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Moved to new house, our mesh WiFi system is struggling to cover the house well enough, seems to be really struggling with the old walls, even having points a room apart is having a big impact on speed. I could pay £150 for 2 more points or I could use the free mesh system Virgin will send me to run a 2nd network to the parts of the house the other one won't cover sufficiently.
Question is, to make it more convenient for people not having to have 2 networks on their devices, if I give these networks the same name and password, would it essentially run as a single network, and devices would find and connect to each one as if they were a single network.
Specifically wondering.....
- How would a device decide which network to connect to, would it just go with the strongest?
- If you were to connect to one of the networks then move to a part of the house where the other network was stronger, what would happen.
The short answer is yes, it'll work.
It won't be as slick as a "proper" mesh (or multiple APs on the same system) as each time a device moves from one mesh to another it will have to re-authenticate, which will cause a blip.
It depends what you are doing whether you will notice this - on a wifi/whatsapp/facetime call? Yes you'll notice. Watching YouTube? Very unlikely, as it caches. General browsing, unlikely to notice.
You might find that there is some frustrating middle ground where the device won't roam as quickly as you would like, so it will still be connected to the other network and struggle with signal. A quick drop into airplane mode and back out should sort it.
The biggest issues is the devices will likely hang on to the network they are connected to until they physically cannot connect anymore. If you don’t wander around it’s likely not too much of an issue.
I'm 90% sure this is how my TP Link powerlines work, even down to the having to occasionally flick the phones WiFi off/on to force it to reconnect to the strongest point in certain rooms.
I’m 90% sure this is how my TP Link powerlines work, even down to the having to occasionally flick the phones WiFi off/on to force it to reconnect to the strongest point in certain rooms.
If it isn't a mesh system, but a number of powerlines then yes, this is how it will be working.
It'll be a mess. Better option is to phone Virgin and tell them you're leaving because their equipment doesn't serve your house properly. If you're out of contract (or close) they'll almost certainly bury in you in free mesh extenders if you agree not to leave.
The biggest issues is the devices will likely hang on to the network they are connected to until they physically cannot connect anymore. If you don’t wander around it’s likely not too much of an issue.
This. This is exactly what happens. I tried it (and spent a while trying to make it work) and it's frustrating, slow, and basically rubbish. Sorry 🙁
Same issue here. I run 2 mesh networks with different names at each end of the house. Using the same name for both didn’t work.
You need all your devices to support Fast Handover for it to work reliably. (which is basically what all the mesh devices support).
Works for me with an airport Extreme as the second router