Mesh network question

Murmansk

I’ve got a flat that’s the ground floor of a large Victorian house with very thick walls and I’m lucky enough to get my Internet connection from  someone on the top floor – I have a Cat5 cable plugged into their router and that comes down to my flat. It’s a decent fibre to the cabinet Internet connection.

 In my flat the cable goes into a Netgear powered switch with 8 ports. One port then connects to a TP Link RE350 which gives me wi-fi around the flat. It’s centrally located under the stairs but because of the thick walls the speed I get reduces from about 70 near the device to more like 10 in the other rooms.

 I’m thinking of replacing the TP Link device with a cheap mesh network setup such as the Netgear Orbi RBK13 with 3 units.

 Will this improve my wi-fi speed around the flat – and I’d quite like it to extend into the garden too?!

grumpycrab

MESH  is great but the choice is wide (TP-LINK have flooded the market with so much stuff they've put me off the brand.) PCPro magazine has a review of MESH systems this month.  Orbi RBK13 doesn't top score.  Average d/l speed 120Mbps (speed is good enough for you.)  High raters are BT Whole Home (160Mbps) - surprised me too (unless the firmware's been sorted) and D-link Covr 2202 (140Mbps).  Top rated Orbi RBK50.

Murmansk

Thanks for that, yes I know the one I'm looking at is not top rated but it does come out quite well in  Web User and Computer Active reviews I've read and the other ones cost a lot more so I think it would suit my purposes, which are fairly undemanding.

arciere

Have you considered running a cable from your switch to another location in your flat, to add a secondary access point?

Murmansk

arciere said:

Have you considered running a cable from your switch to another location in your flat, to add a secondary access point?

I have, good idea but for various reasons it's not really very easy to do that.

mgfvvc

Murmansk said:

I’ve got a flat that’s the ground floor of a large Victorian house with very thick walls and I’m lucky enough to get my Internet connection from  someone on the top floor – I have a Cat5 cable plugged into their router and that comes down to my flat. It’s a decent fibre to the cabinet Internet connection.

 In my flat the cable goes into a Netgear powered switch with 8 ports. One port then connects to a TP Link RE350 which gives me wi-fi around the flat. It’s centrally located under the stairs but because of the thick walls the speed I get reduces from about 70 near the device to more like 10 in the other rooms.

 I’m thinking of replacing the TP Link device with a cheap mesh network setup such as the Netgear Orbi RBK13 with 3 units.

 Will this improve my wi-fi speed around the flat – and I’d quite like it to extend into the garden too?!

I'm doubtful of the utility of Mesh on it's own in this situation.

The difficulty is that a pure mesh backhaul is over wifi, so the backhaul from the extra nodes would be limited by the wifi drop off. It's possible that careful placing might alleviate this, but that would require you to find spots where the wifi backhaul signal isn't impeded by the walls and there is a convenient power source. That may not be practical.

It is possible to use mesh with an ethernet or Homeplug backhaul, which may work for you?

Murmansk

mgfvvc said:

I'm doubtful of the utility of Mesh on it's own in this situation.

The difficulty is that a pure mesh backhaul is over wifi, so the backhaul from the extra nodes would be limited by the wifi drop off. It's possible that careful placing might alleviate this, but that would require you to find spots where the wifi backhaul signal isn't impeded by the walls and there is a convenient power source. That may not be practical.

It is possible to use mesh with an ethernet or Homeplug backhaul, which may work for you?

Thanks I see exactly what you mean, but in practice I can take the current wi-fi device from out of the cupboard under the stairs and connect the new mesh base to a Cat5 cable that I have going to my Humax box, then I can connect the other mesh unit(s) almost by line-of- sight so I think it'll do what I want plus my current wi-fi device can only seem to manage to send out wi-fi at 30mbps whereas my ethernet connected computer gets 70mbps, so I hope the new mesh devices will be faster.

Grumpy_chap

I use the Google Wi-Fi Whole Home System and easily cover the full house plus garden (three storey 1920's mid-terrace).  Speed over the mesh is about 50 mbps, ethernet is much faster.

Rodders53

Get mesh units with ethernet ports or at least ensure the router (master mesh unit) has a WAN and LAN to connect the Humax box with if you are planning on using that ethernet cable for the mesh.
I went for some cheapo Tenda units with 2.4GHz and 5GHz (dual band) wireless recently to eliminate a wifi not spot in my home (£80 for a mesh of 4).

More expensive 'tri band' mesh units have a dedicated extra, hidden, 5GHz backhaul frequency in addition to the two bands that are broadcast;  that can help if speed is super-important.

melanikoko

To begin setup, open the app and follow the instructions for connecting the mesh router to your modem and adding satellite nodes. One of the most important things to consider when setting up your mesh network is where to position each node for optimal Wi-Fi coverage without any dead zones.