From my understanding, the omni-directional antennas used in many wireless routers are designed to focus the transmission downwards, which is why many users are having problems with wireless at the upper floor while their wireless router is placed at the ground floor.

The best is to place the wireless router at the upper floor and it works well to cover almost the entire house (for a standard 2-storey terrace or semi-D).

I tested HomePlug on my kampung double-storey house with 3-phase.

Using Aztech HomePlug AV (200Mbps), it works across different phase, but the maximum speed is slightly reduced (checked on the software provided by Aztech). On same phase, subject to wire length & cable quality, usually can get around 160 to 180 Mbps while on different phases, the speed will be reduced to about 100 to 120 Mbps.

But that's more than enough for your 5Mbps UniFi (also 10 and 20Mbps).

If however you do face problems, suggest you call your electrician to reconfigure the distribution to put all sockets that you going to use HomePlug on the same phase.

this is an excellent and impt question but the answers are not straightforward, at least to me when i tried reading some articles.

the way i understand it, a typical wireless router dipole antenna transmits in a balloon form, a matter of how much the balloon is "squeezed ". read this for a quick understanding:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-cent...misconceptions/

if above is correct, the ideal place to place the router has to be right in the center of the house. but how often is that possible?! unifi comes in either from the ground flr front for newer houses or from the back upper for older ones. unless one spends own money to pull the cable elsewhere.

there have been all kinds of reports - some upper back says good, some say no good. some front lower says good, some say no good. and that's not surprising given all kinds of routers, their positions and amount of inference in each case.

so... given the constraints, i think one can only try these:

.. orig unifi router is surely weak - change to better one.
.. play around with the twin antennae ("squeeze the ballon"), see if a particular position is better for where u want wifi.
.. provide as much clear line of sight as possible to minimize distortion; wood, concrete do not matter; metal does.

i have replaced router at front grdflr, back upstairs still pretty good wifi, very acceptable, no need homeplug or wifi repeater. it was not the case with orig unifi router.

Paid RM400 to the installer today because he said I had to pay RM450 to TM because I had to install it on the 1st Floor of my house, so he could do it for cheaper. Did I get ripped off or is this normal?