The problem isn't distance; it's SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). Distance (including barriers) is one of the most common CAUSES of bad SNR, but a weak transmitter will also cause the same problem. And while a wifi extender will improve signal attenuation due to distance or barriers, it doesn't help when the signal is weak because it was never powerful enough to begin with.

Now, it's possible that a repeater might be able to do the job for you anyway, if its transmitter is more powerful than the one in the router. At that point you could just plug it in RIGHT BESIDE the router and get an improvement.

You might be able to convince your mom to buy this one by pointing to the fact that it calls itself a "range extender": https://www.amazon.com/Securifi-Almo...n%3A4676750011

Or this one, because it labels itself a "wifi booster": https://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DAP-15...n%3A4676750011

Or this one, which is specifically labeled a "repeater and range extender": https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Wire...676750011&th=1

That was my point as well, if my laptop is having problems....how would the wifi extender help when it would either have to be right be the modem or just as far if not further away from it than my laptop. They don't seem to understand that....or maybe they don't care.

Which one of those would you suggest the most? Which ones would be better upstairs by the modem? versus being put downstairs (of course, if it doesn't plug in directly into the wall and has a cord, I can put it closer to the modem even down stairs than I could the wifi extender we had)

All three of those can be connected to your modem via an Ethernet cable and may present a better signal than the built-in router. You might consider configuring the two routers differently at that point so that you can configure one to work better with your mom's computer and the other to work better with your own.

I mean, you should try to see how long of a cable you can route to get the second router closer to where you want to use it. Even a few feet can make a difference.

As for which one I'd choose... the first one has GREAT reviews, but it also looks the most like a router so it might be a harder sell to your mom. The other two look roughly equivalent, but the D-Link looks slightly more reliable if you compare off-site reviews.

One problem I have with all three of those is that they don't have exterior antennas, which means you can't swap them out. If you could land a high-gain antenna (6dBi) then that would be a big help for you, since your situation is noise and not range. It might even work on your stock router if it has a replaceable antenna.

Well, with cables, I can't get it any closer if upstairs due to how the upstairs is laid out and heavy stuff I can't/won't move everywhere since I'm the only one who would set it up and all.

I don't think you can add antennas to their modem/router thing .-.

I'll see what can happen XD

Channel 3 worked for me somehow. Idek how considering what people say. Or maybe it just didn't have time to go out on me before it went out on my mom XD

The channels that people recommend are the best in the absence of competing signals because they're on the edges of chunks of spectrum -- they've got more room for frequency variation. However, the key phrase there is "in the absence of competing signals." When everyone takes that advice, those channels get overcrowded, and every wifi signal in the area that ISN'T the signal between you and the router is just noise to your computer. So it's not unusual that using channels that people recommend against will actually give you BETTER service.

The problem with choosing channels is that everyone is set to auto around here.

Luckily, it seems, most people that are on channel 6 with us, move quickly due to that...and/or have like 1 bar of signal for me to pick up....

But this time, I got a different error when I ran the troubleshooter. The default gateway is not available.

Hour later: Kicked me again before fulling kicking me off the modem altogether. Wifi analyzer currently only shows two other networks able to be read, both on channel 11.

Also I think this is becoming more of a journal for my internet problems...on top of a warning for anyone who has Time Warner/Charter/Spectrum for a potential cable/phone/internet provider.

Charter is way better than Time Warner in my experience so far, and they're still mostly running independent services.

Don't read too much into the specific error messages you're getting. They all mean the same thing: "can't talk to the router/internet".

Oh I know, but they are different errors so maybe there's something different I can do to fix it (I doubt it, but I need hope so I don't call them and cuss them out D: )

No they're not, in my area, they just merged into Spectrum and are now officially spectrum and since that happened (or right before the official switch over, but they were switched) and we got a new modem from them, everything has went to hell.

We switched to a spectrum package, phone automatically was cut off because no one told us our phone modem from time warner was not compatible so we had no phone for DAYS due to that. We added cable back, got boxes...no remotes were given to us by the lady in the store, called about both phone and remotes. Technician will come. No remotes, but phone got working due to him installing a new modem. Got remotes the next day from the store/office. No cable. Luckily they sent the same tech as before all this bs who remembered that he put a data trap on in order to see if that would improve the internet (which means the guy that was supposed to reconnect our cable didn't even get out of his van to see anything. He took it off and HALLAJUEH! There was cable.

Noticed we had no voicemail (because they did not activate it when all they had to do was drag our stuff from the TWC plan to the Spectrum plan). Contacted tech support. They 'fixed' it....10 mins later when voicemail should've kicked in, internet and phone both go out. Right before this I noticed that the phone modem also had internet when it wasn't supposed to. Called in, voicemail was not added, or was added incorrectly. They fix that, someone had messed up....the whatever tells one modem to be internet and the other to be phone. He fixed that. He 'turned' off the internet on it (Cause signal that close can cause interference). Later found out, there's still internet on it, I eventually get into modem to turn off wifi...doesn't help signal....can't get back into the POS modem now, even with an ethernet cable so we can't try and see if that modem would be better internet for us than the upstairs one.

And I'm probably forgetting something.

