I'm just about at the end of my BT contract and it's time to look for a new broadband deal that includes extra nodes to give decent wifi coverage throughout the house or alternatively pick up a mesh system to go with a new router and provider.
I'm the first to admit that I have very little knowledge on these, I've managed to set up a NAS system and one additional node on the current BT system, but that's about as far as I've gone. My wife and I work from home and have two children that spend too much time gaming, the layout of the house absolutely means more than one wifi point, probably 2 or 3 points in total.
What do I need/want?
Can't you keep using the existing nodes?
I am with Vodafone.
The new router goes a lot further through the house (like all of it!) than the one from my previous supplier.
I'd go for a decent internet deal and then solve the problem from there.
A basic range extender is £13.
Google Wi-Fi are dead easy to setup and reasonable cost.
I used to have a single router via BT or Virgin or whoever and use plug in adaptors to extend the Wi-Fi around the house
I was forever dealing with complaints from the wife/kids ‘Wi-Fi’s not working’
All complaints ended when I bought a mesh setup. Never a complaint since
The Mesh system I bought was the BT whole home - a three white disc system.
I have just binned BT as the broadband supplier, and was sweating the discs wouldn’t work so well with Zen’s fritzbox
Thankfully it did
I've 3 tp link deco x20s in the house - I've no problems with the internet / wifi around the house now. Only issue was the old HP printed couldn't handle the mesh wifi and I had to set up a separate 'guest' wifi that only uses 2.4GHz rather than a mix of 2.4/5GHz. All done through the tp link app.
Another vote for TP Link Deco, we have five (yes, I know), M5 discs dotted around the house, annexe and stables, works great and seems to distribute all 13 (yes, I know) of our broadband-megawotsits to the various things that want them around our awkwardly laid out, hoofingly-thick-stone-walled house
+1 for the TP-Link Deco mesh stuff. We've got a 3-pack of the Deco S4 system.
I primarily bought it to solve the issue of intermittent wi-fi in the garage for Zwift (on the recommendation of another STWer). It has solved that and also smoothed out the wi-fi around the whole house.
The only issue is finding convenient locations to site the units so they are reasonably spaced out & near to power sockets.
I feel that ours are a little close together, but the system works so it's fine as it is.
TP-Link Deco M4’s x3 I think we’ve got, yes they’re £100 but they really do just work.
Very impressed!
FWIW, gaming is more affected by latency than throughput. The more radio hops between gamers and the router the worse it will be.
WFH usually means conf calls and telephony. That is also very sensitive to latency.
As well as the topological latency of radio hops, interference and collisions, congestion when the system comes under load (one user downloading something big) can prevent time sensitive packets from getting to their destination on time.
You have to take care over access point placement, channel selection as a start and then some mesh are better than others at solving these problems with their feature sets.
You need to shop carefully to get the best answer to these problems that doesn't involve Cat 6 cabling and a network engineer.
Lots of folk will suggest what has worked well for them be it TP-Link Decos, Orbi, Google/Nest, Tenda or eero, however what works well in their home may not in yours so you need to consider your home and what your ideal outcome is before buying anything.
First is what is your home like, size, layout, construction and where is your master socket / router located.
Second do you have any dead/slow spots today than need to be resolved.
What are the drivers, cost, speed, latency ,stability or functionality (parental controls, guest networks etc)
These things will drive what solution to use and where you place any mesh nodes.
Another factor is who will be your new ISP, many now want you to use or force you to use their modem/router/ap boxes and won’t let you use a 3rd party unit, others will let you put their modem/router/ap boxes into modem/pass through mode allowing the use of better router/ap’s and mesh systems.
I’d suggest when selecting a new isp having a Google to see if there are reports of using 3rd party units being easy, difficult or not working (Sky, Vodafone and Plusnet? Come to mind as being more difficult).
Depending on your home it maybe that a single higher quality router/ap would suffice and some from TP-Link and Linksys can be upgrade to mesh if you do find they don’t cover the whole home.
Mesh, there are generally three types:
Dual Band – These have two radios in them a 2.4ghz for wifi traffic, a 5ghz one for wifi traffic and also to send the traffic between the satellite nodes and the main/master node connected to your router or modem (the backhaul).
Tri Band – These have three radios in them a 2.4ghz for wifi traffic, a 5ghz one for wifi traffic and a additional 5ghz radio for the backhaul to send the traffic between the satellite nodes and the main/master node connected to your router or modem.
Powerline - These have two radios in them a 2.4ghz for wifi traffic, a 5ghz one for wifi traffic. They use the power connection and your domestic wiring as the backhaul (the performance of these does obviously depend on the state and layout of your ring mains)
Dual Band are often cheaper but offer lower speeds. Tri Band are generally more expensive but offer higher speeds.
In a ideal world you would have your master node centrally in the house to act as a hub and make the satellite units spokes so they can all reach the master, if you chain a number of satellite units together that is where you can see performance hits as the data has to pass through a number of units before getting to the master.
When placing Dual/Tri Band units they have to be close enough to get a strong signal between nodes but not so close that your wifi clients continually hop from node to node, this is more art than science but generally there should be some help in the set-up guides for any system, I try and start as far apart as I can and move satellite nodes closer to the master until I get a stable connection.
Powerline units are more flexible as each unit doesn’t need a strong wifi line to the master as its using the ring main as the backhaul so you can have better placement options to get even coverage over the whole home.
Placement:
I have had success in placing a single router/ap in the loft close to the centre of the hose with the antennas faing into the home, this is because its much easier for wifi to go through floors than walls, I’ve used this in my own 1910’s 3 bed with a gf extention and three bigish steels in the gf, obviously this is not an option for everyone but if you can get power and either the master socket or a either net run to the loft is a option.
If not then try to look at the size / layout of the home and where your dead spots are today and get the router/ap or main node close to the centre.
Depending on size and construction try and split the home into two and put two nodes in the middle of each ‘half’, if its larger then split into three, the main node in the centre of the middle third and the satellites in the centre of the outside thirds, if T shaped then the main node in the join of the T and then depending on dead spots other satellites at the extremes, etc.
Where to Buy:
Well I’d always suggest direct from Amazon because if you find you’ve brought something that doesn’t work they have a great return policy and that allows you flexibility in getting the right system for you.
Tip: When you set up the new devices if you use the same SSID (wifi network name) and password as used by your current router you shouldn’t have to change the login details on your client devices
What to Buy:
Ahh that all depends on the points above, a bit more information and we can get beyond the “I’ve got this and its great!” suggestions.
Can you run cables?
I bought a single Unifi UAP-AC-LR years ago, was intending to buy more once I tested but I find we actually get really good coverage over 3 floors with it mounted on the ceiling in the hallway. Just pulled up landing floorboards upstairs and ran a cable down to the understairs cupboard where the network stuff lives.
If you need more, you just put more in and things will roam seamlessly between them, such as if you're on a wifi (facetime/whatsapp/zoom) etc call and move around the house.
