I've been corresponding with a reader whose broadband modem's Wi-Fi doesn't reach the far ends of his house. He'd asked about Wi-Fi extenders, but I haven't found one that's worth a darn.

My recommendation for larger spaces is always a mesh Wi-Fi system like Eero or Orbi or Google Nest Wifi. These systems use multiple access points and have multiple radios inside to bounce the internet around to the far corners of your home.

How do you add them? The easiest way is to connect the main mesh access point to one of the Ethernet ports on the back of four existing modems. (My AT&T modem has four.)

There is one setting you have to think about before things will work properly. Each device on your home network is assigned a unique address called an IP address. This stands for Internet Protocol. It is this internal address that your network uses to route internet traffic to the right device.

Your broadband router is currently handing out those addresses. By default, your new mesh system will also want to do so. Having two routers handing out addresses is a bad thing. I chose to let the AT&T modem be the router, which means I have to go into the settings on my Eero router and put it into "bridge mode." Then I just finish setting up the new Wi-Fi network and start joining my devices to it.