At my wits end; PLEASE HELP!

[KevinG94]

Alright, I want to make this as detailed as possible so I can get the best advice.
The Problem:
The wireless range in my house is terrible, atrocious, appalling, or any other word for "bad" you can think of.
The House:
My house is a 2,800ft^2 (260m^2) split level. I've included a picture of the layout that's on my tax assessment. The red dot is where my router and modem are, in the front office. The green dot is where my sons room is on the second floor, where the wifi is slowest/non-existent.

The Devices:
At any point these may be connected to my network:
x1 desktop PC connected by ethernet
x4 laptop PC's on wifi
x1 Xbox One on wifi
x2 Xbox 360's, 1 on ethernet, 1 on wifi
x2 iPads
x3 iPhone 5S
x2 Androids (GS4 and Droid 4)
The Journey thus Far:
I have Xfinity (Comcast) and had the Technicolor 3 in 1 modem, router, and phone unit and besides having terrible range and speed it didn't allow me or my wife to connect to our employers over VPN. This is a known problem with the unit and others at work have had the same issue. I read some reviews online and ended up buying my own modem, an Arris TM822G. Whether directly connected to the modem or through my routers, VPN works now, problem solved. I have an Airport Extreme 5th Gen that I used with my previous ISP and it worked relatively well even with the slow (15Mbs) package I had. The problem areas of my house are the basement, where there's no signal and my sons' rooms on the opposite end of the house relative to the router. I put a NetGear 2.4Ghz range extender upstairs between their rooms and that seemed to help slightly. For reasons that I cannot explain my previous ISP with 15Mbs got the same speeds in their rooms as my new ISP with ~120Mbs. Same router, same range extender, but slower speeds. However, run speed tests near the office and you get between 80-100Mbs. I went to BestBuy and the salesperson talked me into getting a Linksys AC1200+ E6350 which he claimed had much better range and speed than my AirPort. Hooked it up and while the speeds seem better (especially on the 5Ghz AC) the range seems worse. The 5G network doesn't even make it into my living room and the 2.4 on the extender is slower still upstairs. I'm at a loss and realize local sales people at electronics stores are little to no help.
Potential Solutions:
After searching for any information on home networking and confusing myself further I stumbled upon SNB and thank God I did. I found the charts really helpful even though I won't claim to understand all the different metrics. I think the charts comparing the 2.4 and 5Ghz downlink at location F is the most relevant for finding a router with the range to reach my sons' rooms. Also, the router ranker set for "wireless range" is interesting. From looking at these I'm considering the Linksys AC2400 E8350, Asus Dark Knight N900 RT-N66U, or the NetGear NightHawk R700. I'm slightly confused by the fact the Asus has the best range on the charts despite just being an "N" router while the others are "AC".
Conclusion:
So what are your thoughts? Do I get a "stronger" router likes the ones I listed above? Any other router suggestions? Should I get one of these directional antennas I've read about but admittedly have no clue where to start in regards to which one or how compatible they are with specific routers? What about router and extender combinations that are more effective than my current setup. I honestly don't know and am just seeking any advice I can get. Money is no object in this case, I just want to get this taken care of and not have to listen to my kids complain about slow internet. I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this and I appreciate any feedback anyone might have. I'll include a screenshot of inSSIDer that I've had up while I wrote this. My 2 networks are "Home Wilshire" and "Home Wilshire_EXT". Unfortunately my laptop is 2.4Ghz only so I don't know what the 5G looks like around here. I'm sitting in my living room right where the "19'" is in the above photo and the _EXT network is coming from the upstairs extender around where it says "22'". Again, thanks for taking the time to read this, I know on other forums this might be TL;DR but this is my first post here haha.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
In general pactical terms your location of router is not ideal for best of coverage. For better coverage router has to be
higher up central location of perimeter as possible as you can. If you can locate it upstairs room behind garage, that'd
be better. If relocating router is too difficult then you may need one or two AP set up or may be power line
adapters?. Whatever you choose it is time consuming to find best possible result to make every one happy but it's all worth while giving you practical experience. My house is 2 story, about same size as yours. Luckily my house is
almost square in shape like solarium type with lots of open space. Router is located on top floor loft, which gives
useable signal all the way down to basement, around house outside. So one router is enough for me. Good luck
and have fun.

 

[KevinG94]

Thanks for the input. I knew the position of the router was far less than ideal but I'm kind of stuck by wiring layout and the fact the office desktop needs ethernet. I'm considering putting the router or an AP above the ceiling tiles in the basement around where the 2 "11 foot" notations are. It'd probably be a weekend project getting electrical up to it and I'd be opening a new can of worms with a wireless card for the desktop. I'm starting to believe its the best solution however.

 

[netwrks]

Be careful what routers you put in ceilings, some run a bit hot.. In respect to networking products, I do run two NG R7000's, as I like their range, (they easily support iOS and Intel Wireless clients, if correctly configured) but ASUS also makes decent hardware. Make sure you pick routers with external antennae's.

Do not use range extenders, they will ultimately disappoint. If it was my house,
I would put one in the general vicinity of your office, as "the router" and, the other, as an AP, around the middle of the 22' wall. If money is no object, have a CAT6 cable run between the router and AP, but leave yourself some (cable) wiggle room, if you need to move the AP. Get both WIFI networking devices up in the air, (as close to) but not in the ceiling. Also, run CAT6 between the TM822G and your router.

 

[flowrider]

If you can't run wire why not look into powerline adapters then connecting those to some access points?

 

[Pierino]

I tried the ea6350 for 1 day. It was horrible. Get either an asus rt-ac68u/r, rt-n66u/r, rt-ac66u/r or a Netgear r7000.
You'll be much happier with the range on those. I've had/have all of the those.

 

[thiggins]

First, thanks for using the Chart feature that lets you look at different measurement points. I recommend using the 2.4 / 5 GHz "Profile" plots; the A-F plots data points are extracted from the "profile" plots for backward compatibility with products tested with older open air testing.

You can't accurately compare products tested with different test techniques. The ASUS RT-N66U was tested with the first Octoscope chamber method, which had less pass loss. In other words, products tested with the "black bar" test method will appear to have better range, while they don't neccessarily *have*better range. That's why the Ranker only ranks products within test method.

Now, to your question, as OPs have suggested, I'd try a pair of Homeplug AV2 class adapters. Use the Powerline charts /rankers to explore products.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/powerline/view

You can use them between the modem output and router WAN input to move the router. Move it to a central point on the center level.

Or between a router LAN port and a second router converted to AP (or router that has an AP mode) instead of the range extender. If the range extender has an Ethernet port you can probably use it as a second AP. More info about setting up a multi-AP network is here
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basi...best-way-to-get-whole-house-wireless-coverage

 

[sfx2000]

HomePlugs are a good way to extend Ethernet to adjacent AP's - but getting back to the original post - WiFi is always about Location...

No matter how much money one puts into things, so consider a mix of HomePlugs perhaps and finding a better location - preferably central to where people actually use wireless...