How to find the optimal location of the Wi-Fi router in your home

Moving to a new house can be exciting, at least until you have to set up Wi-Fi. If the thought of poor Wi-Fi coverage, connection drops and slow speeds makes you cringe, here are five things you can do to find the perfect spot for your Wi-Fi router in your home.

1 Start in the Center

The best place for a Wi-Fi router is always in the center of the area you want to cover. Wi-Fi signals spread evenly from your router’s antennas in all directions, meaning that if you place your router in the middle of your house, you should get the best possible coverage everywhere.

However, this will not actually happen. Walls, electrical appliances, furniture and other obstacles will prevent Wi-Fi reception from being the same everywhere in the house.

Regardless, if you start in the middle, you’ll be able to move around a central area in your home to ensure that you set up your router in a location with the least interference and the best signal strength in all four corners of your home. Even if you end up using a repeater to fix a Wi-Fi dead spot or add a Wi-Fi hotspot, the new access point will get better signals compared to if you just threw your router in the corner of the house.

2 Place the router as high as possible

There’s a reason all those signal towers you see are so tall, and you should do the same with your Wi-Fi router. Placing or mounting your router in a high place, such as on the ceiling, will ensure that there are as few obstacles as possible between the access point (your router) and the device you are trying to connect to Wi-Fi.

This is one of the fundamentals of Wi-Fi router placement that you need to remember. While many Wi-Fi routers are still designed to be placed on a table or mounted on a wall, you can just as easily mount them on the ceiling (be sure to check the fitment) or on a high shelf or cabinet.

3 Remember the ISP WAN line

Depending on several factors, such as your ISP and the region you live in, your service provider may run a cable directly to your Wi-Fi router. If your router is located in the middle of the reception room, this can mean an unsightly cable that you will have to hide or otherwise route around corners and walls.

I recommend looking to Windows for help – an architectural feature, not an OS. Having a window near the router means you can route as much of that WAN cable from your ISP out of your house as possible and only concern yourself with the length you absolutely need to keep in mind to keep in mind the other points on this list.

This goes for any other opening in your house where you could run a WAN cable without risking long-term damage. It’s best to talk to your ISP and plan ahead as this gives you a chance to run the WAN cable with the rest of your home wiring.

4 Beware of interference

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It is likely that there will be several household appliances in your home, including a microwave oven. If you’re placing your router in or around the kitchen, you might not have a good time watching cooking videos while using said microwave.

Anything in your home, including your microwave, baby monitor, wireless security cameras, Bluetooth devices, and even cordless phones can interfere with your Wi-Fi signals. An interruption can cause anything from a small speedup to a perfectly usable network. Older Wi-Fi routers are more susceptible to external interference, so this may also be a sign to upgrade your router.

Mounting your Wi-Fi router up high helps mitigate this, but you should be aware of the placement of your home appliances and router. It took me months to figure out why my internet was getting dirty for 30 seconds out of nowhere in my new apartment, and then I realized that my roommates were heating up dinner at the time and the microwave was sitting between my room and the Wi- Fi router. causing interference.

5 Before mounting, use a Wi-Fi analyzer to ensure signal strength

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If you think you’ve found the perfect spot for your Wi-Fi router, take out your phone, install Wi-Fi Analyzer if you’re on Android or nOversight WiFi Analyzer if you’re on iOS, and just walk around the house. These apps can report real-time Wi-Fi signal strength much more accurately than your phone or computer would normally show you.

By doing a pre-mount signal check, you’ll make sure you’ve covered every corner of the house before you finally mount the router. This can save you unnecessary drilling or, in the worst case, relocating an already installed milling machine.

Finding the optimal Wi-Fi router location for your home is not as difficult as it seems. With some careful thought and planning, you’ll find it in no time.