Where is your router?

[Sasssquatch]

I’’m reading the list of places your router should not be:

In drawers and cupboards

Near windows and mirrors.
close to a wall
Near electronic equipment such as baby monitors, wireless phones or televisions

Place your router centrally in your home
Place your router as high as possible
Place your router in an area with no obstacles which could block the Wi-Fi signal.

so where does that leave? Dangling from the ceiling in the middle of the room? (Although then it would be close to the light and it probably wouldn’t like that either)

also worth noting the fibre enters the house on the corner nearest the road as they refused to put it further along the wall where I’d be able to comply with the instruction to place it centrally in the house.

the router came with a cable 1 metre long so can only be at the most 1m away from the wall and window so put it 1 meter away from the wall into the room?? but it should be as high as possible? So on a table? One meter in from the wall. With the cable stretching from the connection box to the table. That’s practical 🙄

oh and it needs two sockets. One for the little gray box and one for the actual router. So it must be close to two free sockets but also no more than one meter from the box (because of the cable). And not near anything electronic (are sockets electronic?)

also worth noting my upgrade was necessary as my unreliable connection was “due to environmental conditions” like living in a house with walls and windows amd doors and other electronic devices.

Open reach/BT tried to tell me it was a me problem when ours dropped out up to 15 times a day. I kept logs. Eventually they realised it was very much a Them problem as it was the cables in the actual cabinet. They hadn’t been properly secured so every time the wind blew - poof no internet for me.

And then refused to pay compensation because losing it 15 times a day doesn’t = a full day without service.

Anyway, now that’s sorted. Our router is on an open sofa console shelving unit shoved down the side of the sofa by the lounge wall because it and the router are ugly and that’s where the cable comes in.

I have the main router (Eero nest) behind the tv in the lounge, it was wired up behind the armchair as that was where the guy could put it when he was wiring up my own line from the street's fibre supply, and then I popped a longer ethernet cable on it so I could move it to the TV table. The TV works really well wirelessly there, and then I have a secondary one that works wirelessly downstairs with its own power supply and gives my work laptop a boost.

On top of a kitchen cupboard

Ours is in the under stairs cupboard because that’s where the developers put the connections (new build). Stupid place to put it but it seems to work ok.

Or, even better use a TP-Link Powerline adapter. They work off the mains so you don't have cables trailing everywhere.

The same here. Only the door is behind the wall - so it’s a corner.

On top of a wardrobe in my hallway just next to stairwell where ceiling height increases massively. I bought an extension to get it on top of the wardrobe. It works fine all over the house and back garden

Mine is behind the TV against one of the outside walls, so WiFi at the opposite end of the house is pretty much non existent.

I don't really rely on WiFi though, as I have run cables to the room I use as an office, and all my home automation stuff has its own mesh network, as only one device needs to be in range of the router. If it ever becomes a problem, I'll just put a network extender in.

Ours is on the windowsill in DH's office as this is where the cable comes into the house.

Ours is on a shelf on an interior wall. It's also disguised by a fake book box.
We also have a booster in the larder, so that wi fi reaches the rest of the house.

It's probably all wrong, but it works so far.

On a shelf on the top landing - has to be near a wall to be near a plug!

Mine is hidden on the top of tv unit behind the picture frames. The plugs are on the side wall.

Same here, nowhere else it can go.

Ours is too, as that's where the fibre connection is. 🤷‍♀️

You’ve now exposed your router to the world 😱

To everyone saying there’s is next to where the fibre comes in, you do realise you can buy a longer cable and put it anywhere you want? We’ve got a 10m cable or similar and it’s on the opposite side of the room to the wall where the fibre comes in.

I’m not sure why everyone is saying they have no choice. Our fibre connection comes into the house at a corner. We simply run a nice long Ethernet cable to a central spot (the hallway cupboard) where the actual router lives. Strong signal throughout the property,

It’s something to look into but it would mean tacking a very long cable all around a huge living room and having it literally lying across the hall floor as there’s only one power point there.

On the hall sideboard, which is against a wall, next to the display unit that tells me how much my gas & electricity is costing. It works fine all through the house and to the end of my massive garden.

On the dining table at the end of our living room/dining room. We did have a booster in the loft but a storm last year broke our skylight and the rain came in and frazzled it. Still haven’t replaced it as everything has been fine without it.

You mentioned an attic. Our cable goes up the wall into the attic, across the joists, and drops down into the hall cupboard. It's a flat cable and barely noticeable.

No, I didn’t mention an attic.

i’m getting worried now, three different posters on three separate threads have thought I’d said something I hadn’t. 🥸

One in a cupboard in the living room, one ceiling mounted on the landing, one wal mounted next to the ceiling in the kitchen and one in the sheltered area in our garden.

My mistake, I was confusing you with OP. Do you have access to the attic? Flat cables can also be run under carpets and other types of flooring. Where there's a will, there's a way!

Ah, yes I could run it under the carpet.