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Question

Weak-wifi signal through thick walls in my apartment

May 2, 2015 2:08PM PDT

Hello all,

I live in a rather old apartment building in Chicago. I had to call AT&T here about 10 times over 8 months to get my AT&T Uverse internet service to be somewhat acceptable. And by acceptable, I mean about 3 mb/sec DL speed and 50ms ping. This is my WIRED connection in my main room. The ping does spike to the thousands sometimes though.

Anyways, I have a one-bedroom apartment. In the main room where my router is, the wired connection to my PC is fine, as described above. If I do an Ookla speed test on my smartphone while near my PC, my DL speed goes down to about 1.3mb/sec. However, in my bedroom, it gets 0.3mb/sec. For my laptop in my room, it is a bit of a struggle to watch Netflix. Netflix pauses every ten minutes for a few minutes at a time.

What can I do to remedy this? It should be noted that my apartment building is old and was a "Comcast building" up until a few years ago. They have only since then allowed AT&T to come in. With this said, is it possible there is a better wiring infrastructure for Comcast users?

Anyways, the wi-fi in the bedroom at 0.3mb/sec is my biggest issue. I hear you can buy an extender or something to increase the range of the wireless signal. Would this work? The router they gave me is supposedly an "upgraded one" (but I don't buy that). It is a 5031NV.

Any help on either the wireless signal or just my internet situation in general would be helpful. I do game online, so it is important to me. However, I know switching would be costly since Comcast is expensive, and there's no guarantee the signal situation in the bedroom would change.

Thanks VERY much for any help!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Read this.
May 2, 2015 4:59PM PDT
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Answer
Re: extender
May 2, 2015 7:04PM PDT

Did you consider powerline ethernet already?

Kees

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What is that exactly?
May 5, 2015 5:18AM PDT

Is it just using a long ethernet cord for a direct connection?

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Link only.
May 5, 2015 5:22AM PDT
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Answer
Try this
May 24, 2015 12:17AM PDT

Hey have you tried changing the wireless channel in your router? To do that, you have to access the modem page by opening a browser and typing the modem address (usually that is 192.168.1.1) on the address bar. There should be an option there to change wireless channel settings, usually with values ranging from 1-13. With AT&T, as far as I know, even numbers denote circular signal distribution, while odd numbers indicates horizontal signal distribution. So in your case since its a 1 bedroom apartment, you can just select 13. If you're residing on a 2 floor house and the router is on the 2nd floor, the highest you can do with max performance is 12. I think signal boosters are not gonna work for AT&T modems cause usually they have 2wire gateways (modem/router) and bridge mode is not possible (not unless you still have AT&T DSL modem - not sure for that). Hope this helps.