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Whats the best way to boost home wifi (talk talk) so that it will get a better reception in teh extension, furthest point from router, so that a secon TV can be used for streaming tv etc?
thanks
No expert but had the same problem, router at the front of the house & no WiFi in the workshop. Bought a Tenda Nova MW6 mesh kit (as recommended on here) Easy to set up & works perfectly
Exactly the same here as the Hoff. Word for word.
Mesh is what you need. Been a few threads on here over recent months and all come up with the same recommendation. I’ve recently put in BT mesh and wish I’d done it earlier.
Yep Mesh system! As previously recommended to me on here.
Similar to above, recently stumped up for BT Homehub discs and wished I’d done it sooner. Internet works throughout house now including streaming TV, Zwift etc.
Another vote for bt discs. Cheap, work with every net setup
BT homehub and mesh disks over here too. They just work really well, even down end of garden in shed.
I'm not an expert but I was under the impression mesh only helps if you can sort of 'stepping stone' the nodes between your router and the location you want to improve. In our case the router was already sitting at the closest point so we just got a booster instead.
I asked this question a few weeks back and was advised to invest in a Mesh set up. I bought a, Which? Best Buy, Linksys Velop 6600 system and it has worked a treat. Mrs can do MS Teams calls while the wean's streaming Youtube videos. It never drops out and there are no blank spots. Well worth the outlay.
Bought a Tenda Nova MW6 mesh kit (as recommended on here)
By whom?
I bought a Tenda MW12 system. It was canine excrement, I sent it back.
TP Link Deco
Easy to setup, good app, great wifi performance, easy to add more discs, you can also plug components directly into them via cat5 (hifi streamer, TV etc.)
I opted for a 3 pack of Tenda MW5c which whilst being on the cheap end has been great. I would probably opt for something inherently faster / more powerful if I was trying to cover a bigger area but I'm in a pretty small flat, just with thick walls so I figured I'd be better off with more hubs, spaced close together to 'stepping stone' through as mentioned above.
I used an old router reconfigured as an Access Point, but I do have a network cable running from the main router to the point where I needed the AP. If you don't, then Mesh is where it's at
TP link Deco here. Works perfectly through solid stone walls (interior ones) in our house. Perfect wifi everywhere and it lets me manage them easily - wireless and wired connections. Love it.
I bought 3 BT Whole Home discs off someone on here, really really good.
I gave those to my mum and bought a set of 4 mini-discs from BT for myself and the signal is nowhere near as good, even with the 4th.
I’m not an expert but I was under the impression mesh only helps if you can sort of ‘stepping stone’ the nodes between your router and the location you want to improve. In our case the router was already sitting at the closest point so we just got a booster instead.
I do not think this is the case - I could be sat next to our router (a Virgin SuperHub) and could get >100mbps one minute and 10mbps the next and the speed would be up and down all the time. I plugged in a cat5 cable directly and monitored it and as a modem it was consistently getting the >100mbps speeds so I got the TP-Link Deco (connected to the SuperHub now running simply as a modem) and we now get consistent and reliable >100mbps speeds throughout the house irrespective of how many devices are connected (and it was the same throughout lockdown with four of us concurrently connected).
By whom? I bought a Tenda MW12 system. It was canine excrement, I sent it back
.
I've got a Tenda (I think MW6 too) setup which works really well. 200mbps out of the router when I'm standing over it but the speed drops off pretty quickly as you move away. The mesh gives a consistent ('only' 80-90mbps) speed all over the small but lead lined house, and still gives 30mbps at the top of the garden.
We're quite close to splashing out on a mesh system too. We've got a TP Link extender currently, but there seems to be some issue with the signal from the router reaching it - I keep getting a "no internet" error, despite having all the bars on my ipad, and as it has a strong signal from the extender, it won't switch to the router. It's also very marginal reaching the conservatory.
I notice most of the mesh systems have some app associated with them. Is there something that's simple plug and play that just makes good wifi everywhere without additional ****ery? I don't need parental controls, we very rarely have guests, etc.
