Vodafone with wifi 6E worth upgrading to fix my home network?

matelodave

Wifi 6 (802.11ax) can be faster but its range is likely to be less especially as 6E uses the 6GHz band and will only be of benefit if the stuff that you are using is also wifi 6 equipped.

We only have one device in our house that would benefit from wifi 6 and thats my laptop, everything else is bog standard either 11ac (5GHz/2,4GHz) or 11a/b/n (2.4 or 5Ghz) although 11ax is backward compatible it will only benefit equipment which is equipped or upgraded to 11ax.

Mesh systems might communicated between each other quite a bit faster but probably need to be closer together as 6GHz doesn't go as far as 5GHz which doesn't go as far as 2.4GHz and is less capable of penetrating walls & floors so you sacrifice speed for distance.

In the end the only really reliable way of shifting data around is over ethernet cabling not wifi

Vannaa

I ditched my powerline adaptors after nine months, either they weren't up to the job or there was too much interference. I bought a new wifi router and put my Virgin router into modem mode and that improved the wifi signal, I found a lot more devices were using the 5G network. My son is a gamer so I ran a single ethernet cable upstairs into a network switch so he could hard wire his PC, consoles etc.

[Deleted User]

matelodave said:

Using something like Ookla I get 92mbits on the 5GHz channel virtually all over but only 45 on the 2.4GHz channel. Laptops, phones and tablets all work on 5GHz as does the TV, cameras, printer, smart plugs and an energy monitor use 2.4GHz. The phone and DECT base station plug into the router for telephone service.

I can even get around 5mbit/s in my caravan which is parked about 10 metres from the the building and probably at least 20 metres and three walls away from the router.

I think many people just put up with the rubbish wifi from their ISP's box without realising what a proper Wifi access point / router is capable of. I'm still on Wifi 5 and getting 500-700+ mbps and various places around the house, dropping to about 200-300 Mbps outside and reaching about 40-50 metres before it deteriorates to unusable.

These speeds are typical on my phone in the back room about 10 metres and a brick wall from the Wifi access point. Note the 2 of them are 5G rather than wifi outdoors.




My laptop can get even higher speeds than my phone, recent test from the exact same location 10 metres/brick wall:



I recently got the Wifi 6 Virgin Hub 5 - guess what? It can't achieve half the above speeds because it is a cheap ISP router.

If you want decent Wifi, do yourself a favour and buy a proper router, mine is now 4 years old and well worth the investment, and even though it is "only" Wifi 5 it beats the pants off a brand new ISP Wifi 6 router:

https://rog.asus.com/uk/networking/rog-rapture-gt-ac5300-model/

Spinybif

I have that exact Vodaphone router in a 4 bed detached house.  Found the wifi signal was hopeless at the opposite side of house.  Fitted a  Linksys velop  3 unit system and never looked back.  One connected by short ethernet  cable to router, one in dining room, 3rd in loft.  Can roam around the house without changing SSIDs with full strength 2.4 & 5 Gig signal.  In the app you can prioritise connection eg Tv or gaming computer.  Also gives you a guest network which can allow visitors to use your wifi without compromising main wifi connection. Another attraction is that if you change broadband supplier just change ethernet cable over.  All your existing wifi logins remain the same.