Home Networking Companies

Start with the basics...

What type of internet do you have? Cable? Fiber? Satellite? Upload and download speed? How many devices running at once and doing what?

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Upload and download speed?

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Clutch info right here.

The very first thing I'd do is draw a simple sketch of your house. Then take a phone, laptop or tablet (or all 3) and pull up your favorite speed test website. Then I'd walk around to different points of the house and run it there. See what speeds your are getting where. Where are the fats spots and where are the slow spots? What are the devices in each area? You can also run a wifi heat map via phone apps, but that info is a little harder to interpret.

My best guess is one of two things. 1). You don't have enough bandwidth for everything you're doing. This could be because of two reasons: You internet speed from your ISP isn't fast enough or reason 2). You don't have enough access points. Most commercial routers only allow a certain amount of connections. You can find out how many connections are supported by searching for the model number. If you go over than number, funny things start to happen. You can also check the number of devices online by logging into your router. Most have a "network map" feature that will show you how many devices are currently connected to the network. You'd be surprised at how many it can get up to.

Dovetailing on to that chain of thought, If you have a bunch of smart home devices, like nest cams and lights, you could consider building a second network (with one or more other routers with a unique network name) just for those smart devices. When I set up my smart home, I didn't do that, and I kind of wish I had.

My personal home network is pretty simple. We're on comcast/xfinity and pay for about 350 mb/s downloads (about $60 per month). It comes in via a standard cable modem. I have 1 main "fast" router and then 3 inexpensive (sub $100) AC1750 routers throughout the house as wired access points. It covers our two story (ground floor with a finished basement) 4,500 sq ft house very nicely. If I had to do any upgrades, I'd add a 4th access point outside under our covered porch for improved signal in the backyard.

what do you mean by VRs all over the house?

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what do you mean by VRs all over the house?

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Assuming kids are playing VR gaming headsets.

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What existing setup do you have? Do you have any ethernet runs?

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No ethernet runs.

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The very first thing I'd do is draw a simple sketch of your house...

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I don't want to do this. I want to pay someone to come into my house and do all of this. I want to pay them to come build the greatest home network that can possibly exist.

Are there companies that do this? Because there should be.

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What city are you in?

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BR... er.. Now the Great City of St George.

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: 3 Nest thermostats, 3 Nest Protects, 2 Nest Cams, 1 Amazon Alexa and 1 Google hub, 2 LG smart alarm clocks, 1 macbook, 4 TV's with Roku's but at really no point are more than 2 running at a time, a PS5, Meta Quest 2 running at various times, and a whole litany of Ipads and phones...

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On this list, the nest cams and the TV's are the most data intensive users. Nothing else uses a ton of data. I suppose the Ipads and phones could, if they were watching video.

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Fiber. ATT 1GB.
Upload: 433.1Mbps
Download: 368Mbps

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How close were you to the router/modem? Repeat the test as far away from the modem as possible. This biggest issue here is that you're paying for 1GB speed and getting 40% of that.

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Motorola modem/router. Also there's 2 "extenders" they offered for "maximum coverage"

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Here is the heart of the issue. You need access points, not extenders. Sounds like a perfect solution for a standard off the shelf mesh wifi system. My 80 year old parents set one up in their house without assistance. How many sq ft is your house?

Yeah, close to 400 mb/s is smoking for uploads.

Thinking more, I think two things are happening. 1) You are maxing your available connections. The combo router modem likely only supports about 20-30 connections. IF you try to connect more, other things get kicked off. 2). You getting bottlenecked through the extenders.

As I said, we pretty much have a "full" smart home. Smart switches, light bulbs, appliances, TV's and hubs/control devices in every room. We also have a 16 camera wired security system (althou they are all connected via a single NVR). As a point of reference: Checking 2 of my 4 routers. My primary router (the one that distributes IP address throughout the network) has 20 wired (this included the 3 additional access points) and 39 wireless connections. The router on the south end of our house (master bedroom) has 20 wireless connections. We have no issues with either speed or connectivity. Occasionally my phone will want to hang on to a wifi connection from the other side of the house, but that easily remedied by cycling the wifi on the phone.

Before I spent a ton of money on a home networking company, I'd buy a consumer grade mesh system for around $200 and it will likely solve all of your problems. They are extremely easy to set up. The most important thing to remember is to turn off the wifi on the modem/router.

If it works, then your in business. If not return it and you're out nothing but time.