I need to make 3 mobile devices and a printer work across 3 floors/4 bedrooms (the 2 PCs are cabled), out into the garden and ideally into the cellar. Feels like 3 widgets would be right? One connected to the router on the top floor, one on the 1st floor landing, one in the kitchen on the cabinets. They'll all be within 10' of each other as the crow flies and nowhere in the house will be more than 20' away from one.
I’ve got a Tenda (I think MW6 too) setup which works really well.
I could stand inches from a node and the app would go "what network?" and show all three nodes in red.
It routinely went "connected, no Internet." When it claimed to have no Internet, existing connections still worked; eg, I could be on a Teams call and it carried on working fine, I just no longer had web access. Disconnect and reconnect to the Wi-Fi and all it worked again instantly.
The only DHCP configuration it gave was to change the third octet of the subnet. Forget reserving addresses or having space to set statics, so the printer changes addresses and I've to remove and re-add it to every client in the house. "Off" was not an option it offered even, so I couldn't replace the lack of functionality with a RPi.
Rubbish. And for a flagship product, shocking rubbish.
Is there something that’s simple plug and play that just makes good wifi everywhere without additional ****ery
Bt whole home. Your router is still the router, the disks just replace the WiFi. There is an app but I think it's all accessible from the web interface. Just set the WiFi name and pw and be done. I advised my 70 year old mum to get a set and she configured it by herself without calling me
Foe me it ended up being the Google mesh system. never had a problem since installing, and everything before it was pants
Is there something that’s simple plug and play that just makes good wifi everywhere without additional ****ery
Same as johnjn2000, I went with Google Mesh and it's about as close to plug-n-play as you can get. It's made a huge difference, very happy with it.
Another vote for the TP Link Deco's here. Plus I really like the fact that at night the hubs have no light them so perfect for bedrooms etc.
Another TP Link Deco mesh user, 5G router has pretty poor wifi, went from dodgy signal in one of the upstairs bedrooms and the kitchen, and no signal in the garden right by the house, to 80mbps right down the other end of a pretty big garden. Literally get full wifi signal everywhere in the house (and beyond) now.
Which TP Link Deco stuff are people using? There seems to be tonnes of (well, you know, a few) different ones
Is this kit any good?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07RXLF5XZ/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_3?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
TP Link Deco - +1 for this one.
The only DHCP configuration it gave was to change the third octet of the subnet. Forget reserving addresses or having space to set statics, so the printer changes addresses and I’ve to remove and re-add it to every client in the house. “Off” was not an option it offered even, so I couldn’t replace the lack of functionality with a RPi.
I lack the technical knowledge to know if this is a genuine criticism of the hardware or just a really modern poem.
What's your home broadband speed? And is it likely to increase any time soon?
And how big is the house? Don't underestimate the power of these things, I'm in a decent sized 3 bed with a good sized garden and 2 decos do perfectly fine.
Another TP Link Deco M5 here. Awesome! Simple to setup and consistently good WIFI right around the house and into the garden. 3 units in a 4 bed detached, 2 downstairs and 1 upstairs.
Whats the difference between a Deco E4 and a Deco M5?
Apart from the M5 being £50 more and the size of the units?
And the TP Link stuff has a great / easy to use app (I am sure other makes do too). I have assigned my kids' devices to their own usernames on the app and I can simply switch off the wifi to their specific devices from my phone, ie, if Kid A is playing up I can switch off their wifi access but Kid B and the rest of the house still has wifi. I can also set filtering, time controls etc as well as get an overview of what sites they have visited/block access to specific sites etc.
I have to say, as good as the reports are of the units themselves from folks here, the TPLink website sets a gold-standard in bafflement...
It's basically this:
I lack the technical knowledge to know if this is a genuine criticism of the hardware or just a really modern poem.
Right, so, assuming I'm thick and the TP-Link site is no help...
