Your Wi-Fi isn't slow. It's in the wrong place.
Before you buy a second router, move the first one. What actually blocks a signal, why the cupboard is the worst place for it, and how to split the two bands.
A router is the one piece of equipment in the house that people buy twice before they move it once. The second one usually works a little better, and the reason is rarely the hardware. It is that the new one ended up somewhere slightly less bad.
Wi-Fi is radio. It behaves like radio, which means it is weakened by distance, absorbed by some materials and reflected by others, and it cannot be argued with. Before spending anything, it is worth understanding what the signal in your home is actually walking through.
What actually stands between you and the router
Not all obstacles are equal, and the differences are large enough to matter.
- Water absorbs 2.4 GHz strongly. This is not a coincidence — it is roughly the frequency a microwave oven uses to heat food. A fish tank, a water tank, a water heater, even a dense wall of houseplants, sits between you and the router as a genuine barrier.
- Metal reflects. A steel almirah, a refrigerator, a metal-backed television, the foil-faced insulation behind some wall panels: the signal does not pass politely through these, it bounces.
- Concrete and brick attenuate. Every wall costs you something. Two or three walls on a diagonal costs you a great deal more than the floor plan suggests, because the signal is crossing each one at an angle and therefore through more material.
- Glass and wood are mild. A wooden door or an interior glass partition is close to free by comparison.
Put plainly: the problem is often one specific object, not the general distance.
Height, and why the cupboard is the worst place
A router with vertical antennas radiates outward in a broad horizontal disc, not in a sphere. Standing it on the floor, or inside a cabinet at knee height, puts that disc into the furniture.
Shelf height — roughly chest level or above, in open air — gets the disc above most of what is in the room. It is the single change that most often produces a visible difference, and it costs nothing.
The cupboard deserves its own mention because it is where routers go to be tidy. A closed wooden cabinet is bad; a closed metal one is far worse; a cabinet that also contains the set-top box and a tangle of power adapters is worse still, because heat throttles the router from the inside while the door blocks it from the outside.
Centre of the home, not centre of the wall
The cable usually enters at one edge of the house, and the router usually stays where the cable ends. That puts half of its coverage outside the building.
If the cable can reach, move it towards the middle of the area you actually use. If it cannot, a longer ethernet run to a better spot is a cheaper and more reliable fix than anything sold as a signal booster.
Two bands, two jobs
Most routers broadcast on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and they are not interchangeable.
- 2.4 GHz travels further and passes through walls more willingly. It is slower, and in a crowded building it is sharing the air with every neighbour's router, every Bluetooth device and some cordless phones.
- 5 GHz is substantially faster and much less crowded, but it loses more to each wall it crosses.
The practical division: 5 GHz for the room the router is in and the one next door — where the laptop and the television live — and 2.4 GHz for the far bedroom and anything that only needs to send a little data, like a smart plug or a sensor.
What will not help
Two things get bought in this situation more than they should.
A more expensive router, installed in the same cupboard, is still in the cupboard. Its extra speed is available only to devices that can already see it well.
A repeater or extender placed where the signal is already weak will faithfully rebroadcast a weak signal. An extender works when it sits midway, in a spot that still has a solid connection to the router — and even then it typically halves throughput, because it is talking in both directions on the same radio.
Move the router first. If coverage is still short afterwards, you will at least know what you are actually buying for.
A ten-minute check
- Stand where the Wi-Fi is worst and look back towards the router. Name every wall, tank and metal object in the straight line between you.
- Lift the router to shelf height, in open air, antennas vertical.
- Move it towards the middle of the space you use, as far as the cable allows.
- Join the 5 GHz network on devices in nearby rooms, and the 2.4 GHz one on devices far away.
- Test again from the same spot you started in.
Most homes get a useful improvement somewhere in the first three steps, and nothing has been bought.
