I think that many of us are in the same boat with the reality of the layout of our homes. Definitely the description of a 2 story townhouse, is probably similiar to my challenge - a very narrow, long linked home, with a ton of walls.
The solution of the Google WIFI gives you a wireless mesh solution and can be easily expanded on.
Others have used a router in bridge mode in a better location.
In my home, one of the worst spots is right where the cable connection got put for the modem, against a sheet of drywall separating our office/basement rec room from the furnace room. The signal has to pass up through 3 feet of drywall, a steel support I beam, and a couch, with the furnace and lots of electrical behind that wall all causing interference. The best location, we now know would have been our living room on the first floor in the middle of the house, away from transmitting through a vertical wall, and no steel beams, and no electrical, but when we installed, we had wired connections throughout the house, no WIFI devices, and ever since we went WIFI, we have been struggling to find the best solution.
Currently my solution is a wired connection to a D-Link 1620 extender which can be a repeater on wireless or wired as I have done, turn off the 2.4 to avoid any further saturation on that frequency, and only unfortunate thing is that we have to switch our connections as we move around the home, but I named the WIFI SSID as west side from the router on 2.4 and 5.0 and from the repeater east side on 5.0 only to make it easier to know which network signal I should be on.
I have gone the bridged router route with improvements before 5.0 came along and before my 2.4 was totally saturated from my neighbours, then I went the router, with another router on the upper floor acting as an access point - basically the same as the 1620 does.
I looked at the Google WIFI solution that was on sale last week on black friday sales, but they were out of stock, and the repeater was also on sale for under 50.00, so I went that route. I am not fully satisfied, it is a compromise, but the reality of the layout of my home. I can't blame Rogers or Hitron for the reality of how WIFI signals work, and the architectural layout of my home. So I work the solutions.
Thanks for telling all of us what you did, it allows us all to become educated on how to work with the reality of the limitations of WIFI, interference, electrical structural walls and so forth.
Good luck with your solution.
Bruce