We have a stone-built cottage, all the walls are, well, thick stone. Router is in the sitting room, on a windowsill which is at the back of the house, and the WiFi struggles to get from there to the front of the house due to configuration of said walls and the doors through them (which is, I assume, the only way the WiFi can get through). The room above the sitting room is fine (I assume it gets through the floor), the front bedroom is, again, iffy.
To add complication, there's also a separate annex where we work, which is c15ft across the yard from the back of the house, but conveniently the windowsill the router is on looks directly out at it.
So, I think I need four mesh nodes, one by the router, one at the front of the house downstairs, one on the landing, and one in the annex. Does that seem right?
If so, I assume I can just buy two of these sets?
Purleeeeeeeaase.....?
What's your actual Internet speed?
I highly doubt you'll need 4, I'd start with 2 and you can add an extra one if you need more coverage.
The one next to the router will more than cover the 15ft to the annex. And then one at the front of the house will cover upstairs and downstairs there.
The levels of spec goes like this:
Cheapest model will have 10/100 ethernet ports so you'll be physically limited to around 70mbps max speed.
Next models up with have gigabit ports but all traffic will go though the same wireless (backhaul - ie the data being sent between nodes) and the wireless to your phone etc, which will reduce speed of you've got a lot of devices.
Next level up with have a dedicated WiFi backhaul chip which separates the background data transfer and the data going to devices.
Unless you have 200mbps broadband I'd get these
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9180581
Also check if your router has a setting for bridge mode or similar, makes things a lot easier.
Thanks
What’s your actual Internet speed?
A whole 12, and no, there's no zero missing off the end there, of your interweb megawotsits. FTTC, but the cabinet is the best part of two miles away.
The one next to the router will more than cover the 15ft to the annex.
Yeah, the problem isn't so much distance, but really thick stone walls (which the annex also has). The WiFi from the existing router already reaches in, but only very just, my thinking was it would need a boost from within the annex itself?
Unless you have 200mbps broadband I’d get these
Any particular reason? Aesthetically, and for an extra tenner, I think MrsIHN would prefer the M5s
Also check if your router has a setting for bridge mode or similar, makes things a lot easier.
Er, again, talk to me like I'm thick...
Posts about Wifi always remind me of this thread which should never be forgotten and is STW at its finest. Sorry OP this may not actually help you fix your problem.
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/improving-wife-signal-in-house/
I personally wouldn't cripple a wifi network due to it needing to only accommodate low broadband speed. If you're doing anything at all more interesting than accessing the internet from a couple of devices then a solid network to allow things to talk to each other is very desirable (I'm thinking along the lines any kind of computer to computer file transfer, network storage, smarthome stuff, sonos/airplay type audio, Sky multiscreen, etc etc....). While some of those things need minimal bandwidth, I'm sure having a dedicated back haul does wonders for latency - which is what will make everything feel "fast".
A single (dual) pack of the m5 will be more than fine then, you won't need anything super duper for that speed. 200mbps was an just a number, was more if you have really fast broadband as the mid spec models will hit thier limit at 100-150mbps.
Don't underestimate the power of these things - your broadband router, if it came free with the broadband, is probably worth a few quid and has to do a lot of jobs and have the hardware for all this in the small box, whereas these mesh devices have one job.
If (and it's a big if) you need an extra, it's literally 3 clicks on the app to add an extra node. I'm confident you won't though.
Wicked, thanks. And the bridge mode thing?
We had rubbish wi-fi, ended up running an outdoor cable around the house and into the dining room to create a wired point for working from home. Then ran a switch to allow both a wifi extender and laptops to run off it. Also used power-line adapters as the tv box needs a wired connection for some reason.
Turns out it's just the provided router is rubbish (virgin superhub 3).
Got a Netgear Nighthawk a couple of weeks ago as Virgin kindly upgraded us to 500mb broadband and I decided their router couldn't handle the volume of connected devices.
Turns out I should have done it earlier as the dead-spots in the house are now seeing upwards of 100mb and connectivity is much more stable in general, not to mention having a device which handles modern life better (no need to split wi-fi bands to get stuff to work).
