OK guys, help me out!
So you know my Internet situation is a stressor for me right now. I hate not being in control. Instead of paying $70 a month to have my own network, I did get my landlord to upgrade to Comcast Blast, for only $13 a month more and he's covering that expense which is sick. So now we're supposed to get up to 150 Megabits/second. Now, we still have tons of devices using this network at all times... We're talking 6 people each with a phone, computer, and a few streaming devices like my buddies PS4 and my laptop and then the Wii U (I never run my laptop and Wii U at hte same time to lower the bandwidth need).
So I wonder about bandwidth and how it's affected. Now, the router/modem is upstairs in the landlords apartment, I'm directly below. last week I was getting decent Wifi service of about 25-150ms ping, 7-15 Megabit/second download speed. I could play overwatch generally and get disconnected like once a night, and had that infamous disconnect when I tried to raid for the first time in months :(
(Important note: the landlord has decent router and modem. N450, not AC. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00F3ZN536/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AJHDZSI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
Sooo over the weekend I got this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/linksys-ac1200-wireless-range-extender-white/4229300.p?id=1219709884796&skuId=4229300
It's an AC1200 linksys range extender. I plug it into the wall and it generates a whole new wifi network based off the one my guy upstairs is sending. I thought that might help since I'm downstairs going through the ceiling/walls and maybe I'd get less disconnects. It seemed to work, I even had a solid 3 hour Overwatch session with ObiOne where we went 2-0 in competitive play and I never got DC'ed, only had one major lag issue as I recall. So it creates my own personal wifi network that no one else has access to. It's pretty cool. I called it LaChupaCabraDX for some reason.
The extender has an ethernet port on it. I tried connecting it today... and everything seemed to go to shit. I suddenly was getting like 143 ping and less than 1 megabit/second download. It lasted like that for an hour or two then I stopped the ethernet and went back to the wifi and it was still really slow. Not sure what happened. That was like at 4-5pm when I don't think anyone was really home, it's possible the landlord was upstairs downloading or streaming not sure. I figured if I connected my laptop to ethernet into that range extender, it would be like essentially ethernet into the router and I'd see something closer to that 150mb/s. Anyone know why that's not happening? How does that ethernet port work? How does the signal go through the electrical outlet it's plugged into? Or is the range extender just creating a new signal, and then the ethernet is plugged into that signal which is weakened by being duplicated?
By the way, that slowless isn't so bad now. Not sure what changed from this afternoon, but now at 10:34pm it's better. I'm on the wifi again (the original network, not my range extender network) and I"m at 43ms ping with 5.2 Mbps.
I then went back to Ethernet. AWESOME! 14ms ping, 9.55 Mbps
Any suggestions on what I should be doing to optimize my internet connection? I realize the easiest thing would be if I could somehow ethernet through the ceiling into my landlords apartment and into the router itself but I'm not sure he'll do that. So what's the next best option? Range extender? Double router? Something else?