Leave the router where the internet comes into the house, and put one wired access point where you actually use Wi-Fi. The basement closet is a bad place for Wi-Fi but a fine place for the router, because that's where your cables already come back. Moving the box itself is worth it only in one case: you have a coax modem, and the new room has a second cable to send the network back down. Otherwise one cable up to a ceiling access point does more than any move.
Why the closet is the wrong spot for Wi-Fi
Router makers and internet providers say the same thing: basements and closets are among the spots to avoid. Floors, concrete and walls all eat signal, and if the router sits inside a metal box in the wall, it's worse again. That's why the router in the basement shows full bars on the phone in the next room and falls apart two floors up. In older Seattle houses, some plaster walls are over metal lath, which acts like a screen in front of the signal.
None of that means the router has to move. It means the Wi-Fi has to get out of the closet. Those are two different jobs.
When moving the box is worth it
Before you move anything, answer two questions: is your box fiber or coax, and is there a second cable at the spot you want to move it to?
- Fiber box. The fiber comes through a small sealed hole and the box lives where it lands, and the router normally sits right next to it. Once it's in, moving it is difficult. Plan on it staying.
- Coax modem. This one can realistically move to any room with a live coax jack.
On a new install, fiber or coax, ask the installer to put the box where you want it.
Even with a coax modem, moving the router to a central room has a catch. Every wired jack in the house runs back to that closet. If the new room has only one network jack, moving the router there is a harder job. You want two jacks at the new spot: one from the modem, one back to the switch in the closet.
If you add your own router, it should be the only one making Wi-Fi and handing out addresses. Two routers stacked on each other can break gaming and port forwarding.
If the closet is hot, cramped or has no outlet, we can mount a small rack nearby, or move the internet connection so everything lives in one place.
Add a wired access point instead
For most houses the better move is the opposite: the router stays, and Wi-Fi comes out to the house over a cable. A ceiling access point on the upper floor, fed by one Cat6 run from the basement, puts full signal where you are without moving the router. A UniFi U7 Pro is $189 and rated for about 1,500 sq ft, and the access point gets its power over the same cable, so no outlet is needed on the ceiling.
Then turn the router's own Wi-Fi off or down so devices don't hang on to the weak signal from the basement.
In a finished house the run is the real work. We route through closets, the attic, and the basement or crawlspace first and only cut where there's no alternative, and we point out the hard runs during the walkthrough. If the cable genuinely can't go up, a cable-TV (coax) jack upstairs can carry the network with a pair of small adapters (called MoCA). It's not as good as a cable, but it's still a wire.
If your house already has a builder's wiring panel with jacks in most rooms that nobody ever hooked up, you may already have the cable. We test the existing runs, hook up a switch and access points, and turn that panel into a working wired network.
What won't fix weak Wi-Fi upstairs
A new router. A faster router in the same closet has the same floors in the way. It doesn't get a wire to the second floor.
More mesh nodes. More nodes talking over the air through the same floors is the same problem with more boxes. If you already own a mesh kit, giving the nodes a wired connection back to the router roughly doubles their speed, so the kit you paid for isn't wasted. One cable often does what the second and third node were bought for.
A Wi-Fi extender. It turns one wireless hop into two, and a basic one can cut the available bandwidth in half. For a far office, run a cable or put a wired access point on that end of the house.
Cat6a. Cat6 handles any run inside a house. The access point doesn't need anything more.
If your box is fiber, or there's no second cable at the spot you had in mind, leave the router alone and spend the effort on one cable up.
Have questions about your project? Contact us for a free estimate.
