So my family are sick of our router not able to send it's signal around the house, and I'm pretty sure that mesh networking is the way to go. I'm looking at getting 3 units, one for front of house, one for back, one for my room.and possible 4th for the conservatory/garden. My concern is, do these things have to be connected via ethernet in order to mesh? Also, any recommendations? Budget is around £100-150
Wireless mesh will trash your wifi even more. You're probably best to use gigabit ethernet powerline as the backhaul. Then you could use a 4 port gigabit powerline in your room and hardwire your PC etc, and a couple one ports. I'd suggest using the Mikrotik hAP AC2. Set them up in "Dual AP with switch" mode, then set one of them to be the CAPWAP master, and the other units to be slaves. They're about £60 and you won't get better AC performance in that pricerange I feel. CAPWAP will allow them to be one autonomous system, and devices will roam. They're also powerful enough to host many simultaneous connected devices.
Did try Mesh on a few occasions but wasn't very impressed. Threw up all sorts of issues with older Wi-Fi devices such as security cameras. On the other hand I installed some TP-Link Powerline Wi-Fi Extenders that duplicates the credentials for a single Wi-Fi signal and it works wonderfully. So the full speed broadband speed gets thrown through your electrical wiring and it spits out great Wi-Fi locally wherever the plug is. Buying multiple plugs scales the Wi-Fi range. In one of my installations one plug is connected to the broadband that beams the internet to a plug upstairs through the house circuitry that in turn gives good Wi-Fi upstairs. Then another plug about 30 metres away in a shed so there's Wi-Fi in the garden! All working with a single Wi-Fi login. Mileage would vary depending on the wiring in your house however! Here's the kit I use... https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/powerline/tl-wpa4220kit/ It's an excellent bit of kit. If you go for it then I'd recommend testing the extender out in all the places around the house before you invest in more Powerline plugs. Should easily come under £150. Only drawback is the 100Mbps limit which is fine for web browsing and streaming. Not for really heavy network use! Such as 4K streaming whilst gaming and downloading at the same time, all depends on your situation though!
My Mum has these. Each adapter is it's own wireless network with the same name and password, but they aren't actually an enterprise system. That means you aren't technically roaming to the nearest hotspot, you're only moving when you lose signal. Things like a CAPWAP roaming system will automatically re-register clients to the nearest AP. (A side note referring to my posts above; Ubiquiti access points will also do this - but the hardware is twice the Mikrotik I suggested and also requires an external controller, or the cloud key to set it up at least, whereas the Mikrotik is all in box.)
I was surprised when I tested the network Wi-Fi speed for the plug 30 metres away in our shed and it gave the exact same result as sitting right next to the router!
Yep - you might have gone outside range! Also, some wifi devices will auto select between multiple hotspots with the same SSID when enterprise wifi is not enabled. Android for example doesn't but iPhone does it much better. YMMV!
The oldest device on our network is my Mum's 3rd gen iPad. We do already have a TP-Link power-line adapter to connect the digibox/DVR to the network as it stands, I assume the WiFi extenders won't cause any issues with that? Again, I assume I would have two primary devices in proximity to the router to broadcast to LAN and WiFi with however many points as needed
In my case the router links to the small TP Link plug pictured below... Which links the two larger plugs (pictured above to the right) and repeats the Wi-Fi using the same credentials as the Routers Wi-Fi. As Zoon points out, this particular setup works well for me because upstairs and in the shed were both Wi-Fi dead spots before the TP Link plugs came on-line! so your mileage may vary. Can't tell you if the model pictured would work with your current setup unfortunately. I just know that particular model with an additional extender AV600 plug works well in my case! Struggled with many network solutions over the years but this has been the most stable to date!
Unless I'm mistaken. With Powerline you have to ensure all the adapters are on the same electrical circuit? Not sure whether this only applies to newer homes but I think these days each floor sits on a separate electrical ring/circuit.
As long as there’s only one fuse board it’ll be fine. It’ll cross rings but it won’t cross fuse boards.
Correct; however, modern fuse boards have electrical noise filters which can attenuate speeds so worth bearing in mind also.
Very much depends on the house wiring. In my case I get a flawless signal through the powerline from the router to the adapter downstairs that sends the signal through the wiring to my powerline adapter upstairs. When I try this in an adjacent room downstairs with the same plug the speed drops like a stone. It shouldn't but there you have it. The powerlines are at the mercy of your houses internal electrical wiring, however that may be configured! All part of the fun of building a network that works for you.
Should probably get an idea of your house setup. Where is your router positioned in the house? For good Wi-Fi it's best to get the wireless router positioned centrally and at a high point. Also what make/model is it and who provides the Broadband?
So it's fibre through SSE/Swalec, so the router is positioned fairly centrally in the staircase downstairs, but it's a TG589vac v2 - Coverage gets spotty as soon as you go upstairs/to the kitchen, hence looking at mesh/powerline extenders
Probably not the best router for dishing out Wi-Fi and being hidden under the stairs would further muffle the signal. If you can experiment with the routers placement then a simple fix might be to run a wire upstairs and try the router positioned on the landing if that's possible? Alternatively switch the routers Wi-Fi off and run a cable from it to a beefy wireless router upstairs that'll cover the whole house. My other setup consists of an RT-AC68U rigged in this fashion and it covers a large 4 bedroom house with decent Wi-Fi. Unfortunately it stops just short of the rear garden!
Yep. I had 600 and 500mbps plugs running in a house built less than five years old and was getting regularly 200-300mbps. Still, that’s plenty given how quickly Wi-fi data rates dip off.
I picked up a set of the BT Whole Home wifi mesh things a month back, have been faultless so far. I had Gigaclear FTTP installed a couple of months ago and for some reason my old and trusty TP link wifi router had become unreliable. So now I just run the Gigaclear modem/router with the wifi off and use the BT setup. Wired side is all Netgear gigabit smart switch. Currently have two of the Whole Home things, will add a third in the garage at some point. Very easy to install, and no dropouts yet, everything I have connected so far has worked, ranging from old kindles, Ipad mini 2, various laptops, Kinde fire, old android phones and tablets.
