Where to put your router: 7 rules that matter
Router placement changes your WiFi more than any setting. The physics of walls, mirrors and metal cabinets, plus where to put a router in a Malaysian terrace or condo.
You can spend RM800 on a router and get worse WiFi than a RM200 one in the right spot. Radio does not care about price; it cares about distance, walls, and what is between the antenna and your phone.
This is the cheapest, fastest improvement available to almost every household, and it takes fifteen minutes.
What walls actually cost you
Signal loss is measured in decibels, and roughly every 3 dB halves the remaining power. Indicative losses at 5 GHz:
| Material | Typical loss | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Drywall / partition | 2–4 dB | Barely noticeable |
| Brick wall | 6–10 dB | One bar down, speed drops |
| Concrete wall, 100–150 mm | 12–20 dB | Often unusable at 5 GHz |
| Concrete with steel mesh / rebar | 20–30 dB | Effectively blocks 5 GHz |
| Mirror or glass with metallic film | 10–20 dB | One "innocent" mirror can kill a room |
| Metal cabinet, fridge, water tank | 20 dB+ | Blocks almost everything |
Two concrete walls between router and bedroom is why the bedroom is dead, no matter what the box promises. Water is the other silent killer: a bathroom wall with pipes, an aquarium, or a full water tank above the ceiling.
The seven rules
- Central, not convenient. Put the router as close to the middle of the space you want covered as the fibre point allows. A router in the front corner of a terrace loses half its coverage to the street and the back of the house.
- Height, and out in the open. 1.2–1.8 m on an open shelf. Not on the floor, not behind the TV, not inside the TV cabinet, not under a stack of books.
- Away from metal and water. Fridge, microwave, metal shelving, mirrors, fish tanks, water heaters. Half a metre of separation already helps; a metre is better.
- Antennas vertical for one floor, angled for two. With one floor, keep antennas upright. For two floors, angle one antenna horizontally so the signal pattern spreads vertically — or better, add a node upstairs.
- Do not point it at the street. A window facing the road is a signal leak. If the fibre point is by the front window, moving the router even two metres inward usually gains more than any setting.
- Keep the microwave and 2.4 GHz cordless phones away. A running microwave leaks exactly into 2.4 GHz. That "internet dies at dinner time" complaint is often a microwave and a router on the same shelf.
- Wired beats wireless for the backhaul. If you can run one LAN cable to the far end of the house, a cheap access point there will outperform an expensive mesh kit.
Double-storey terraces and condos
Terrace, two floors. Put the router on the ground floor near the staircase, then run one cable upstairs to an access point on the landing ceiling. Concrete floor slabs are usually the single biggest loss in the house; going through the stairwell void is much better than through the slab.
Condominium. The fibre point is often in the living room next to the TV and a mirror wall — the two worst neighbours for a router. Move it out of the cabinet, off the floor, and away from the mirror. If the unit is long, a single node in the corridor between bedrooms is usually enough.
Shoplot or office. Ceiling-mounted access points in the corridor, not a router in the manager's room. Metal racks and glass partitions do the damage.
What placement will not fix
If the wired speed is also slow, placement is not your problem — read why your WiFi is slow at night first. If coverage fails at one specific end of the house even after moving the router, you need a second radio, not a better one: see mesh vs extender vs powerline.
The test that settles it: stand where the WiFi is worst, and check whether the signal drops by more than about 20 dB compared to standing next to the router. If it does, you have a physical obstruction problem, and moving furniture is cheaper than any subscription upgrade.