Thanks for the responses, guys, I'll cogitate.
I debated about going to a mesh network but I have a lot invested in my current wireless system and a mesh actually degrades network performance (more overhead). Yes, less than signal dropouts! But still... I have a 1900ARC router, switch, cable modem, range extender, several media bridges, a few powerline units, high-gain antennae on the router and range extender, bunch of local network adapters for the PCs in our house (seven!), etc. Our floorplan is open and the media room is below the kitchen where there are very few places to put the range extender. I also have another media bridge to a backup drive stack on the other side of the basement and I cannot move either that or the media room. That said I may try moving the extender across the kitchen, again. I did move it around quite a bit when I first got it, several years ago, but left it where it seemed to provide the best compromise of performance and location at the time (kitchen is wife's domain). Having the wife unplug it to plug in a mixer to make a cake can be frustrating...
The only streaming I do is with SONOS from my NAS. I kept adding things to the network (including those pricey high-gain antennae), moving this and that, and so forth hoping for a solution. I have not tried phone apps but do have Linksys' own and a couple of other signal monitoring apps on my notebook so I have tweaked component placement and antenna orientations to optimize the signal (I have been fighting this for about 7-8 years now). I should just bring home a spectrum analyzer from work but am leery of signing the chit for a $250k piece of equipment for the weekend... I go in bursts or little impulse functions of working on it: live with it a while, get a few days to sit and actually enjoy some music instead of watching TV or movies, have a glitch in the datastream so waste a few hours trying this and that, before giving up in frustration and deciding that
Beverly Hillbilly's reruns really ain't so bad after all.
We also had to pick up a cell booster for our home since we are in a dead zone (near the top of a ridge but apparently out of line-of-sight for Verizon). It also has to live in the upstairs office, connected to the router. Coverage to the first floor is "OK" but again a little spotty to the basement, but better than without it.
Probably be better if I could move the whole router/switch/NAS/cell booster to the first floor but I don't have a good place for it. Tempted to clear out the hall closet and stick the mess in there, but it'd probably cook itself, and I'd have to plumb cable in there somehow.
The good news is we know it would be hard for a hacker to snoop our network.
Maybe... With my luck, that upstairs router is blasting all over and providing great coverage for all the neighborhood
except my media room.
Sorry for all the whining and thread divergence, just venting and not feeling well yet (bad cold), and really thinking the right answer for this is a local drive and interface, maybe a little dedicated server. But, my new LG TV and Oppo both have network connectivity, so the demands seem to be going up, not down, in my little room.
