbps, for example)) should do the business. If you're in a larger house or an office and you need to cover a big area with a strong Wi-Fi signal, you may have to consider a dual-band Wi-Fi extender that supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (try the TP-Link Deco E4 - AC1200).

Get the best home fibre

Your router, booster and/or extender can only work with what it's receiving. To get the fastest, most reliable home internet connection, make sure you have a good FTTH connection. It's not a luxury: the longer we all work from home (even if it's just a few days a week), and the more time we spend playing online games and streaming our entertainment, the more need there is for a strong Wi-Fi signal throughout one's property.

Use our online tool to compare Home Fibre options in your area, and to check the available line speeds and prices side by side.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or medical advice.