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This, although I have an Orbi mesh system that works well.
Yea, I know you had great luck with your Mesh. I did not. Well, it actually was OK but my wife, who WFH full time kept having some issues. I was all "It's not my system!" She called her IT people and they pulled the "Yea, some of our applications don't like working with a mesh system, so we can't help you". (aka "We will just blame it on your system since we can").. I was at Bestbuy that night getting ... the most expensive router I've ever purchased. And it worked.
I did exactly this in a home built in 1940, Plaster walls, full basement, partial attic (attic located only where roof slope restricted headroom).
I had the service provider put all their equipment in the basement, and routed all the cat-5 for the first floor outlets along the basement joists. Wherever I wanted to put a wall outlet, I first cut the hole in the plaster for the outlet box, and then used a drill with a 36" long bit, steeply angled into the wall from the box opening, so that I could drill down through the bottom sill of the wall and into the basement.
This method is fairly common, and worked well for me. You can use a bit only 1/4" diameter if you like, just to establish a pilot hole, and then go drill from below with a larger, normal length bit to get the size opening you need for the cable
Then, having a closet underneath the stairway to the house's second story, I used that closet as a passage to reach the second floor. In My case, we had a first floor restroom right next to the stairway, and there was a small plumbing chase accessible from the back of the closet, so I just routed the wire alongside the pipes to the bathtub, through the plumbing chase into the closet, and up underneath the stairs to a central wall in the upstairs.
And yeah, I had to cut off a little plaster in one wall of the second story, just to route the second story cables through. I ended up placing a decorative wooden panel over this opening, but could have used a hinged access door, or whatever,
Then I fished the wire from that location into the attic, put a second router in the attic, and then ran from there to all the second floor outlets.
It'll all be much easier if you just shell out the money now for a quality 200' electrician's "fishtape", and use that for wiring through all the blind spots.
Some times it can be challenging hitting your mark at both ends, but with a little creative thinking it's amazing what can be reached.
And if you're running a bazillion wires through wall, floors, and ceilings, shell out a little more money for an inspection camera so you're not flying blind when you can't pass a wire where you need it to go.
Came to say this. I got tired of dealing with wires and crappy wifi. I would buy a $70 router... hmm... not great. Let's try adding a mesh... mmm... still not great. Finally cracked and said screw it I am going to buy some seriously high end wifi. I spent $270 on a Wifi 6 Netgear Nighthawk router and it blankets my house now, every corner of the house has extraordinary coverage. So much better.
Thank you-- Yes, the Wi-fi coverage in the house is awful. When the house was retrofit for fiberoptic, it was dropped into an upstairs bedroom... a bedroom that one of my kids chose to be their room when we moved in. I contacted ATT & they said for $99 they're relocate the drop to a more central location. But I think there may be hidden fees too, so IDK. We'll try an extender, mesh or some of these other suggestions-- including a more powerful router.
And if you're running a bazillion wires through wall, floors, and ceilings, shell out a little more money for an inspection camera so you're not flying blind when you can't pass a wire where you need it to go.
Thanks-- Ironically enough, I bought an inspection camera on Amazon Prime Day. Looking forward to trying it out. I was thinking of having ATT relocate the drop into the downstairs family room (It's currently in an upstairs bedroom), routing through the basically hollow space above the fireplace-- making sure I avoid any F/P heat source. Then I'd route a ethernet cable from the router back to the upstairs, through the same path, and connect it to a Ethernet switch, which I'll hide in a closet.... and then route ethernet from that switch to all the rooms upstairs that need it through the attic.... Easy Peasy??? With the weather so blazing hot these days, I'll wait a month or two for that attic task. and I need to find a way to get power to this ethernet switch... And downstairs, there are enough soffits & closets to nearly route cable where I need to go. I've never lived in a two-story house before so IDK if the structure between floors is solid joists or truss joists. Maybe another task for the new camera.
Is the house already wired for cableTV throughout the house? If so, you might try looking at MoCa (Multimedia over Coaxial Alliance) adapters, which allow you to use the coaxial cable already wired throughout your house as an ethernet network. I live in a house built in 1962, but remodeled in 2000. When the owners remodeled it, they installed coax in all the remodeled rooms. I use that coax to extend my network using MoCa adapters. It does not interfere with your cable at home, and should not mess with your cable line outside of your home. I live in a two-story house with the cable modem in the downstairs corner of the house. I use 4 MoCa adapters to spread the internet throughout my house, which also allows the wifi to reach my detached garage, and also the neighbors yard (for a security camera located in their yard). Wired Cat-6 would definitely be better, but creating a "roaming network" in my house using MoCa works really well for me.
