wifi extender question

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joesxm3

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I am getting a Tesla and need to have a good wifi signal in my garage. Right now it does not seem to be that strong, maybe 2 bars on my Kindle Fire.

My house is about 50 feet end to end. The garage is under the main floor at one end of the house. The family room with the cable modem that does wifi is on the other end on the main floor, about 12 feet from the far wall.

I ordered a small NetGear wifi extender that plugs into a wall socket and has a couple antennas.

The signal seems to be about 4 or 5 bars in the part of the basement that is 5 or 10 feet away from the cable modem (but one floor down).

Should I try to put the booster in the end of the basement that seems to get a decent signal, or should I put the booster on the other end of the main floor that is over the garage?

At first I thought I could buy an extender with an ethernet port and run a cable to the basement but the one I was looking at only used the port to connect the extender to a computer.

Would and alternative be to run the cable and get some sort of wifi unit that I plug onto the ethernet network? Would that be a different wifi network from the one that the cable modem provides? Would such a device conflict with the cable modem wifi?

Thanks.

Joe
 
Are you sure you need it? Doesn't the car have its own cellular connection?
 
Pretty sure. I think you only get updates via home wifi.
 
Unfortunately, you already spent money on the extender. I would recommend you look into a mesh router. They can cover a large area very well. Adding satellites is very easy.
 
Jerry1 said:
Unfortunately, you already spent money on the extender. I would recommend you look into a mesh router. They can cover a large area very well. Adding satellites is very easy.
Click to expand...



+1 a mess router/satellites are excellent…. Costco has Google versions that work well. Plug n play and enjoy
 
joesxm3 said:
Pretty sure. I think you only get updates via home wifi.
Click to expand...

I'd check on that. Surely there are owners who don't have their own garage with wifi.

From the Tesla website:
You can check for new software updates by opening the ‘Software’ tab on your touchscreen. If a new update is available, you’ll receive a notification on your center touchscreen display, with the option to install the update immediately or schedule for later. You can also check for available updates in the Tesla app. If an update is available, you will see a ‘Software Update’ section on the main page of the app. To ensure the fastest and most reliable delivery of software updates, connect your vehicle to Wi-Fi.
Click to expand...
 
I ran a CAT 6 cable from my router to the garage. It was the best solution and maintained a solid 1 GB/Sec data rate to the garage from my router. I added a second Wifi router and it works marvelously. Prior to that I used powerline Ethernet adapters with Wifi from my router to the garage, but the data rate was about 28 MB/sec.
 
I cancelled all my orders and will think about things in more detail.

Being old school, I would prefer to just run a cable to the garage and plug on some sort of WiFi provider as long as it does not conflict with the Xfinity modem. It could be a completely separate WiFi network just for the car and wall charger.

I suppose I should see if they put up with 2 bars before I go nuts.
 
I had one of those Netgear extenders and it worked ok. It creates a separate network name, so you have to manually switch when you want to move from 1 to the other. I’m fairly certain the speed degrades as the signal gets rebroadcast.

I switched to a mesh network (Google WiFi) and it works great! It retains the same network name and any speed degradation is minimal. I have 4 of the “pucks” scattered around the house, including the one connected to the WiFi modem. Setup and is super easy.
 
I suspect you're headed for trouble with multiple active routers. Probably can be done but easy to make a mess. Seems to me that mesh is the way to go.
 
joesxm3 said:
I suppose I should see if they put up with 2 bars before I go nuts.
Click to expand...

I would do this before anything else. If it doesn’t work, like the others, my preference is a mesh system rather than an extender.

Can you use an ethernet cable with the Tesla? That would be much less expensive and very reliable.
 
You would think Ethernet cable would be nice. It has USB ports and I use a USB Ethernet adapter with my laptops.

Will the mesh play nice with an Xfinity supplied cable modem with WiFi?
 
I was looking at that an hour ago. Seems like a good option.
 
joesxm3 said:
Will the mesh play nice with an Xfinity supplied cable modem with WiFi?
Click to expand...
You can disable the Comcast wifi and just use a mesh. It’s the pricey option, however. If the ethernet cable option works it would be my first choice.
 
This article explains the differences between a Wi-Fi extender and a mesh network. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/wi-fi-range-extender-vs-mesh-network-whats-the-difference

We had an extender for several years, but there were still problems in certain areas of the house. We switched to a mesh network this year, and the Wi-Fi is now working like a charm throughout the house. We got a TP-Link system, which I found easy to install and set up, although I must admit that I did not do all that much comparison shopping before buying it.
 
I found a sale on N300 for $20 including tax.
 
I hummed and hawed at the "expense" of replacing a almost perfectly working netgear wifi/route.


After I bought a mesh router (I have the eero 6+), I realized I was just being a cheapskate. This solution works so much better than tweaking the angles of the antenna, changing channels to reduce interference etc. on the old router.


There are advantages to using the latest wifi protocols that these routers support.
 
joesxm3 said:
I was looking at that an hour ago. Seems like a good option.
Click to expand...

I have an xfinity router base station and ran an ethernet cable to my garage where I plugged in an Apple AirPort Extreme. Works great. So I have a house network and a garage network. My garage network wireless signal is strong enough to serve my detached workshop about 100' away.
 
We've had Mesh force M3 for a couple of years and we have had good experience with it. Detached garage is about 60-70' from the main router. We have 1 @ the router, 1 @ TV (20' from router), and 1 @ garage front corner (50' from TV)... Stick & brick home.
 
I'm a Tesla owner and had the same issue - I park my car near a detached garage about 100' from the router in my house. I do get a weak wi-fi signal out there and sometimes that's enough for the car to do an OTA update, but sometimes not, so I bought this extender:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MR90E3A/
which I put on my back porch. It's still about 75' from there to my car but it's a clear line of sight and gives me a pretty strong signal.

According to Tesla, "If your connection shows less than three bars, you may need to move the vehicle closer to the Wi-Fi source or wait until you have a better connection before downloading an update."

To answer one of the points that someone raised, your car will check for updates via the cellular network, but it really wants to do the big software download over WiFi. So even without WiFi, you car will let you know that an update is available but you'll need WiFi to begin the download. I've hear that Tesla might force some very critical updates over cellular but I haven't seen that yet.

As for where to place your extender, I think you'll just need to play with it and see where it works best.
 
MichaelB said:
Can you use an ethernet cable with the Tesla? That would be much less expensive and very reliable.
Click to expand...

True but you'd need a very long one unless you don't drive very far.
 
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