I’m in the middle of redoing the network in my house. I’m renovating a two-story house and already planning to run Ethernet, so I want to do Wi-Fi properly from the start instead of just throwing one router in the hallway and hoping for the best. Most likely I’ll end up with 2 access points, maybe 3 if needed.
What I’m trying to figure out is:
How do people actually decide where APs should go in a house like this?
I’d also like to avoid making a mess of the channels, especially on 2.4 since I have some Zigbee devices too. Not trying to build anything fancy, I just want solid Wi-Fi and not have the APs stepping on each other.
Curious how you guys usually handle this for a normal house setup.
Listen, for a home, I wouldn’t complicate things at all. Once the cables are installed, consider half the job done; that’s usually the hardest part. For starters, just pick a couple of good spots (preferably somewhere in the center) and test the signal before you screw everything down. People often get too hung up on adjusting the direction, when in reality, it’s simply a matter of poorly placed points.
That’s kind of what I was wondering. I keep seeing people mention heatmaps and floor plans and all that, but most of the tools people bring up seem like overkill for a regular home network. I’m not against using software, I just don’t want to spend enterprise money to place two APs in a house.
I usually use NetSpot for this kind of thing. It’s intuitive, but the information is more than adequate: you can check channel load and create a coverage map just by walking around the house, and there’s a planning feature that lets you test different access point placements. For a typical apartment or house of this size, there’s no point in using expensive professional software. Do you have a complex house layout (multiple walls and levels) or a simple “box”?
placement first, channels after. If the AP locations are bad, channel tweaking won’t save it. Once they’re in decent spots, then look at channels and clean things up a bit.