Self check
Do I actually need an upgrade?
Probably not, if your house is small, single story, and open. Read the nine symptoms below. If none of them sound like your house, keep your money. If three or more do, the problem is real and it is almost certainly physical rather than something your internet company can fix over the phone.
Three houses, three answers
What a house this size actually needs
Four houses, from one that needs nothing to one with two outbuildings. Find the one that looks most like yours. The green shows the area an access point covers well, and the dots are where the equipment goes.
Small home, up to 2,000 square feet
One access point, and you probably already own it
A single story house of this size, with normal frame construction and no detached building, is covered by one well placed access point. The box your internet company gave you very likely is that access point. If this is your house, we will tell you to keep your money.
- covered
- 1,800 sq ft
- single story
- frame construction
- 1 access point
Larger home, 3,000 to 4,000 square feet
Three access points, because upstairs is a different building
Two floors means the router downstairs is shouting through a floor to reach the bedrooms. Three access points, one upstairs and two down, is the usual answer. Notice that the second floor does not cover the garage, which is why the room above it is the one everybody complains about.
- covered
- 3,200 sq ft
- two story
- 3 access points
- existing wiring used where it exists
Large home, 5,000 square feet and up
Five access points, and the casita is why
Past about five thousand square feet the count stops following the floor area and starts following the shape of the property. A detached casita, a long upstairs wing, and block walls downstairs are each worth an access point on their own. The casita here is reached with a point to point link rather than a trench.
- covered
- 5,200 sq ft
- two story plus casita
- block downstairs
- 5 access points
- casita on a point to point link
Estate, 7,000 square feet and up
Eight access points, and two of them are not in the house
At this size the property sets the count, not the floor area. A casita and a pool house are each their own small building with their own walls, and each is reached with a point to point link rather than a trench. The main house still only needs three on a floor, because the arithmetic does not change, only the number of buildings does.
- covered
- 7,200 sq ft
- two story, casita and pool house
- block downstairs
- 8 access points
- two point to point links
Access point counts here are typical, not a quote. Concrete block, foil backed insulation, metal roofing, and a detached building each move the number, which is what the survey is for.
Your speed test is fast but video calls still freeze
A speed test measures one device pulling hard for ten seconds, usually standing near the router. A frozen call is normally a coverage or roaming problem at the far end of the house. The test keeps telling you everything is fine because, where you are standing, it is.
One room has never worked, and you have stopped mentioning it
A permanently dead room almost always has a physical cause: a block wall, a foil backed insulation layer, a metal duct run, or simply distance. Nothing you plug in at the other end of the house will fix it. It needs an access point closer to it, or a cable.
You have added an extender, and then a second extender
Extenders repeat a signal that was already weak, on the same radio, so they halve throughput and often make roaming worse. Two of them stacked is usually the point where the house needs a design rather than another box.
The mesh kit came with three units and one is in a drawer
That normally means the third unit could not find a good spot, which is a placement problem rather than an equipment problem. Moving two units ten feet is frequently the entire fix, and that is the cheapest job we do.
Devices hold onto the wrong access point as you walk around
Called sticky client behavior. Your phone clings to the access point it first joined, well past the point where the closer one would be better. It is a configuration and power tuning issue, and it is invisible to a speed test.
It is worse in the evening than during the day
That is usually neighbors rather than your equipment. Everyone on your street lands on the same handful of channels at the same time. The fix is a channel plan based on an actual scan, not a new router.
The lanai, the pool deck, or the garage has never had signal
Exterior block walls plus distance. This is the most common request we get in The Villages and in Leesburg, and it is usually solved with one properly placed access point rather than a whole new system.
The camera app is slow and the recorder is on your main network
Two separate issues. Cameras belong on their own network segment, and remote viewing should never be a port forward pointed at a recorder. Both are fixable without replacing the cameras.
You have no idea what any of your equipment is or where it is
Extremely common and not your fault. Whoever installed it left nothing written down. Documentation and a walkthrough are part of every job we do, and we will do that alone if it is all you need.
The honest threshold. Under about two thousand square feet, single story, frame construction, no detached building: the equipment your internet provider handed you is very likely adequate, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling. Over about three thousand square feet, two or more floors, block walls, or a detached garage or workshop: a single router was never going to do it, and no amount of extenders will change that.
Want the answer for your house rather than a similar one? The planner starts with what is not working, then asks about the building, and gives you an access point count range, a sketch of roughly where they go, and the specific reasons the number is what it is. About a minute, and it is still not a quote.
Still not sure? That is what the free assessment is for.
Twenty minutes, no charge, and no obligation. Plenty of them end with us telling you to keep what you have.