Whole-Home WiFi: How to Eliminate Dead Spots in Your Home

The WiFi Problem Has Never Been Worse

Cast your mind back ten years: a household might have had a couple of laptops, a smartphone each, and a smart TV. One router in the study managed everything comfortably. Today, the average Australian home connects between 20 and 40 devices simultaneously — smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, soundbars, 4K streaming sticks, video doorbells, security cameras, smart speakers, robot vacuums, thermostats, and a growing fleet of smart lighting and blinds controllers.

Working from home has changed the stakes further. A video call that freezes mid-presentation, or a Teams meeting that drops out because a family member started a 4K stream in the next room, is no longer a minor inconvenience — it is a professional liability. Pair that with Canberra's notoriously dense housing stock and you have a recipe for frustration.

Dead spots — those pockets of the home where WiFi either doesn't reach or performs so poorly as to be useless — are one of the most common complaints we hear at Palmers TV. And in the vast majority of cases, the solution is not a faster internet plan. The problem is the internal network itself.

Why Dead Spots Exist in the First Place

Understanding why dead spots form is the first step to eliminating them permanently. There are five primary culprits.

Your ISP-supplied router is not designed for your home

The modem-router supplied by your NBN provider is engineered for cost, not performance. These devices typically broadcast from a single point with limited transmit power, basic antenna configurations, and no ability to manage dozens of simultaneous clients intelligently. Placed in a utility cupboard or behind a TV cabinet — as is common in Australian installs — the signal barely makes it to the next room.

Canberra's building materials are signal killers

Canberra was built for cold winters. Double-brick construction, poured concrete slabs, dense plasterboard, and steel framing are standard across suburbs from Woden to Belconnen and Gungahlin to Tuggeranong. Each material absorbs and deflects WiFi signals — particularly on the 5 GHz band, which offers the fastest speeds but the shortest range. A double-brick internal wall can reduce signal strength by 12–15 dB, effectively cutting usable throughput in half or worse.

Distance and interference

WiFi signal degrades exponentially with distance, not linearly. A router that delivers 600 Mbps at 3 metres may struggle to achieve 50 Mbps at 12 metres through two walls. Add channel congestion from neighbouring networks — particularly dense in Canberra's townhouse developments — and performance degrades further.

Too many devices on a single access point

Consumer routers are rated for a theoretical maximum device count that bears little resemblance to real-world performance. When 25 smart home devices and four streaming clients all associate with the same radio, each competes for airtime. The result is high latency, dropped packets, and buffering — even when signal strength looks fine on your phone's WiFi indicator.

Consumer Solutions — and Why They Fall Short

The consumer electronics industry has responded to the dead spot problem with a succession of products that promise whole-home coverage. Most deliver partial relief at best.

WiFi range extenders

A plug-in WiFi extender creates a second network by receiving your existing signal and rebroadcasting it. The fundamental problem: it can only rebroadcast what it receives, and it has to dedicate half its available bandwidth to that task. In practice, devices connected to the extender receive approximately 40–50% of the speed they would get from the main router — and that is assuming they are within the extender's range in the first place. They also create a separate SSID, meaning your phone will not automatically switch between them as you move around the house.

Consumer mesh systems

Systems like Eero, Deco, Google Nest WiFi, and the consumer tier of Orbi have genuinely improved WiFi for millions of households. In an open-plan home under 200 m² without thick walls, a quality three-pack can deliver excellent coverage. The limitations appear at scale: consumer mesh nodes communicate with each other wirelessly, and each wireless hop introduces latency and reduces throughput. In a large home requiring three or four hops, the device furthest from the gateway may receive a fraction of your NBN plan speed. These systems also lack the management tools to properly segment IoT devices, configure QoS, or generate the kind of heatmap data that reveals coverage gaps.

Powerline adaptors

Powerline networking runs ethernet-equivalent signals through your home's existing electrical wiring. In theory, this eliminates the need to run new cables. In practice, performance varies wildly depending on wiring age, circuit topology, and electrical interference from appliances. Powerline adaptors rarely achieve their rated speeds and can introduce latency that makes them unsuitable for video calls or gaming. They are a last resort, not a solution.

The common thread across all three approaches: they treat the symptom, not the cause. A professionally designed network addresses the root problem — the right hardware, in the right locations, connected via dedicated cabling.