Thanks for this suggestion!--- I had no idea this was a "thing". I'll investigate it, because, yes-- several of the rooms have coax cable, and that would get me about 1/2 way there. I'm curious as to whether it will bottleneck the internet speeds, but it may be worth it, because there is a web of this cabling inside the walls in at least half of the rooms I want to run CAT6 cable into.
Thanks-- Ironically enough, I bought an inspection camera on Amazon Prime Day. Looking forward to trying it out. I was thinking of having ATT relocate the drop into the downstairs family room (It's currently in an upstairs bedroom), routing through the basically hollow space above the fireplace-- making sure I avoid any F/P heat source. Then I'd route a ethernet cable from the router back to the upstairs, through the same path, and connect it to a Ethernet switch, which I'll hide in a closet.... and then route ethernet from that switch to all the rooms upstairs that need it through the attic.... Easy Peasy??? With the weather so blazing hot these days, I'll wait a month or two for that attic task. and I need to find a way to get power to this ethernet switch... And downstairs, there are enough soffits & closets to nearly route cable where I need to go. I've never lived in a two-story house before so IDK if the structure between floors is solid joists or truss joists. Maybe another task for the new camera.
Unless you're doing your own wiring, the power to the ethernet closet may be a problem. Putting an outlet in a closet is against code, at least where I live. Is your house stick-built or modular?
Thanks for this suggestion!--- I had no idea this was a "thing". I'll investigate it, because, yes-- several of the rooms have coax cable, and that would get me about 1/2 way there. I'm curious as to whether it will bottleneck the internet speeds, but it may be worth it, because there is a web of this cabling inside the walls in at least half of the rooms I want to run CAT6 cable into.
They've been very solid in my usage. Mine are 100Mbit but I would expect the higher speed ones to work just as well.
I'm resurrecting this thread because I, too, tried a couple of band-aid approaches. We now have ATT Fiberoptic internet & equipment-- BGW-320, I think. I think I still want to route ethernet cable and create a new location for the ATT device a Network switch or two, two PoE Access Points and a couple of PoE cameras. I'm mildly concerned with latency if I use a Network switch, or two. I believe Fiberoptic is faster than CAT6A. Are there consumer-friendly network devices that can chain together using fiberoptic cable instead of CAT6A cable that anyone here has had success with?
I'm resurrecting this thread because I, too, tried a couple of band-aid approaches. We now have ATT Fiberoptic internet & equipment-- BGW-320, I think. I think I still want to route ethernet cable and create a new location for the ATT device a Network switch or two, two PoE Access Points and a couple of PoE cameras. I'm mildly concerned with latency if I use a Network switch, or two. I believe Fiberoptic is faster than CAT6A. Are there consumer-friendly network devices that can chain together using fiberoptic cable instead of CAT6A cable that anyone here has had success with?
Why are you concerned about the latency of a switch?
According to info online, your BGW320 router: Yellow Ethernet ports support data transmission speeds of up to 1000Mbps. They're also compatible with 10/100Mbps connections. Blue Ethernet ports support data transmission speeds of up to 5Gbps. They're also compatible with 10/100/1000 Mbps and 2.5Gbps connections.
CAT6A spec: 10 Gigabits per second at 5000 MHz at a distance of up to 100 meters (328 feet).
There are network switches that have full 10 Gig ports (see https://www.netgear.com/business/wired/switches/10gigabit/ ), but they get very, very expensive quickly. A search for the first model listed on that Netgear page indicates a typical price of $2160.00 to $2400.00.
Other switches have 10 Gig uplink ports, with the rest of the ports being 1 Gig (NETGEAR 10-Port Gigabit/10G Ethernet Plus Switch (GS110EMX) - Managed, with 8 x 1G, 2 x 10G ). This is listed at $220.00 on Amazon.
You can get various switches that are SFP (fiber to Ethernet) capable, but you also need the SFP adapters for that switch. You need to make sure that the fiber type is correct for the adapters. See: https://www.cables-solutions.com/sfp-vs-sfp-plus.html
Fiber cable has to be handled with a certain degree of care - you cannot handle it the same as Ethernet and there are definite limits as to how tight of a radius it can be bent. You would also need to know in advance the lengths needed and order them since there are specific tools, connectors and knowledge required to terminate fiber cable.
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And it worked.
