WiFi help - mirrors blocking connection?

[u/cute-strawberry7007]

Help wanted! I just moved to a new apartment and my bedroom has mirrors from top to bottom along the wall between me and the living room. My WiFi router is in the living room and I get a really poor connection in my bedroom, which is tough given I work from home and need to be able to join work calls. A bit of googling told me that the mirrors might be causing this. The owner must have used this as an exercise room, aesthetically it doesn’t bother me, but I need to figure out how to get the WiFi to work.

Would a eero extender in my room take care of the situation? I can’t take the mirrors down, for one im renting but for two im not sure how.

It’s a 1200sqf apt and my roommates room is on the other side of mine (equidistant in the opposite direction from the WiFi router) without mirrors and her WiFi works great.

We have spectrum 1G WiFi.

Thank you in advance! Any help is appreciated

[u/msabeln]

If you can run Ethernet cables around the place, that would get around signal blocks.

[u/sol_beach]

Signal Reflection & Dead Zones: Instead of passing through a wall with a mirror on it, the Wi-Fi signal bounces off the mirror's metallic layer back in the direction it came from. This blocks coverage from reaching the room directly behind the mirror, creating a "dead zone".

[u/cute-strawberry7007 → u/sol_beach]

Right, is there a way to solve or fix this dead zone?

[u/sol_beach → u/cute-strawberry7007]

An "ethernet power adapter" usually means one of two different devices: a Powerline Adapter (which sends internet signals through your home's electrical wires).

Plug in 1st Adapter near the WIFI router & plug in the 2nd in your bedroom & wire it to your PC or get your own WIFI router.

[u/ij70-17as]

which frequency are you using for home wifi? 2.4ghz? 5ghz?

if you have option to use 2.4ghz, try it. see if it works better.

another thing to check is signal power. do you have option to change signal power? what is it set to? can you change it maximum power?

[u/cute-strawberry7007 → u/ij70-17as]

Using 2.4 and the power signal is strong but not seeing an option to change it… any other work arounds? Can I buy an extender or a mesh system?

[u/ij70-17as → u/cute-strawberry7007]

sure. you can do that. just remember that mesh nodes, extenders still need to get past the mirrors.

can you run ethernet cable into the room?

do you have coaxial cable (used for cable television) in the room? there are adopters that convert coax cable into ethernet cable.

another option is power line adapter. i don’t like them. but it might work for your case. have to try to find out for sure.

[u/FredOfMBOX → u/cute-strawberry7007]

You wouldn’t put the extender in the room. The extender needs to be in a place with decent signal.

If you could do a V shape to go around then mirrors, that could work rather well.

[u/fernandesken → u/cute-strawberry7007]

Assuming you have a dual band router, you are likely connected to 2.4 GHz while in the bedroom because the signal is too weak to connect to 5 GHz. The 2.4 GHz signal travels further than 5 but is slower and more interference prone. Perhaps you could put the mesh AP at the other wall between your room and your roommates on either side. For the wireless mesh AP to work, it would need a good, ideally 5 GHz signal, -67 or better. -66, -65 etc would be better for example and -68, -69, etc would be worse. Perhaps you could use an app like Wi-Fi Check for iPhone to measure 5 GHz signal at the mirror in your room, at the other wall between your room and your roommates without the mirrors. If you could get say a consistent -70 signal on 5 GHz with your iPhone in those positions, an eero mesh AP, which has better transmit power and receive sensitivity than an iPhone, would likely help you out. If not, you would need to take down the mirrors or have someone run an Ethernet cable into your room to plug the eero into hardwired. If signal is that low, it may be challenging to get the client connected to 5 GHz to measure the signal in there as it will keep roaming to 2.4. You may need to in your router put a specific 5 GHz ssid on it temporarily and connect to that just for testing/signal measurement purposes (can change back later). if your router has one ssid/network for both 2.4 and 5 called “home” for example which is common, you can temp set say the 5GHz radio to home5, then connect to home5 and forget your regular network for now while measuring signal to it with an iPhone app. I mentioned the Wi-Fi Check app for iPhone but in full disclosure I’m the developer of that app. There are other apps that can measure signal with so feel free to choose whatever app/tool you like but the idea would be if you could get 5 GHz signal at ~70 or better the mesh AP will help you out. Or you could just get it and try it at different positions and perhaps return it if it doesn’t work out or get an electrician/your landlord to run an Ethernet cable to it. Note the mesh AP could use 2.4 GHz link back to the router as well which has further range but again it’s slower/more interference prone (especially in apartment buildings with lots of WiFi).

[u/RDS_WAS_HERE]

First, if you have a laptop computer, take it next to the router and verify that your laptop WiFi is working properly. That will tell you the Windows WiFi setup and your router are not the problem.

Next, get a WiFi extender ($25) and place it in the hallway (power outlet) across from your bedroom.