I'm in the sweet spot of bafflement where you know some words to google with, but not quite enough to get the answer you want.
Is there some combination of mesh and wired access points that would let me string a few wires round the house, have max speed by plugging in laptops or telly at those points, but also have those points broadcast a wifi mesh network with a single SSID?
Background: Long, thin, brick house, signal needs some help to get round the house. Currently enjoying a free trial of 900Mbps for a few months, which is nice. couple of times I've needed it and it's been good to be able to plug in and get it, but the rest of the time, the 900Mbps is just making up for crap wifi signal. I'm less than 10 metres away through some wall and double glazing in a shed and getting 100ish, sometimes less, sometimes more. a wifi extender doesn't help because it can't be half way between here and there, only right next to the router or right next to the laptop here.
If I could drop to say a 300Mbps service, get 300 plugged in at several wired access points and a reliable 200 or 150 over wifi throughout the whole house on a mesh network, that would be ace. savings over the contract would pay for a bit of kit and cabling.
Cheers!
My Tenda Novas do what I think you're after. I have one plugged into my router and another at the other end of the house. Stood next to the plusnet router I get twice the download speeds through the Novas that I get from connecting directly to the router!
The Nova nodes have mesh WiFi but also have a cable port but I just use the WiFi as its quick enough. Both of us work from home doing countless Teams calls without issue.
I initially bought four to place three around the house but the pair have been so good I sold the spares to my mate.
If you are looking at wired access points just forget the whole mesh terminology completely. Mesh is just a wireless backhaul for access points.
Is there some combination of mesh and wired access points that would let me string a few wires round the house, have max speed by plugging in laptops or telly at those points, but also have those points broadcast a wifi mesh network with a single SSID?
Yes, basically most mesh systems will have an ethernet backhaul option with a couple of gigabit ports which act as a switch, into which you can plug in a 5/8/24 port switch and have more devices connected.
My current set up, with 800mbps 5G broadband basically has 2 mesh nodes (main and one secondary) connected via ethernet via a couple of switches, along with 2x TV's, PS5, PC, Apple TV, smart hubs etc all connected via gigabit ethernet so getting full 800mbps.
Then a third mesh node upstairs connected via WiFi to the main mode.
This means I get 500mbps on any WiFi devices connected to the 2 ethernet nodes (limited by WiFi 5 speed) and 2-300mbps on the upstairs node, with basically full WiFi signal everywhere in the house.
And you want mesh rather than singular access points as the WiFi roaming is better, with an old style access point your WiFi device will hang on to whichever one it's connected to until it loses the connection even if theres a better WiFi signal 2ft front the device. Mesh will allow the device to switch between the nodes to give the best connection.
Yes but if you can run wires then you don't need mesh, just "prosumer" access points like Unifi ones.
PoE switch somewhere that provides the power down the network cable (mine is under the stairs with the router) then access points in ceilings where you need coverage. Unifi also do some very nice "in wall" units too that have 4 ethernet ports for the fixed things like TVs and computers, but are also a mini access point for wifi.
Control it all through software that lives on a PC/server/NAS/Pi or you can buy a hardware "cloud key" to host it - set up your SSID(s - you can have many, eg a kids one that switches off at night) and they all work together. Clients can just seamlessly roam between them, they support all the protocols to hand off properly between access points.
ace, thank you paul. I've got one of these already which sets up as a mesh network with the TP router. https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/range-extender/re220/
The RE220 mesh node has just the 1 ethernet input. It's sounding like I could plug one end of a CAT6 cable into LAN1 on the TP router, plug the other end into a 2/3 port switch in the shed, with the laptop plugged into the one port and the mesh node in another. Same for LAN2 and the telly and another node in the living room. etc, And walk around the lot with my phone and have one wifi network to connect to, phone just choosing the best signal for the same network.
I know I'm asking about particular kit you might not be aware of, but if this is all standard stuff for standard sort of kit, I'll carry on in that direction and see what happens. I can see if it works with pretty minimal outlay before I start drilling holes in walls and lifting floorboards.
Cheers again.
+1 What ta11pau1 said.
I don't get the love for Tenda kit. I bought a set of their top-of-the-range units (MW12?), they were beyond shit and got sent back.
and thanks Simon, not sure if I'll be stretching to those Ubiquiti Unifi jobs. Plenty of other things further up the £600-ish shopping list than 3 of those! Good to know about the cloud key stuff, not currently an issue with our toddlers, but still worth knowing about.
That re220 is a bit rubbish, for one reason - it only has a 10/100 port. You'll be limited to 100mbps on anything WiFi connected to that node presuming it does act as a node via ethernet backhaul which I'm not sure it can.
Does your main router have a bridge mode? If so it'll make setting up a mesh system easier, but you can use it in access point mode if not (former means the mesh handles DHCP and you get QoS options, latter means DHCP is done by the router). You basically turn off the WiFi on your main router and the mesh nodes handle it all.
If you only need up to 500mbps speed over WiFi then £100 or so will get you a perfectly good system with 3 nodes. If you want WiFi 6 which will give you around 900mbps or so then you'll be looking at £200 or so.
I've got a TP link Deco M4 with 3 nodes which covers a fairly large 3 bed detached house and most of the decent sized garden.
And yes, the nodes just have to be on the ethernet network somewhere, they don't have to be connected directly to the router. As above I've got 3x 5/8 port switches with the mesh nodes connected to 2 of them. Between the main node and the router there's 2 switches and about 100ft of ethernet cable!
Any one using Cat 8 cable? Any good? Friend just told me to use that.
Your friend is clueless.
Well, you gotta be ready for that 25gbps broadband though!! 🤣
I mean, obviously, Cat9 is where it's at these days.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am clueless about the cable for my wired connection tbh.
Never heard of cat 8 until yesterday LOL!