The Professional Approach: Enterprise-Grade Networking for Homes

The same principles that govern enterprise IT infrastructure — centralised management, dedicated wired backhaul, strategic AP placement — apply equally well to ambitious residential installs. The technology has simply become more accessible and affordable.

Enterprise-grade access points

Ubiquiti's UniFi range brings genuine enterprise-grade radio technology to the residential market. UniFi access points use higher-quality radios, better antennas, and more sophisticated client management algorithms than any consumer device at a comparable price. Critically, they are designed to work together under a single management controller, enabling features like band steering (automatically directing clients to the optimal frequency), roaming (clients hand off between APs without dropping connections), and per-AP load balancing.

Structured cabling: Cat6 and Cat6A

The single most impactful upgrade in any professional network install is wired backhaul. Running Cat6 or Cat6A ethernet cable from each access point back to a central switch eliminates wireless congestion entirely and delivers symmetrical gigabit speeds to every AP. Cat6A is the recommended standard for new installs — its shielding and bandwidth headroom supports 10 Gbps and future-proofs the network for a decade or more.

PoE switches

Power over Ethernet switches supply both data and power through a single Cat6 cable, eliminating the need for a power point at each AP location. This dramatically simplifies installation — an AP can be ceiling-mounted in the centre of a room, exactly where coverage is optimal, without requiring an electrician to install a nearby power point.

VLAN segmentation for IoT

A professionally configured network separates traffic into virtual local area networks. Your primary devices — computers, phones, tablets — sit on a secure main network. Smart home devices and IoT gadgets are isolated on their own VLAN, preventing a compromised smart bulb or doorbell camera from accessing your banking laptop. A guest network provides internet access to visitors without exposing any internal resources. This is standard practice in enterprise networking and increasingly important as the number of IoT devices in the home grows.

Mesh WiFi vs Dedicated Access Points: Which Is Right for You?

The choice between a consumer mesh system and a dedicated access point infrastructure depends primarily on your home's size, construction, and how you use your network.

Ubiquiti UniFi occupies the sweet spot for most Canberra homes that have outgrown consumer products. It delivers genuine enterprise reliability and feature depth — including a clean centralised management interface — at a price point accessible to homeowners. For homes requiring four or more access points, a UniFi installation typically costs less than a premium consumer mesh system of equivalent capability, while dramatically outperforming it.

What a Professional WiFi Installation Actually Includes

When Palmers TV designs and installs a whole-home network, the process is methodical. Here is what is involved from first contact to completion.

Site survey and heat mapping

Before recommending any hardware, we conduct a physical site survey of your home. We assess building materials, existing cabling, the location of the NBN connection point, and any factors likely to affect coverage. For complex installs, we use heat mapping software to model signal propagation and determine the optimal number and placement of access points before a single cable is pulled.

Cable runs

We run Cat6 or Cat6A ethernet cable from a central network cabinet or patch panel to each AP location. In existing homes, we work through roof cavities, wall cavities, and sub-floor spaces to minimise visible cabling. All cable runs are labelled, tested, and documented.

AP mounting and configuration

Access points are ceiling-mounted for optimal omnidirectional coverage — typically in hallways, living areas, and above stairwells where they can serve multiple adjacent spaces. We configure the UniFi controller with your preferred SSIDs, set up band steering and fast roaming, and establish separate VLANs for IoT devices, guest access, and primary clients.

SSID setup, guest networks, and IoT segregation

You receive a single unified SSID for your primary devices — your phone connects to the same network name regardless of which AP it is associated with, and hands off seamlessly as you move through the house. A separate guest network provides internet-only access for visitors. IoT devices — smart TVs, cameras, speakers, smart plugs — are assigned to their own isolated network, improving both security and performance.

Testing and handover

We conduct a full walkthrough of the finished network, testing speeds from multiple locations and confirming coverage in every area of the home. You receive documentation of the network layout, login credentials, and a brief orientation on the UniFi management interface.

Investment Guide: What Does a Professional WiFi Install Cost?

Pricing depends on home size, construction complexity, number of access points, and any additional networking hardware required. The following ranges reflect typical Canberra installs completed by Palmers TV in 2026. All prices are in Australian dollars and include supply, installation, and configuration.

Frequently Asked Questions