Upgrade MESH routers

Clive_Woody

We recently upgraded to fibre to property with speed up to 400Mbps. I have an older set of TP Link Deco M5 routers that always worked fine, but with the upgrade we get 400Mbps through a cable but WiFi around the house is more like 80Mbps.

Would it be worth upgrading our mesh routers to a newer set to try and achieve faster speeds around the house (large-ish 4 bed detached house with extension, ideally with coverage in the garden too)? 

matelodave

Are you using 2.4 or 5gz wifi - 2.4 is a lot slower than 5ghz and could be what's causing your limitation.

[Deleted User]

TLDR: Connect your mesh nodes via ethernet to the main router to maximise speed for the best bang for buck upgrade.

As per above comment need to know a lot more information to be able to help.

• Exact device your are getting the 80mbps max speed on (to know the spec of the wifi on the device) and which band it is connected to (2.4 or 5), the wifi specs eg 802.11ac 2x2 mimo and the signal strength RSSI / dBm.
• Distance from the nearest mesh and any objects / walls it passes through.
• How many hops from the router to the mesh node it is connected to
• Whether the mesh backhaul is wifi or ethernet and if wifi what band it is on
• What other devices are connected and active when testing

The Deco M5 has a spec sheet quoting 5Ghz @ 866mbps and 2.4Ghz at 400mbps however maximum throughput will be somewhere around 60-80% of those speeds at the very best assuming a device that is within a close range and capable connecting at those speeds.

So on 5Ghz you could get about 500-600 mbps under the very best conditions. Wifi is half duplex and that bandwidth is shared with transmit and receive. 

If you are one node hop away from the router, then the data needs to be sent from router to node then node to device within the same channel and therefore the 500-600mbps now becomes 250-300mbps under very best conditions.

But that is under perfect conditions. Wifi bandwidth is affected by distance and objects such as walls. All it takes is a couple of thick walls for the signal to pass through and that throughput could be halved again to 125-150mbps.

Then take a few other devices on the same channel using the bandwidth and it reduces further. Bandwidth is shared in terms of time. So say for example there is about 150mbps bandwidth available one device wants to transmit at 150mbps and another at 20mbps simultaneously. Both get half the time each so the slower device gets 10mbps allocated and the faster one 75mbps - yes many people would think the slower one gets 20mbps and the fast one 130mbps as it adds up to 150 but that is not the case.

Sorry to get all technical but wifi is totally mis-sold specification wise and it leads customer to expect much more than reality.

But ... not reason why a good wifi router or mesh system can't delivery 400mbps or more to a wifi device - you just need to consider all the above and buy a system and device capable of those speeds. I'm sat about 10 metres from my wifi router with a brick wall in between and just run a speed test on my iPhone XR and I'm getting 522mbps.

Clive_Woody

[Deleted User] said:

TLDR: Connect your mesh nodes via ethernet to the main router to maximise speed for the best bang for buck upgrade.

As per above comment need to know a lot more information to be able to help.

• Exact device your are getting the 80mbps max speed on (to know the spec of the wifi on the device) and which band it is connected to (2.4 or 5), the wifi specs eg 802.11ac 2x2 mimo and the signal strength RSSI / dBm.
• Distance from the nearest mesh and any objects / walls it passes through.
• How many hops from the router to the mesh node it is connected to
• Whether the mesh backhaul is wifi or ethernet and if wifi what band it is on
• What other devices are connected and active when testing

The Deco M5 has a spec sheet quoting 5Ghz @ 866mbps and 2.4Ghz at 400mbps however maximum throughput will be somewhere around 60-80% of those speeds at the very best assuming a device that is within a close range and capable connecting at those speeds.

So on 5Ghz you could get about 500-600 mbps under the very best conditions. Wifi is half duplex and that bandwidth is shared with transmit and receive. 

If you are one node hop away from the router, then the data needs to be sent from router to node then node to device within the same channel and therefore the 500-600mbps now becomes 250-300mbps under very best conditions.

But that is under perfect conditions. Wifi bandwidth is affected by distance and objects such as walls. All it takes is a couple of thick walls for the signal to pass through and that throughput could be halved again to 125-150mbps.

Then take a few other devices on the same channel using the bandwidth and it reduces further. Bandwidth is shared in terms of time. So say for example there is about 150mbps bandwidth available one device wants to transmit at 150mbps and another at 20mbps simultaneously. Both get half the time each so the slower device gets 10mbps allocated and the faster one 75mbps - yes many people would think the slower one gets 20mbps and the fast one 130mbps as it adds up to 150 but that is not the case.

Sorry to get all technical but wifi is totally mis-sold specification wise and it leads customer to expect much more than reality.

But ... not reason why a good wifi router or mesh system can't delivery 400mbps or more to a wifi device - you just need to consider all the above and buy a system and device capable of those speeds. I'm sat about 10 metres from my wifi router with a brick wall in between and just run a speed test on my iPhone XR and I'm getting 522mbps.

Thanks, very educational and lots I never knew. Funnily enough it's an iPhone XR I've got too and was using for the speed test. I get a WiFi speed of pretty much 399Mbps stood next to the primary node but speed drops off rapidly as I move out of the room and around the house.

The primary node is connected to the router by ethernet, but the other two are too far away from the router for an ethernet connection. It's a 1980s house so mostly stud walls between router and mesh nodes.