I have three computers at home. My wife has one, my daughter has another one and I have one as well.
Two are on the top floor (I live in a ranch) and one in the basement in my office. Xfinity offers the Xfi, but I was told there are very good cable modems/routers that are better. Any suggestions are very helpful. Currently I have the Netgear Nighthawk S8000 hub and the XFi
Depends on your budget. If you are looking forward to high streaming/gaming, try [ASUS TUF Gaming WiFi 6 Router (TUF-AX5400). If you have a moderate budget, then try the NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR500
can you hardwire your PC to the router?
Unfortunately, not directly. I have the router upstairs, and my PC is in the basement. I used a 50ft CAT 6 cable to get it to the router.
You can have a wireless router downstairs and still get good signal as long as it is almost directly over the modem upstairs. Otherwise, it’s best for you to get a hub. Since you already have a hole (assuming you did drill a hole), and run that cable downstairs to a hub. Have at least three to four ports if you have other devices that need wired access.
Wireless is getting better but there’s always that connectivity issue with them. If you can run cat 6 to your PC your gaming connection should never drop.
There’s wireless extenders you can buy that can help as well though I don’t know how well they are for gaming.
oh so it is already connected by a wire to the router? then you should be good. if aesthetic is a problem then you can the cable between the walls to the basement
or you can check out mesh routers. the good ones are expensive though
Any mesh router suggestions?
I’ve been wanting to get my house hardwired eventually but that’s a bit more involved than I’ve had time for, so in the meantime I’ve been using a Nighthawk AX6600 router and it’s been solid. Covers a ~1900sqft two story house easily without need for mesh, and has had somewhere in the ballpark of 15-20 devices hooked up to it without issue. For general use it’s been indistinguishable from hardwired, and copies between devices equipped with Wifi 6 hardware are fast enough that I’m not missing hardwired too much.
I might be buying MoCA adapters to repurpose the coax in the house for hardwired connections on the devices that need it most, but those suckers are expensive.
since you already have a netgear, check out the Netgear Orbi systems
edit:
right now i’m using the Vilo mesh routers… 3 for 80 bucks. not the fastest but still faster than the internet connection at home