Note: This is just in this month alone, not including the actually internet problems I'm complaining about in this thread (mostly if not completely)

Sounds like typical Time Warner support in the face of everything suddenly changing for no good reason.

Time Warner support was better than this. Until now, every time I got someone that knew english well (Just because it isn't their first language doesn't mean they can't be good). And Time Warner would skip to sending a technician out instead of lying saying they did something when they didn't. (I think the phone modem still has internet....just internet we can't access through wifi now)

Bleh. Sorry to hear. :( I had no end of trouble with TWC when I had them. I suspect a lot of it depends on what call center manages to take your call.

Don't get me wrong, the actual SERVICE sucked balls, but customer support? Well, they never lied to me....and never made me want to bang my head against a wall....now they do.

Service still sucks, just in a way I think they could fix since...with TWC it was slow speeds, like under 10mbs always. But we always had internet unless there was an outage...but new modem and the merger? We can't have that anymore. We tend to get higher speeds now, but it randomly goes out.

I just checked wifi analyzer (a windows app, free) one is in range right now on channel 11, the other ones not in range are channels 1 and 11...we're channel 6 so interference should not be a problem considering NO layout has changed at all. Electronics are where they were....such as phones and other things....modem is where it was...laptops are where they are. Idk what changed, but it wasn't on our end in our house.

So I'm looking through settings on my adapter (wireless) what does wfd channel mean?

I think I may have found a setting that wasn't helping. Minimum Power Consumption....from what I understand it would like put the adapter to sleep if it thinks I'm idle....and maybe it was getting signals that I was idle when I wasn't or right before I was going to be not idle (or maybe it has nothing to do with it lol)

As far as I can tell that's the same channel number.

I... don't THINK that "minimum power consumption" setting does that. I think that has something to do with what happens when your laptop goes to sleep. Try it, see if it helps, but it might interfere with your laptop's sleep mode.

Do I need to set it to be the same channel number as my modem? Because it says 11 and my modem is set to 6

I don't know, I thought I'd try it LOL since at night I close my laptop and all...and during the day, well, my laptop is supposed to go to sleep after 45 minutes or so (sometimes it doesn't, due to a game...a few times it hasn't because IDEK but most of the time it does)

The WFD channel probably isn't relevant. You wouldn't be able to communicate with the router at all if you were on the wrong channel, so that's automatically managed. That channel is probably for some other mode that you aren't using.

Closing your laptop is mostly what I meant. Worst case scenario, your laptop won't wake back up from sleep correctly and you'll need to reboot it to make everything work right.

Oh well, then...it went to sleep fine and woke up fine :D Just as it has always done :D Of course, this is only once.

My Windows laptop doesn't like waking up from sleep. I have to hard-reboot it pretty often if I let it sleep for more than a day.

Now once a day I must reset the wireless adapter in my laptop. Terrific D:

Heh. Didn't I say I have to do that? ;)

Just shut it down when you go to bed instead of using sleep mode.

That's the thing, it wasn't when I woke it up....it was hours later.

And I was think maybe a driver is messed up, so I went to Toshiba's website...there's like 10 drivers just for the internet and I don't know if I need them all D:

Which during this process, miniports (or whatever) have appeared (they appeared awhile back)....where did they come from? >_<

A miniport is the part of a Windows driver that talks directly to the hardware. You... shouldn't need to worry about that? I can only imagine that you're using some sort of generic driver that's exposing stuff that normal OEM drivers would keep hidden.

I hadn't changed the driver at all and it just appeared. Since they appeared I tried changing the driver, no difference.

And like I said, Toshiba's website lists 5 billion different drivers for just my laptop's internet, I don't know if it needs updating or not, and if so, which ones?

If you're willing to do the research, open Device Manager and you can dig through your hardware tree to figure out what specific devices you have. That should also tell you what version of the driver you have if you keep poking.

I can only find information from the Toshiba website, not the broadcom one....because I tried contacting the broadcom website and they say they don't deal with it.

The Toshiba one says I'm updated I think...like drivers are newer by like one day on one of them that I don't have, but it has a lower number.

The driver date says nov 2015....but the driver on toshiba say sept 2016

Yes, officially, the chipset manufacturer doesn't provide support for OEM-distributed hardware, and technically you're on your own here. Even I can't really support you here; if you want to experiment with this, it's on you, and the possibility does exist that you might knock yourself online with no good way to get back online (find a copy of the original driver's installer so you can roll back while offline!).

They actually told me to go to this other website that seems to be the same friggin website so I'd end up with them anyway.

I'm just afraid to uninstall the driver and reboot D: I'd rather have internet that kicks me than no internet at all, you know? (Do you remember my posts about a linux computer doing this, but way more often? I never did find a fix for that, but linux is complicated D: )

It kicks me now and switches to ethernet which I don't have and the adapter must be reset for it to work again. This used to never happen -le sigh-

I wish there was a website with a list of optimized settings for my adapter XD

I changed the power setting back, but it still kicks me entirely, but reconnects which is an improvement.

Well, now you know why that setting is set the way it was.

Well, I googled, and usually that setting, while plugged in, there's a battery setting that sets it to be disabled so maybe the two disableds was making it worse? Idk