Would adding a second router in my room help, or make things worse? 

Wi-Fi Hardware
1

I live in a pretty rural area and our internet isn’t amazing. We get around 40–50 Mbps on a good day, which is fine for normal stuff, but lately my gaming has been awful. Ping jumps around, parties drop, and sometimes my PS5 just acts like the internet disappeared for a few seconds.

The main router is downstairs in the living room. My room is upstairs on the other side of the house, so right now I’m using a TP-Link Wi-Fi extender/booster. It has an Ethernet port, so I plug a small switch into it, then run Ethernet from that switch to my PC and PS5.

So technically my PC and PS5 are “wired,” but only wired to the booster, not all the way back to the main router.

Would buying another router and putting it in my room help? Like if I connect my PC and PS5 to that router by Ethernet, while it connects wirelessly to the downstairs router? Or would two routers in the same house just interfere with each other and make things worse?

I can’t run a proper Ethernet cable downstairs without annoying my parents, so I’m trying to work with what I have.

2

Two routers can work in the same house, but you don’t want two devices both acting like full routers unless you know what you’re doing.

3

If you buy another router for your room, it should be in AP mode, bridge mode, or client bridge mode depending on the model and what you’re trying to do. Otherwise you may end up with double NAT, weird DHCP issues, and gaming problems that are worse than what you started with. But if it’s still connecting wirelessly back to the downstairs router, it’s basically replacing the booster with a better wireless bridge. That may help, but it won’t be the same as real Ethernet.

4

Well, it depends on a few factors. If you just plug a second router in straight out of the box, it’s going to cause a massive headache. It’ll create a second subnet, give you Double NAT (which absolutely breaks console matchmaking), and crowd your airwaves.

Here is what you can try instead:

  1. Look for a router that explicitly supports Client Mode or Media Bridge Mode. This turns off its own routing functions and just uses its antennas to grab the downstairs signal.

  2. Separate your Wi-Fi channels. For example, lock your main router to channel 36 on the 5GHz band, and make sure your room setup isn’t blasting Wi-Fi on that same frequency.

  3. Definitely audit your airwaves. Download a Wi-Fi analyzer app like NetSpot on a laptop or phone. Walk around your room and map out the signal strengths. Use NetSpot to see if they are interfering with each other or if the downstairs signal is getting completely drowned out by local noise.

5

@Lunar_Drift stop trying to fix Wi-Fi with more Wi-Fi. That’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Wireless is your enemy here. Since you can’t drill holes for an Ethernet cable, you need to look into Powerline adapters (HomePlug).

6

@PacketDropper37 Lmao fair enough, I deserved the roasting.