Looking for a good wireless router to go with your high speed Internet connection but live in a house or apartment made of brick or concrete?
Look no further – let’s discuss the best router for brick or concrete walls.
What is the best router for brick walls?
Here are the best routers for brick or concrete walls:
What’s the deal with brick or concrete?
The composition of materials used to construct a building can absolutely make a difference in the range, reliability, and performance of your wireless network.
If your house, condominium, flat, or apartment is primarily make up of brick or concrete, you have more challenges than someone living in a building composed of traditional materials such as wood and drywall.
This has do with the fact the the Electromagnetic Waves of the Wi-Fi signal get absorbed (or even reflected) more or less by different materials in the environment. In the case of brick or concrete, these materials absorb the signal much greater than wood does, resulting in decreased range and speed, and generally less reliability than the same Wi-Fi network in a wood environment.
What can I do about it?
This is where the selection of your router and it’s configuration comes into play.
Most routers nowadays are dual-band routers, which is a good thing. However, in the case of EM-absorbing materials being present in the walls, ceilings, and floors of your residence, (and therefore being present between your router and your phone/tablet/laptop) it is best to connect on a lower-frequency band if possible.
What does that mean?
Most routers can operate at both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Generally 5GHz is preferred because of the greater availability of clear (non-overlapping) channels and fewer devices and interference to compete with.
However if you are dealing with brick or concrete, your primary concern is the ability for your Wi-Fi signal to penetrate the materials in your walls.
Lower frequencies penetrate better and are attenuated less by brick, so you should use 2.4GHz over 5GHz.
This logic is the opposite of what I usually recommend. As I said before, people living in brick or concrete environments have special challenges!
So I should just scrap my dual-band router?
Now, hold on. I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t use the 5GHz band on your router. In fact, for wireless devices that are close to your router such as in the same room, or perhaps just one room away – you should try sticking to 5GHz.
For the rooms that are further away than that, you may need to use 2.4GHz.
Overall what I’m trying to say, is that you should be prepared to test both frequencies and see which works better for you.
Best Router for Brick Walls – Netgear R6700
- Recommended for up to 25 devices: Reliably stream videos, play games, surf the internet, and connect smart home devices
- Wired Ethernet ports: Plug in computers, game consoles, streaming players, and other nearby wired devices with 4 x 1 gigabit Ethernet ports
- Loaded with advanced technology: Designed with a 1GHz dual core processor, 3 amplified antennas, Beamforming plus, Dynamic QoS, Smart Connect, and more
- USB connections: Share a storage drive or printer with any connected device or create a personal cloud storage to access from anywhere, using the 1 x 3.0 USB port
- Safe & secure: Supports WPA2 wireless security protocols. Includes Guest Wi-Fi access, DOS, Firewall, VPN, and more
The team here at Infravio really likes the R6700 and recommends it to our readers frequently. This router is feature-rich, highly stable, and offers excellent performance without breaking the bank.
Connecting your devices to the 2.4GHz band on this router should provide some of the best performance you can hope to attain in a brick/concrete environment.
If you are still having trouble, you may want to think about deploying one or more wireless access points in your home, which will serve to decrease signal attenuation by bringing the source closer to more devices.
Andrew Namder is an experienced Network Engineer with 20+ years of experience in IT. He loves technology in general, but is truly passionate about computer networking and sharing his knowledge with others. He is a Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) and is working towards achieving the coveted CCIE certification. He can be reached at andrew@infravio.com.