I live in a 2-bedroom apartment. My ISP router (Wi-Fi 6) is in the living room, and my gaming setup/TV is in the bedroom (about 30 feet away, through two drywall walls).
When I’m in the living room, everything is perfect — hitting 400+ Mbps easily. But in the bedroom, it’s a total roller coaster. Sometimes I get 200 Mbps and games run fine. Other times, the speed drops to like 15 Mbps, streams start buffering, and I get insane packet loss and lag spikes in Overwatch.
I have about 12 devices connected in total. I was thinking about buying a cheap Wi-Fi extender or upgrading to a high-end ASUS router, but I don’t want to waste money if that’s not the issue.
Is my router just weak, or could it be something else? What should I check first?
Never buy a Wi-Fi extender. They cut your bandwidth in half and rarely fix stability issues. If you can’t run an Ethernet cable, look into MoCA adapters if you have coax outlets in both rooms. It’s way better than wireless.
@GoodAfternoon_sun Unfortunately, no coax in the bedroom. Just standard power outlets. Is Powerline any good?
Powerline is a lottery. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s worse than Wi-Fi.
Since you live in an apartment, 99% chance your issue isn’t the distance or the walls, it’s your neighbors. Your router is probably fighting 20 other networks for airtime. Have you checked your channel congestion?
@golem919191 Honestly, I haven’t touched the router settings since the ISP technician set it up. It’s just on “Auto”. How do I check for congestion?
Leaving your router in “Auto” mode in an apartment building is a guaranteed way to experience constant lag. You really need to figure out what’s happening with the radio waves around you. Just download NetSpot to your laptop, as it will greatly simplify the whole process. Open the “Inspector” tab and see which channels your neighbors are using. If there’s significant interference, your connection drops are literally a brutal battle for airtime. Also, run a survey to see the impact of interference on a map. This clearly shows where your neighbor’s signal is penetrating into your room.
@Then-Reindeer3632 Holy crap, dude. You just saved me $150. I did exactly what you said. I didn’t know I had such terrible interference from my neighbors in my bedroom, but I could just switch to 5 GHz entirely — the channels there are completely clear.
You’re welcome. Glad it helped!