Help with Wi-Fi problems please!

[CopycatNinja]

Hello all! I am having some trouble with my Wi-fi and have tried looking it up but am a little overwhelmed and am hoping someone who knows more about it can help me.

I live in a small mother-in-law house attached to the side of the main house. I think 3 or 4 people live in the main house, and 3 of us including myself in the small side unit. We all share the same internet and as a result, i think it is pitifully slow. In addition to that, i am often losing connection completely. So i'm dealing with either no internet connection at all, or when it is able to connect, it is very slow. Netflix will have to stop and load what im watching every few minutes...

The main setup (router?) is in the main house, and we have a wifi extender in our side unit, but I dont think it reaches my room in the back very well. In fact, my housemates often complain about their internet being crappy too despite being closer to the extender.

So what can I do here? Would another wifi extender help if i put one in my room? I looked into the mesh things too but those seem more expensive and i'm attending college right now lol, so budget is an issue also.
Would installing a second router on the same network in our side unit be an option? Does that affect the price of our internet plan?

Obviously I dont really know what im doing here lol. Would really appreciate any insight!

[I_royalty_I]

Maybe you just need to up the speed that you are receiving. It sounds like there are a lot of people trying to connect which likely slows it down to what you’re experiencing.

[Bat]

I'd recommend figuring out what your bandwidth and hardware limitations are before making any additional investments. If your internet speed isn't fast enough, or reliable enough to be shared by numerous people, then you may need to upgrade your internet service, or address problems with cabling and connectivity within your home.

Once you've ruled out connectivity and speed issues with your provider, you can move onto hardware. Confirm that your modem and router are capable of utilizing your internet speed to its max potential. Older (and cheaper) hardware may not deliver the speeds that are offered by your provider. You'll also need to determine if your router can the traffic of all the devices that are connected to it. If there are too many devices fighting for resources on an insufficient router, then your quality of service will degrade.

Try to determine if your device's internet performance is better when it's plugged into the router, or in the case of wifi, when your device is in physically close to the router. If your connectivity and speed improves, then you may want to run a wired connection to cover the distance of your living arrangement instead of relying on solely on a wireless repeater. Many repeaters support converting a wired connection to wireless as well. Rather than repeating a weak wireless signal over long distances, you could try running a cable to your repeater instead.

[Cookie Tray]

In addition to everything already said, be sure you are utilizing the proper bandwidth network for your device. If your smart devices are capable of connecting to 5GHz band networks, make sure you are connecting to that rather than the 2.4GHz. If your router has 5GHz broadcasting capabilities but your wireless devices don't show the network, it may be a device hardware issue. Older devices can only connect to 2.4GHz networks.