Can get a mesh extender to add to the new router if I need it at any point, but things are going great so far.
Wicked, thanks. And the bridge mode thing?
It'll be a setting in your routers settings, basically allows the Deco mesh to act as your router and to handle assigning ip addresses plus quality of service, speed limits etc etc.
If you can't set this it's not a big deal, you just turn off the WiFi on your router and set the Deco to access point mode rather than router mode.
I just stuck some aluminium foil behind some white cardboard and used that to reflect the wifi field away from where I don't want it (neighbour/street) and into the house. Does boost the range of the router, although it doesn't produce the 12dpi gain that the properly designed parabolic reflectors do on my other router set up as a bridge.
^^
Basically you don't want multiple devices doing the same thing or you'll get conflicts.
Gotcha, ta. TBH, if the router's now going to be pretty 'dumb', it may give me an excuse to use an older, smaller one that I can tuck away more easily, rather than the massive black slab of plastic that my current providers gave me (assuming i can get the older one set up correctly, can't be that hard)
many thanks for the responses, i get more confused the more i look into these things
anyway found this this morning
https://shop.bt.com/products/bt-refurbished-mini-whole-home-wi-fi-2-disc-104824-refurb-G5ZK.html?utm_content=RR00&ReferrerID=RR00&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz_u8zty58AIVpoBQBh2KEA85EAQYASABEgKE6fD_BwE
i assume i wont find a better deal, thinking of ordering 4 discs as I assume i can use the second pair as add ons if i need more than two?
thanks
Sorry, me again.
Deco mesh wotsits turned up yesterday, so I'll be setting them up tonight. I had a look at the settings on the router, is it the DHCP thing I need to switch off to get it into 'bridge mode'? Or something else?
Ta.
Sorry, me again.
Deco mesh wotsits turned up yesterday, so I’ll be setting them up tonight. I had a look at the settings on the router, is it the DHCP thing I need to switch off to get it into ‘bridge mode’? Or something else?
Ta.
No, DHCP is one of the rings that bridge mode (it can be called different things, like modem mode)) turns off along with Nat, and wifi. Turning off DHCP alone won't work.
Best thing to do is Google your router and that should tell you if it has that option.
Yeah, sorry, should have said, I had a further dig around in the router settings and found the Bridge mode setting.
Lovely. Let us know how you get on and that the signal coverage is like. With the decos in full router mode you gain all the nice things it can do.
Hi just watching this thread with intent, wondering how this went?
We have a 4 bed and i swapped out or BT router with a TP Link Archer, but some rooms the wifi drops off totally and it also drops in the garden. Trying to decide whether to get an AP which will be hard wired by homeplug back to the router. Or Mesh with 2 units.
Mesh does seem the correct way to go, at twice the price of an access point i'm assuming they're still worth it
Key thing to look out for on Mesh Wi-Fi is a dedicated backhaul between the Mesh AP's. These help explain it https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33023-don-t-get-caught-in-the-wireless-mesh https://www.casatech.com/blog/2020/7/19/five-mistakes-to-avoid-when-setting-up-your-mesh-wifi-system
You only need dedicated backhaul if you're seriously hammering your network. Bt whole home gives you real speeds of around 600mbps, or 8 times faster than the fastest non-fttp broadband connection. If you have fttp or want to waste money on an overkill solution, then triband is needed, otherwise just get a cheap setup and it'll be identical
We just have 50Mbps FTTP which suits us fine (and I work from home using VPN connecting to servers etc) , sounds like a 2 node mesh setup could be the best option.
at 50mbps are you sure its fttp not fttc? fttp normally costs a bunch to install and is often only used for speeds of 200mbps and up.
Either way, yes, a 2 node mesh might do the trick, or if your place is big enough, 3 nodes may be better. I'd rather have more cheaper nodes, then fewer more expensive ones if coverage is what you're fixing.
prime day is coming up next week, I expect there'll be some decent deals on