While we’re waiting for whatever our new normal will be, it’s a good guess you’ll need to beef up your network capability to handle more business, education and entertainment. At “Chez Rosenthal,” we’re taking hard-wired Wi-Fi outside to enjoy the summer. Our experience may fit your needs.

We’re doing it so that we can expand our internet coverage to our deck and part of our yard to accommodate four devices running simultaneously. As we all spend more time at home and the summer heat is not oppressive, it’s a good way to give everyone in the family more options. With smart TVs, you might consider it a good way to get a TV outside, and you’ll have no worries if you use an ethernet connection or have a network access point outside.

For my house, it was a fairly straightforward process, including drilling my own holes in my own house. We were able to run wire behind walls and under floors to get to the back of the house, and once we got outside, we put the wire inside some PVC pipe. Our only expenses were for the wire, the pipe and some connectors.

Getting more of a hybrid system of wired and wireless networking in your home may be a good solution. You’ll need a strong network if you find you’re still working from home and your kids are doing all or part of their classroom time and homework online. Whenever you can plug your device into a network node, you’ll get a stronger signal. And the closer you can be to a node, the stronger your signal will be. Getting a wired node outside the walls of your house eliminates the need for the signal to fight its way through the wall.

We have had more calls for help with networking as we’ve spent more time at home and are streaming more content. In older homes with thicker plaster walls, wiring is sometimes the best solution. The alternative is to place a series of nodes to get the signal to the farthermost places from your router or gateway, but it can fall short due to signal strength losses. In the case of a network in a two-story penthouse in an apartment building, we could only use a series of mesh units because we couldn’t go through the concrete and steel between the floors.

If you’re doing renovations or an addition to your existing home – or building a new home – we highly recommend hard wiring your network access points. Your electrician can do it at the same time they do the electrical wiring.

We can help you boost your network’s strength by recommending where to put hardwired connections and mesh nodes. We’re OK with drilling holes in our own walls but not in yours. Once the wiring is in, we can place the mesh nodes and configure everything for maximum network capability. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to talk about it.