Reply to Is it possible to live in a bad grid for internet?

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[quote=Anonymous]I read through the post and the only reply up to mine that provided good advice is the one at 09:26.  That being said, that particular pp missed the fact that you said you lose wifi because the modem is down.  If your modem is down, restart the modem and that should resolve the problem because you lost your connection to the ISP for some reason.  There could also be frequent cable outages in your neighborhood.

Let me give you a little lesson on cable Internet.  With cable Internet, your connection is shared with all the houses in the neighborhood.  By this, I do not mean *your* Internet connection but more generally the connection coming into your neighborhood.  The more people in your neighborhood that are using Comcast, the slower your Internet speeds will be.  I assume since you're on this board that you live in the DMV.  If so, there is a good chance that you can get FiOS.  If so, you should consider it because that is a direct link to your home and could be much faster although it it usually a little more expensive.  .

I don't know the layout of your home but here's the main issues you stated you had over the years.  
1.  Cable modem goes out.  That's obviously going to knock out your cable Internet completely so you need to figure out if this going out is an outage or something wrong on your end (bad modem, bad coax into the house, bad coax in the walls inside the house).  Is your coax inside walls or did they drill through the exterior wall to provide you with Internet?  
2.  Bad WiFi connections.  Alright, so there are actually a few things going on here.  
2. A.  The first you need to know is something a different pp touched on but didn't explain.  Water makes WiFi slower.  You're going to get slower speeds and shorter WiFi ranges when it rains.  
2. B.  The second thing is that other microwave sources between your WiFi router and you can slow down the speed.  Many people will have a microwave oven between the router and themselves and when the microwave is running it will interfere with speeds (this would obviously be intermittent).   https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-does-your-microwave-oven-mess-with-the-wi-fi-connec-1666117933
2. C.  The third thing is about barriers - obviously the more walls and the further distance between you and the router, the worse your WiFi will be.  If you have coax in your walls (I'm assuming you do since you moved your router a few times), your best solution to this is to get a network extender.  If you have ethernet in your walls this will be easy.  Since most people do not have Ethernet in the house, I will assume you do not have Ethernet but that you do have coax in your walls.  What you're going to want is a MoCA adapter (probably several).  You need one between your cable modem and the line coming in so that the adapter can create a MoCA network and share your cable Internet with everyone using your coaxial cables.  Next you would need to put another MoCA adapter anywhere you want an Ethernet connection.  In your case, you don't need a MoCA adapter if you just want a WiFi extender.  You just can buy an Actiontec MoCA adapter for your cable Internet modem and an Actiontec WiFi extender (this has MoCA built in already), they plug and play together.  Below are links to products I've used before.  You're on cable Internet so you also need a POE filter (FiOS doesn't require this since the fiber connection is not shared by neighbors).  A POE filter prevents your MoCA data from leaving your house and going to your neighbor's house.  You would place the POE filter at the location where the Internet first enters your house from the line outside.  Usually there's an obvious wire coming from the pole or underground where it connects into your house.  That's where you will put the filter (just look for it, it's pretty obvious once you actually look).  This sounds kind of complicated but it's not that bad.  You screw in the filter where the Internet enters your house, you put a MoCA adapter before your cable modem, and you use a MoCA WiFi extender on the other side of your house.  Now you have good WiFi everywhere.  If you want wired connections you can also add additional MoCA adapters at any location you have a coax connection (you can even use a network switch to provide Ethernet to many devices connected to a TV).

https://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-802-11ac-Extender-Internet-Antennas/dp/B01BV1Y3W2
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013J7OBUU/ref=twister_B08XVL3GVS?_encoding=UTF8&th=1
https://www.amazon.com/Filter-MoCA-Cable-coaxial-networks/dp/B00KO5KHSQ/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=moca+poe+filter&qid=1620045411&s=electronics&sr=1-3

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYaB3Uqygoc[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Vro0d38pA[/youtube]

TLDR: If your modem goes down, restart it.  If it doesn't reconnect it's either an outage or a problem on your end.  If you want to fix your WiFi issues, learn about MoCA.[/quote]

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