5 free Wi-Fi upgrades hiding in your closet, from old routers to spare PCs

Published Oct 15, 2026, 7:30 AM EDT Monica J. White is a journalist with over a decade of experience in covering technology. She built her first PC nearly 20 years ago, and she has since built and tested dozens of PCs. PC hardware is her main beat, and graphics cards and the GPU market at large are her main area of interest, but she has written thousands of articles covering everything related to PCs, laptops, handhelds, and peripherals. From GPUs and CPUs to headsets and software, Monica's always willing to geek out over all things related to computing. Outside of her work with How-To Geek, Monica contributes to TechRadar, PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, SlashGear, Whop, and Digital Trends, among others. Her ultimate goal is to make PC gaming and computing approachable and fun to any audience. Monica spends a lot of time elbow-deep in her PC case, as she's always making upgrades, testing something, or plotting out her next build. She's the go-to tech support person in her immediate circle, so she's never out of things to do. Whenever she has spare time, you'll find her gaming until the early hours and hanging out with her dog. Shopping for networking gear is an ... interesting experience, to put it mildly. You can spend $10 on an Ethernet adapter and get wild returns on your investment, but you can also throw away a good chunk of change on gear that's essentially a waste of your time and resources. The best upgrades are the ones that cost you nothing, though. You'll be surprised how much you can accomplish with things like an old router or a forgotten Ethernet cable. Turn your old router into a second access point One Ethernet cable can fix your Wi-Fi dead zones Credit: Andrew Heinzman / How-To Geek If you have an old router somewhere, you're sitting on a gold mine of ways you can improve your network. This is perhaps my number #1 favorite. You can turn your old, disappointing router into a second access point and extend your Wi-Fi coverage to parts of your home where the signal is even more disappointing than said router. Trust me, this solution beats a Wi-Fi extender in more ways than one, and it's not just that extenders are generally pretty meh; it's also that this is literally free, sitting in your house and collecting dust as we speak. I've talked about how one Ethernet cable can completely change your home networking plans, and this is the perfect example. All you need to do is connect it to your main router via Ethernet, preferably positioning it somewhere closer to your Wi-Fi dead zones. Many routers have a dedicated access point (AP) mode, but if yours doesn't, you can usually still configure it manually. Just disable DHCP and connect the routers through their LAN ports. That way, the Ethernet connection handles the backhaul, so you're not sacrificing wireless airtime to relay traffic between routers. Even really old Wi-Fi 5 routers can be useful here, so definitely try it out. Turn a spare Windows PC into a makeshift Wi-Fi hotspot Windows has a built-in feature that makes this easy Once it's time to bid farewell to an old PC, keeping it as a network helper may not be an obvious idea, but hey, if you're not selling it, why not? I think a lot of people overlook this one simply because old PCs often get turned into parts for new PCs (or get a new job entirely), but yes, your Windows PC can actually double as a Wi-Fi hotspot. And it doesn't have to be a desktop; a laptop works fine, too. They just need a Wi-Fi adapter. With that Wi-Fi adapter, you can share your internet connection with other devices, which is especially useful if the PC is connected to your router via Ethernet and sits somewhere with poor Wi-Fi coverage. This allows other devices to connect to your PC instead of that router far, far away. Better yet, Windows has this feature built right in. Just head to Settings > Network & internet > Mobile hotspot, select Ethernet under Share my internet connection from, and choose Wi-Fi under Share over. Set your network name and password, then enable the hotspot. Use your old smartphone to hunt down bad Wi-Fi coverage Stop guessing where your Wi-Fi signal drops off Well, this doesn't have to be your old smartphone. It can be literally any smartphone in your household. But yes, a smartphone can still help you figure out why your Wi-Fi sucks. A free app can save you from spending a lot of money on a new router. Grab your phone, install something like Wi-Fi Analyzer, and walk around your home to see where your Wi-Fi signal starts dropping off. These apps show signal strength in dBm, so you can see exactly how much weaker your connection gets as you move away from the router. For reference, -50 dBm is excellent, while -75 dBm is not that great. Once you know where the problem is, shove your router elsewhere and see if the dead zone is fixed. Give your existing mesh nodes a wired connection Ethernet backhaul can make a massive difference Mesh Wi-Fi systems are great for extending wireless coverage, but they're not free. Nor are they cheap. So, if you've already shelled out some of your hard-earned cash to get yourself one of these systems, make good use of it by not wasting time with wireless backhaul. This is how your mesh nodes communicate with the main router, and depending on your setup, it can eat into the bandwidth available to your devices. The last thing you want is your expensive mesh system actually making things worse. The fix, as is often the case, is simple: switch your mesh nodes over to Ethernet. Just connect the satellite node to your main router or a compatible switch, and it'll use Ethernet for backhaul instead of Wi-Fi. Put that forgotten Ethernet switch to work Fewer wireless devices means less competition for airtime If you've got an old Ethernet switch lying around, it's a good time to put it back to work. Wi-Fi is a shared medium, meaning all the devices connected to the same channel have to compete for airtime. The more traffic you've got flying around, the worse things can get, especially when multiple devices are doing stuff online. Moving some of that traffic onto Ethernet frees up wireless capacity for the devices that actually cannot function without Wi-Fi (or even are just more convenient when wireless). An old gigabit switch will do the trick here. Just connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable, then plug in devices that really benefit, such as your PC or your NAS. Fix the problem for free before you spend more money Networking gear can easily run into the hundreds of dollars. A good router will often cost $100-$600+, then there are switches, mesh systems, and all other types of networking-adjacent shenanigans. You can always buy things later, but if you have some old gear lying around, try that before anything else.