Last week, after having watched whatever we thought was hot on HBO, and with the new Beatles documentary on Disney+, we agreed that we should cancel our HBO subscription and sign for Disney. I cannot tell you what a PITA it was to cancel HBO through our FIOS account. Both through the web site, and through the mobile app, there was no place I could find where you could cancel one premium service and activate another. Finally I just started a chat session.
Verizon’s chat function (still) doesn’t work on Chrome.
After switching to Firefox, it was fairly quick. So it only took me a half-hour to do something that should have taken five minutes (which was how long it took me to sign up for Disney+ through my smart TV). Oh, and then I got an email with mistaken information about my account (no, I did not want to cancel paperless billing; yes, I want to keep autopay). So another fifteen minutes the next day sorting that out.
Anyway…
One beneficial side-effect was that I was entitled to a free router and range-extender upgrade. For a mere $10 shipping I could get two spanking new pieces of hardware that might well improve my experience. I was assured that the new hardware had a stronger signal than the old, which is great because sometimes the TV in the bedroom gets a little spotty.
Let’s see how it goes.
Router
The first step. Wait — my internet connection is going to go down. I had better save a draft of this…
Wait — E. is on a Zoom session upstairs.
There. Now I’ve disconnect the old one. This is what it looked like.
After that, pretty easy. I connected the coax, and two ethernet cables, into the parallel slots where they were on the old router. Powered it up, and after a few minutes the light lit up solid. After mis-typing the network password a couple of times, my PC connected easily. The QR code on the back worked to get my mobile phone set up. My Google Home network connected seamlessly, without me needing to take any steps at all.
So, relatively easy!
Extender
The extender sits on a windowsill in the basement studio, where it’s more-or-less underneath our bedroom TV, and in the same room where I work during the day. Pretty easy installation. Just unplug the coax from the old one, screw it into the new one, swap out the power cord, done.
The extender has a colossal dongle. Almost too heavy to stay put in the outlet. They should have supplied a brick instead.
Performance?
Here’s a table of the readings from my wifi analyzer app. I tested six locations: The dining room (E’s home office), the library, in front of the master bedroom TV, in front of the guest room TV, in the basement studio, and right in front of the router itself. Just for comparison’s sake, my signal strength here at the work office, a professional setting, is at -50dBm. Here’s the old and new readings. In the cases of the old signal strength, I’m showing the numbers for both the 2.4 and 5G networks.
| Location | Old signal strength | New signal strength |
|---|---|---|
| Dining Room | -84 dBm/-84 dBm | -75 dBm |
| Library | -47 dBm/-58 dBm | -38 dBm |
| MBR TV | -47 dBm/-59 dBm | -37 dBm |
| GR TV | -48 dBm/-54 dBm | -38 dBm |
| Basement Studio | -46 dBm/-54 dBm | -27 dBm |
| At Router | -37 dBm/-47 dBm | -54 dBm |
Overall a pretty noticeable improvement. Surprisingly, right in front of the new router the signal strength is weaker! I wouldn’t have expected that. My theory is that the other locations are primarily served by the range extender. The television is connected to the main router by ethernet, that’s the only thing that really needs it, so probably no big deal.
The dining room is still problematic. It’s on another floor from the router, and there’s a concrete wall the signal has to go through. I’d rather not have to buy and wire-in another extender for that end of the house. But on the other hand it’s served well by our Google WiFi network.
Did I not mention that? That’s probably because I connected the main Google WiFi appliance directly to the new router with an ethernet cable, just like the old one, and it just worked.
Form Factor
What goes on here? Why are these soooo much bigger than the old ones? They’re a little shorter, but take up a lot more counter (and windowsill) space than the old ones. Plus the fat, bright white is more obtrusive than the slim and bespoke black I had before.
I’ll never understand.