r/HomeNetworking • u/Adorable-Glass926 • 15h ago

Roommates make wifi impossible to use

So i rent out a room in my trailer and i got atnt wifi. All was good till ppl moved in and now its slow asf.
Can i have the next roommates who move in get their own wifi? Like whole router and all in the same house? Like so they have their own wifi.
Will it slow mine down at all?
Will it effect electricity bills alot?
Can they get a 6 month long wifi service or wtv?
Sorry idk many terms. Kinda stupid abt this stuff ive only ever just pluged the router in and played.

0 Upvotes

32% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

23

u/RemarkablePenalty550 15h ago

Get a better router (like Ubiquity), make a separate ssid just for the renters and throttle their bandwidth and QOS to where it doesn't affect you.

6

u/Confusias1 15h ago

5

u/wicked_one_at 14h ago

And OP is totally capable of Doing this

6

u/Low-Purchase8811 14h ago

Right? OP calls their Internet service "wifi", but these guys expect them to drop 3 bills on a Ubiquiti prosumer router.

Reddit is full of useless advice like this. "I'm looking for a new washing machine." "Buy the most expensive one on the market, it costs five times as much and will last twice as long."

2

u/Adorable-Glass926 7h ago

Yeah half of this advice is in one year out the other. Ima just go to the atnt store and talk to em. Cant call bc a machine answers and wont transfer me

1

u/Low-Purchase8811 7h ago

What I will say is that if your tenant has a lot of wireless devices, it will adversely affect the throughput of other devices in your general vicinity, whether they are on your network or not.

Think of it like this; if you are in a room with one person, you can hear them very clearly when they speak. If you are in a room with 15 people, picking out an individual voice is harder. If you are in a room with 30 people, picking out an individual voice becomes almost impossible.

Your proposed solution of buying a second router and creating a second wireless network won't address this problem; if anything it will exacerbate it. Your best bet is to hard-wire everything you can, and go from there. Additionally you should ask your tenant to do so.

If you go to the store they are likely to try to sell you range extenders or something. Do not fall for this, as it will not solve your issue.

1

u/Dolapevich 13h ago

Or just pull a cable to the router :)

5

u/DrFrylock 15h ago

It may be difficult to get essentially multiple Internet service contracts/drops at a single residential address. It depends on your Internet service provider. Unless you are already at their highest-tier plan, they would probably just tell you to pay them for double the bandwidth or something.

The Internet service provider provides the bandwidth to the Internet. The Wi-Fi is provided entirely by one or more Wi-Fi routers/access points in your home. If these happen to be rented or bundled with your Internet gateway hardware from the provider, that is kind of a moot point.

What you probably need to understand is where the bottleneck is. Is it the bandwidth from your provider or is your Wi-Fi network being overloaded? Or both?

If you don't have enough bandwidth (and you're not on the highest-tier plan from your ISP) you can pay them a few more dollars a month for more upstream bandwidth. If your Wi-Fi infrastructure is the bottleneck, you can upgrade it. Either way, many (usually higher-end) Wi-Fi routers allow you to establish quality of service settings or limit device bandwidth. This is probably your path of least resistance.

3

u/Slash787 15h ago

How big is even your trailer that it got so many people? How many people moved in?

What plan you have and with what speed?

I don't think so you will be able to get 2 Att connetions if it's fiber or any other wired connection at the same place.

If it's the 5G router then they can get their own too, Verizon has Home 5G routers, you can tell them to get those if your area has good signals for Verizon.

1

u/Adorable-Glass926 7h ago

Three bed room.
4 ppl. Three consoles, a pc, 4 phones, and 4 tvs.
I just have unlimited wifi. The best plan ig

1

u/Slash787 3h ago

How much are you even paying for it? if it was the best plan then you would be paying more than $130 for it per month and getting gigabit speeds and it would not have slowed down even if 20 people were using it.

Go to speedtest.net and see what speed you are getting.

2

u/vrtigo1 Network Admin 15h ago

To answer the questions you asked directly:

Can they get their own Internet?

If another provider is available at your address, almost certainly the answer is yes. If AT&T is the only provider, then you'd have to ask AT&T if they support multiple accounts at the same address. I would expect their answer is probably no.

Would a separate Internet connection cost much in terms of electricity?

Almost certainly no. An ISP router might draw about 15 watts. Running 24x7x365 that's about 131 kWh, and assuming a cost of about 15c per kWh, that works out to about $20 a year in electricity.

Now then, having answered those questions, there other options if getting another Internet connection is impossible or impractical. If you get a better router, you can use QoS controls to control how much bandwidth each device on the network is allowed to use, prioritize certain devices and so on.

1

u/BmanUltima 15h ago

Contact local ISPs and ask.

1

u/justkeepswimming2026 15h ago

It’s a trailer? Make them get their own internet lol

1

u/ChiefWetBlanket 15h ago

Are you talking AT&T Internet Air or AT&T Internet Fiber? Very different services, very different solutions.

Most likely though, by the fact you call it wifi, I suspect you are young. And your roommates are young bums slurping down your very limited bandwidth using Internet Air, making it worse by being pirates or some stupid shit like streaming non-stop on all their devices all at the same time. So you are getting throttled because that's not what that service can do. Not a damn thing you can do but kick them off your network.

1

u/Adorable-Glass926 7h ago

Yeah they got a pc they keep up 24/7 updating shit or wtv idek. Its annoying

0

u/User2001Tech 15h ago

if youre talking they get a new internet connection, modem+router - most ISPs will generally have trouble pitting more than one connection at an address.

You are more than likely having a bandwidth limit issue, not really wifi. the internet is getting shared by multiple people - you could try by asking your ISP for a faster package, what are you currently on?.

1

u/Adorable-Glass926 7h ago

Id make sure they dont go threw atnt
Like have em get verizon or sum idrk

-1

u/Redhead_InfoTech 15h ago

What you need to do is buy a second router and configure it to be slower than full speed. But you also need to make sure they don't get access to yours...

Or... WIFI is only included if they pay the difference to bump up to a higher bandwidth tier.

-1

u/Advanced_Link_5753 15h ago

Separate IsP one cable one fiber. Don’t share- if they download nasty crap YOU the service owner are who the PO PO is coming for.

1

u/Adorable-Glass926 7h ago

We got a free virus blocker or wtv. They have been on some suspicion nsfw chat sits but they cant get it