Wi-fi that drops out, or will not reach the back of the house
The problem is rarely the wi-fi itself. It is where the box ended up, what is sitting between it and you, and whether the one your provider posted out was ever going to cover a house this shape. I measure it instead of guessing, and I tell you which it is before I change anything.
Message me first. It's free to ask.
Higgins based · onsite anywhere in the ACT · homes, offices, cafes and venues
Whichever one of these is happening at your place
If yours is not here, ask anyway. Describing it badly is fine, that is my job and not yours.
It works in the lounge and dies in the back bedroom
The most common one, and usually the cheapest to fix. I measure where the signal actually falls away rather than guessing, and often the answer is moving the box you already own.
It drops out every evening, at about the same time
A pattern that repeats at a time of day is a different fault from one that happens at random, and it narrows things down a long way before I have even arrived.
The extender I bought made it worse
Plug-in extenders repeat on the same radio they receive on, which halves the speed of anything going through them. Often the fix is moving it, not replacing it.
The printer is the only thing that will not connect
Printers drop off a network for reasons of their own, usually a changed password or a band they cannot see. Set up properly once, on every device in the building.
Just moved in, and nothing is set up
Internet, wi-fi, printers and the devices that need to see each other, planned and set up together rather than one at a time as each one fails.
The video call freezes, and it is always me
Meetings are the least forgiving thing on a home network. Usually it is upload, not download, and nobody ever tests the upload.
The router is exactly as it came out of the box
Default password, default network name, guest access wide open and firmware from whenever it was boxed. Ten minutes, and it stops being everyone's problem.
Customers keep asking for the wi-fi password
A guest network your customers can use, kept away from your own computers and your till. Cafes, salons, waiting rooms and anywhere people sit down.
I measure it. I do not guess where the problem is.
Most wi-fi advice is somebody's guess about your building. The whole job is finding out where the signal actually goes, which takes a walk around the house with something that reads it properly.
It's free to ask and nothing is owed either way. Telling me the make of your router and which room is worst gets you a useful answer before I have left mine.
Tell me what it does, and where
Which rooms, what time of day, and what is plugged in. Describe it however makes sense to you. You do not need the right words for it.
I measure it room by room
Signal and speed in the rooms you actually use, not from where the router is sitting. That is the step almost nobody does, and it is the one that answers the question.
You get the read, and the cost, before anything changes
What is causing it, what each fix would involve, and what it costs. Including the ones that cost nothing.
It works, in the room it did not work in
Tested in front of you in the same spots I measured first, so you can see the difference rather than take my word for it.
One person, and it is this one.
There is no call centre, no ticket queue and no subcontractor. You message me, I answer, and I do the work.
- I tell you the cost before I start. Including when the honest answer is that there is nothing worth paying for here.
- I do not sell hardware. No commission, no reseller deal, nothing I am quietly steering you toward. If the router you own is fine, that is what you will hear.
- I explain what I am doing while I do it. At whatever pace suits you, and written down if you would rather handle it yourself next time.
- I come to you. Anywhere in the ACT. Wi-fi is one of the few things that genuinely needs somebody standing in the building.
What I will tell you not to buy
A good share of what gets called a wi-fi problem is the internet connection, and no amount of new wi-fi hardware will touch it. If that is what I find, I will tell you, and the fix is a phone call to your provider rather than a bill from me. I will tell you what to say to them, because that conversation goes better when you know the words.
If you already own an extender, the answer is often to move it rather than replace it. If your five-year-old router is genuinely fine where it is, that is what you will hear, and there is nothing to pay for hearing it. A mesh system is the right answer for some buildings and an expensive way to solve nothing in others, and which one yours is takes half an hour to find out rather than a guess in a shop.
I do not sell hardware and I do not resell anyone's software. If the fix is something you can do yourself in ten minutes, I will tell you what to do, and that one is free.
Is it my wi-fi, or is it my internet?
Different problems, different fixes, and worth knowing which you have before you spend anything. If it is slow everywhere, including standing beside the router and including on a cable, that is the service coming into the building. If it is fine beside the router and poor further away, that is coverage, and coverage is fixable.
Why does it work in one room and not another?
Because of what is in between. Brick internal walls, a wall-mounted mirror, the fridge, foil-backed insulation, and the metal in a bathroom all take a bite out of it. Plenty of Canberra houses have the phone socket in a front corner, so that is where the router went, and a front corner is close to the worst place in the building for it. Moving it costs nothing and is the first thing worth trying.
Extender or mesh?
A plug-in extender repeats the signal on the same radio it is listening on, so everything connected through it runs at about half speed. That can still be the right answer for one quiet corner. A mesh keeps its own link between units and holds one network name as you walk around the house, which is what most people mean when they say upstairs is bad. Which suits depends on the building, not on the box.
Do you have to come out?
For wi-fi, usually yes, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The entire problem is where the signal goes, and that cannot be measured from somewhere else. Router settings and a printer that will not rejoin the network are different, and those I can often do remotely while you watch.
Anywhere in the ACT, and I do mean anywhere
I am based in Higgins, so Belconnen and the north-west are ten minutes away: Kippax, Holt, Latham, Macgregor, Charnwood, Florey, Bruce. Gungahlin, the inner north, Woden, Weston Creek, Molonglo and Tuggeranong are all a normal drive and I go to all of them.
Homes, home offices, small offices, and the venues where the guest wi-fi matters as much as your own: cafes, salons, clinics and waiting rooms.
Tell me which room it dies in.
A text is the fastest way to reach me. The make of the router and the worst room is enough to start with. I'm back to you within a day, usually much faster, with an honest read on what is going on and what it is likely to take.