Improving wi-fi performance with provided internet?

asus2016 · 12 Jun 2017

My daughter is in Disney's College Program, and living in Disney-provided housing, which includes Disney-provided cable.

Much like a college dorm though, the wi-fi is controlled by Disney, shared throughout the building (versus specific to the apartment), and horrible.

She has already contacted the housing people about improving this, but I am not optimistic that she will get a sustained improvement.

What are some easy (she's not an IT whiz by any means) and affordable (not making a ton of money) ways for her to improve the in-apartment wi-fi? Is it possible in such a situation to just provide their own modem and router to have their own wifi?

bro67 · 12 Jun 2017

The wifi is only as good as the owners have it available for use. All Dorm's at all colleges are going to have bad wifi signal and low speeds. Not much that she can do, but try a external USB Wifi adapter with a short USB extension cable. Most likely she will still have issues unless she is in a common space.

zbook · 12 Jun 2017

There is an option that does require a sizeable budget. She could use her smart phone as the data source. Most unlimited data plans are not unlimited for tethering. The current plan that I am using has unlimited data on the phone but limited when tethering. It is a backup plan that one should know about in case the router or modem fails and when privacy is important. (not being on public wifi)

bro67 · 13 Jun 2017

zbook said:

There is an option that does require a sizeable budget. She could use her smart phone as the data source. Most unlimited data plans are not unlimited for tethering. The current plan that I am using has unlimited data on the phone but limited when tethering. It is a backup plan that one should know about in case the router or modem fails and when privacy is important. (not being on public wifi)

The catch 22 with wifi is that because the Disney properties and those around it are so congested with users, she can still end up having issues. AT&T and VZ are about the best providers around the Disney properties. Personally I would go with Vz, since their wireless data packages are the best and coverage is going to be better than AT&T.