Why WiFi struggles in Fountain Hills homes, and how to fix dead spots

Why homes here are hard on WiFi

WiFi is a radio signal, and the way many homes in Fountain Hills and the northeast Valley are built works against it:

• Concrete block walls. Block absorbs WiFi far more than wood framing and drywall. One interior block wall can cut the signal behind it by more than half, and the faster 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands lose even more than 2.4 GHz.
• Stucco over wire lath. Exterior stucco is applied over a metal mesh. That mesh acts like a screen and blocks most of the signal headed to the patio, pool, garage or casita.
• Long single-story layouts. Ranch-style homes put the primary bedroom at one end and the office or guest rooms at the other, often 60 to 80 feet apart.
• Detached casitas. The signal has to leave through one stucco wall, cross the courtyard and enter through another.
• The router lives where the cable comes in. That's usually a closet, the garage or a corner office, which is about the worst place for it.

First, find out if it's the WiFi or the internet

Run a speed test (search "speed test" in your browser) with your phone standing next to the router, then in the room where things are slow.

• Fast next to the router, slow elsewhere: it's WiFi coverage. Read on.
• Slow even next to the router: the problem is the internet service, the modem or the router itself. Restart the modem and router, and if it stays slow, call your internet company. Paying for a faster plan won't fix coverage.

The fixes, from easiest to most effective

1. Move the router. Out of the closet, off the floor, away from the TV and the fish tank, and as central and high as the internet line allows. Sometimes a longer cable to a better spot is all it takes.
2. Replace an old router. Routers older than about 5 years often lack WiFi 6 and struggle with today's 20 to 40 connected devices: phones, TVs, cameras, doorbells, thermostats, speakers.
3. Use mesh, not extenders. A mesh system (eero, Google Nest WiFi, TP-Link Deco, ASUS ZenWiFi and others) uses two or three matching units that act as one network with one name. Plug-in extenders usually create a second network, halve your speed and leave phones clinging to the weak signal.
4. Connect the mesh points with a wire. Mesh units talk to each other over WiFi by default, so the block wall that slows your laptop also slows the link between the units. A wired connection between them, called wired backhaul, gives every room near full speed. Many homes here have Ethernet in a few rooms or TV coax in nearly every room. MoCA adapters let mesh units use that coax as a network cable, with no new wires.
5. Put your internet company's gateway in bridge mode. If you add mesh behind the gateway your internet company provided, turn off the gateway's own WiFi or set it to bridge or passthrough mode. Two routers competing creates connection problems that are hard to diagnose.

Casitas, patios and the pool

• Casita or guest house: best is a network cable in buried conduit from the house to a mesh unit in the casita. If there's no path for a cable, an outdoor point-to-point wireless bridge between the two buildings works well and often reaches 300 Mbps or more.
• Patio and pool: an outdoor-rated access point or mesh unit mounted under the eave covers the yard without fighting the stucco.
• Cameras and video doorbells: they sit at the very edge of the house, outside the stucco. If they keep going offline or the video freezes, weak coverage is the usual reason, not the camera.

When to call for help

If you have dead spots, a casita with no signal, cameras that drop off or TVs that buffer, I'll test signal and speed in every room, find where it falls off, and set up the right equipment, including wired backhaul over the cable or coax you already have. You don't need to figure out what to buy. See WiFi and router setup.

Common questions