What Was Happening
A household in Streatham SW16 had Wi-Fi that behaved very differently depending on where you stood in the house. Near the router it was fine. Further away it degraded, and in some rooms it was effectively unusable.
They had never had a mesh system. The broadband router supplied by their provider was doing all the work on its own, which is the default arrangement in most homes and the reason this complaint is so widespread.
This is worth distinguishing from a job we also see a lot of — a household that already has mesh and still isn’t getting good coverage, where the problem is how the existing kit has been set up. This wasn’t that. There was nothing to correct; there was simply not enough coverage in the property, and the job was to add it properly rather than diagnose a misconfiguration.
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Our Diagnosis
The first thing worth separating on any Wi-Fi complaint is speed from coverage, because they’re different problems with different solutions and people frequently pay to fix the wrong one.
A speed problem means the broadband connection itself is slow, and it’s slow everywhere including right next to the router. A coverage problem means the connection is fine at source but the wireless signal doesn’t carry to where you want to use it. This household had the second. Upgrading the broadband package would have changed nothing — a faster line still can’t push a radio signal through more walls.
Given that, the fix is more coverage points rather than a faster connection, and the realistic options are:
- Wi-Fi extenders, which rebroadcast the existing signal. They’re cheap and they work after a fashion, but they typically create a separate network name, so devices have to be told to switch and often cling to the weak original signal rather than moving across.
- A mesh system, where several units work together as a single network. Devices move between them automatically, keeping the same network name throughout, and the units coordinate rather than competing.
For a whole-house coverage problem, mesh is the better answer for the reason that matters most in daily use: it removes the need for anyone to think about it. Nobody has to notice they’re on the wrong network and switch.
The remaining question was placement, and that is genuinely the substance of a mesh install.
How We Fixed It
We installed a Google mesh system and set it up to work alongside the existing broadband router.
The important work was positioning. The mistake almost everyone makes with mesh — and with extenders — is putting the extra unit in the worst room, on the reasoning that the problem is there so the solution should be too. It doesn’t work like that. Each mesh unit has to receive a good signal from the unit before it in order to pass on a good signal of its own. Placed in a dead spot, it receives a weak signal and faithfully rebroadcasts a weak signal.
The right position is between the router and the problem area, somewhere still receiving a strong signal while reaching further into the property. That usually means halfway rather than at the far end, out in the open rather than tucked behind furniture, and not sitting on the floor or inside a cupboard. Where the units go matters more than how many there are.
We placed the units on that basis, working out from the router so each had a solid link back, then set the system up to sit correctly alongside the existing broadband router rather than fighting it. That last part matters: mesh added behind an ISP router without thought produces two overlapping networks, which is its own set of problems.
Then we walked the property and checked coverage where the customer actually uses it — the rooms that had been dead, not just the hallway near the router — and confirmed devices moved between units without dropping the connection.
The Result
The household ended up with usable Wi-Fi throughout the house on a single network name, with devices handing over between units as people move around.
It was a short visit. Once the decisions about placement are made correctly, a mesh install is not lengthy work — most of the value is in getting those decisions right rather than in the time spent.
Why This Happens
Wi-Fi dead spots are overwhelmingly a building problem rather than an equipment problem, and that reframing explains most of what’s confusing about them.
A wireless signal weakens as it travels and weakens far more when it passes through anything solid. Plasterboard is fairly forgiving; brick, concrete, stone and anything with metal in it are not. Older London housing stock is full of the difficult cases — solid internal walls, chimney breasts, foil-backed insulation in a converted loft, and the reliable killer, a large mirror, which is glass on a metal backing and stops Wi-Fi almost completely.
The router’s position compounds it. Broadband routers get installed wherever the line enters the property, which is typically a hallway, a corner or under the stairs — chosen by the cabling, not by where anyone actually uses the internet. A router in a corner is wasting a good proportion of its coverage on the neighbours or the street.
This is also why the upsell to faster broadband so often disappoints. The speed a device gets is limited by the weakest link in the chain, and in a house with dead spots that link is the wireless hop, not the line. Doubling the line speed changes nothing for a laptop two floors away that can barely hear the router.
Two practical points are worth knowing for anyone considering mesh. First, the units are only as good as their placement — a badly positioned three-unit system will perform worse than a well-positioned two-unit one. Second, if a mesh unit can be connected back to the router by an ethernet cable, that’s always the better arrangement, because the unit gets a solid link back and spends all its wireless capability on serving devices rather than on talking to the router. Where a house already has ethernet, or where a cable can reasonably be run, it’s worth doing.
Local Help in Streatham SW16
If your Wi-Fi is fine in one room and hopeless in another, more speed isn’t the answer — more coverage is, and it usually takes one visit to sort. We’ll tell you honestly whether you need a mesh system or whether repositioning what you already have would do it.
We cover Streatham for onsite visits. Call 020 7610 0500 or arrange network setup in Streatham — it helps to know roughly where in the house the signal drops off and where the router is, since that shapes what we’d recommend.
