3 Storey House - Cable Router/ WiFi - After thoughts

Exemplar

So the lounge is at the front of the house on the 1st floor and that's where the cable router (Virgin Superhub 3) is. The WiFi is poor in the house due to many reasons inc. metal frame for the rooms, Kingspan foil backed insulation etc. I have adjusted channels on the router and have found a sweeter signal, but it's still not as good as I would like and the spread on is limited.

My thought processes are: 

• Get a cable router such as the Tenda AC10U and place the Virgin router in Modem mode. 
• Get the above and a gigabit poweline adaptor and place the AC10U down on the ground floor in the hallway giving it more 'spread' (will this even work?)
• Get a mesh network and run that from the Virgin Superhub

Anything obvious there? and thoughts?

TIA

Mickey666

Is installing some network cabling out of the question?

While renovating our house I've installed network cabling wherever I could, all terminated into a central 'hub'.  I've then used TP-Link 'wall plate' access points in most rooms.  https://www.ebuyer.com/791688-tp-link-omada-eap115-wall-wireless-n-wall-plate-access-point-eap115-wall

It might sound like overkill but the access points are only about £30, are almost invisible and don't need separate 'wall warts' as they are PoE.  The result is perfect coverage and the option to plug into a gigabit LAN, which I do with PCs.  The hub is also convenient place to put a NAS drive.

Powerline adapters and mesh wifi have their place but involve compromise, mainly speed.  If this is not important then fine, but otherwise a cabled infrastructure will give better performance and reliability. 

Exemplar

Mickey666 said:

Is installing some network cabling out of the question?

While renovating our house I've installed network cabling wherever I could, all terminated into a central 'hub'.  I've then used TP-Link 'wall plate' access points in most rooms.  https://www.ebuyer.com/791688-tp-link-omada-eap115-wall-wireless-n-wall-plate-access-point-eap115-wall

It might sound like overkill but the access points are only about £30, are almost invisible and don't need separate 'wall warts' as they are PoE.  The result is perfect coverage and the option to plug into a gigabit LAN, which I do with PCs.  The hub is also convenient place to put a NAS drive.

Powerline adapters and mesh wifi have their place but involve compromise, mainly speed.  If this is not important then fine, but otherwise a cabled infrastructure will give better performance and reliability. 

Great option and thanks. We did try cabling to no avail unfortunately. 

fred246

I live in a 3 storey house with 38mbps broadband. I had a mix of 200,500 and 600mbps powerline adapters. It was running at roughly 100mbps which I thought was OK because it was faster than the broadband. I have just removed the 200mbps and it's now at 300 to 400mbps. It's noticeably faster which I hadn't expected. Carefully set up powerlines work really well.

mgfvvc

I had powerline and it worked well in most of the house, but the connectivity to the living room was slow and unreliable.

I now use a 3 node mesh (TP-Link Deco M5) with one node on each floor and one in the loft and I have good coverage through the whole house. The speeds aren't stellar, but they are more than adequate for our purposes. I can get at least 10Mbps everywhere, usually more, which is more tan good enough for streaming video, home working, etc.
I have seen a review that ping times are poor with the Deco, which may matter for online gaming?

MinuteNoodles

mgfvvc said:

I had powerline and it worked well in most of the house, but the connectivity to the living room was slow and unreliable.

Was it plugged into an extension chord or a wall socket? I experimented plugging one into a 4 way extension and even though it was the only device speed dropped to about a tenth of what it was plugged into the wall.

itwasntme001

Network problems could be due to many things.  Distance, poor quality WiFi adapters, poor quality router, interference with other devices etc.

Assuming ethernet/wired is out of the question and distance/interference is not an obvious issue, I would investigate first why WiFi is not working.  How many devices do you have on WiFi?  If you have many (more than say 12) then your first suggestion in getting a separate router may help a lot if it is a good quality one.  ISP give out cheap quality routers that can not handle many WiFi devices all at once very well at all.

Then I would look at the WiFi adapters installed - which devices are causing the issues?  Is it just the desktop PCs?  Usually modern laptops and portable devices have decent in-built adapters (you probably won't be able to change them anyway) but for desktop devices it can be hit or miss.  Sometimes good quality adapters are installed, sometimes not (especially if not installed by a well known PC brand).  I recently had an issue with a cheap £10 WiFi card and decided to fork out on a £40 card instead - was worth every penny as it works perfectly now.  Also do not use USB adapters - PCIe ones should be used at all costs.

I would say power-line adapters, mesh networks and extenders should be the last resort as to me they feel more like a bodge and add complexity to a network that should be avoided if possible.  Power-line plugs are also very hit or miss but if they work then they should continue to work.

mgfvvc

MinuteNoodles said:

mgfvvc said:

I had powerline and it worked well in most of the house, but the connectivity to the living room was slow and unreliable.

Was it plugged into an extension chord or a wall socket? I experimented plugging one into a 4 way extension and even though it was the only device speed dropped to about a tenth of what it was plugged into the wall.

It was plugged directly into the wall. I did have one homeplug in an extension cord for a while and that made it even worse, but after making sure that none if the homeplugs were in extension cords the connection to the living room was still slow and unreliable.