Why are your first two links just about buildings looking the same? I was thinking they'd spectrum visualizations per your lead-in which would be really fascinating to see...
probably not the best links, they're meant to be reference to a construction style of putting five wood framed floors on top of a concrete first level/foundation, called a "five over one". Then when the wood walls are divided up into 450 to 750 sq ft apartments, it's a LOT of individual 2.4 GHz APs all packed into a dense noisy space, with only wood between them.
I've got the opposite problem, a big old house with dense old pine shiplap full of nails covered with sheetrock. My wifi can't cover the house. Any recommendations for good router/APs with large range or maybe repeaters?
Probably better off with a mesh / repeater setup, a single super powerful router will still be sketchy at the edges as in that case the other device’s radio and signal strength also begin to play a role.
I’m angry because I just had a TP-Link (ax20) router go bad on me, so I’d just advise you to avoid that brand but do your research - maybe I just got bad luck :)
I do this in my own house w/powerline networking as the backhaul. Cable Modem is located at the main TV and connected to an Ethernet switch with local devices and powerline node. Three more power line nodes power two additional APs and an ethernet switch for wired connections in my home office.
It's not the most elegant solution, but it works and allows me to have Inet/WiFi access in and around my house.
Others have already suggested that your best bet is access points connected by copper.
Ethernet is the most obvious choice, but it might be a lot of hassle to run Ethernet through the walls or attic or basement and add outlets everywhere you need them.
If you don't mind visible cables, running along the top of walls can work. Here's part of the Ethernet cable that is connecting opposite ends of my house and also speaker cable for on of my rear channels [1]. Ugly, but since when I'm indoors I look down a lot more than I look up, I'm fine with it.
Powerline networking has also been mentioned.
One more alternative to consider is MoCA [2], which is an option if your house is wired for cable TV. The easiest way to think of MoCA is that it is like powerline networking except instead of running Ethernet over your power lines, it runs Ethernet over your cable TV lines. A typical MoCA adapter has two coax ports and one Ethernet port.
You hook up one MoCA adapter at your cable modem between the modem and the wall using the two coax ports on the adapter, and hook up the adapter's Ethernet port to an Ethernet port on the modem. (If you don't have cable internet, same instructions except you only need one of the coax ports on the adapter, and the Ethernet port gets hooked up to your DSL or fiber or Starlink or whatever modem).
Then anywhere else in the house that you want Ethernet and have a coax outlet you hook up another MoCA adapter to the outlet via one of the coax ports on the adapter. The MoCA adapters do their magic, and that Ethernet port is logically on the same Ethernet as your cable modem. You can use the other coax port on that adapter to hook up another coax device, like a cable TV box.
I want to love Ubiquiti and put their gear all over my house, I already have some long-range WiFi antennas from Ubiquiti, but my APs are all Linksys right now. However, the recent fiasco and managements apparent fail to even try to fix the issues at Ubiquiti makes me start looking for other gear instead... Worth keeping in mind.
Yeah the gear and software are very good but the management response to basically try to sweep the whole thing under the rug has really soured me on the company as a whole. You might as well just hand foreign intelligence the keys to your network.
