how to get more then 2 bars on my home internet gateway?

Mckinley wrote:

We just got a new home internet gateway and I can't get it over 2 bars in 5 different places I have tried putting it in the house.  ¿Estoy haciendo algo mal? Because I'm doing what it's telling me to do 

Two bars is often sufficient for a person to get the best speeds available at their house. Within those two bars, there can be some variation in speeds you get at various two-bar locations though, so that is why you should restart the gateway via the button on the side for each location you try, including rotating the gateway a few inches and thinking of that as a new position, to try for the fastest speed range you can get.

I understand that while the following is a method which can't be done by some apartment dwellers, but the first thing I did was to take the gateway outside (I have a portable power supply but you can also use an extension cord) to see if there was anywhere in my yard where I could get three bars instead of two. You can also try it on a balcony or patio. So, free of obstructions of the  house walls and outside, I was able to get three bars. So that way you can tell if three bars is possible anywhere. Of course, you can't leave the gateway outside. The attic or second floor should be tried, if you have those.

But in my house, I was only able to get three bars in one place -- in the window facing the tower and with the gateway rotated in a certain way, and that is how I found the single position in the house that is best for the gateway.

Use the GUI at: 192.168.12.1

As Bond mentioned, the GUI is better than the app and you can put that number in the URL of any browser. Click on Status and Overview on the left, and the dropdown arrows near the two bands, Primary and Secondary. You're looking for a location for the gateway where you can get the highest figures on many of those parameters, so on RSRP, keep  in mind -98 is higher than -110. You also want to find a location where you can get two bands, and not just the Primary alone.

I’ve had the gateway for over three months and although I found the window location on the second day, weeks later I refined it to a certain rotation and elevation (a foot higher) in the window where  I always get three bars on the Primary and Secondary bands and the signal never drops to two bars on either the Primary or Secondary.

Although number of bars is usually correlated with speed, there are other factors, too, and some people with 4 or 5-bar signals get speeds below 20, while people with 2 bars can get over 200.