Wifi mesh

RogerRizla

Hi,

Hoping to pick a few wise brains please.

Background: We've moved into a 250-year-old 5-storey townhouse that's tall and thin separated across the middle by a thick wall.

We just had Plusnet installed ( Wifi 5 Hub 2 ) with full fibre planned for our street sometime next year.

It comes in via the back into the phone socket on the ground-floor level reaching about 65 mbps.

Any room above that gets the same signal through the wooden floors without the need for additional support.

Anything in the front part of the house, where the sitting room and TV is, gets 20mbps max even using a TP-Link TL-PA4010 powerline.

I'm wondering if a Wifi 6 mesh system would improve the strength of that signal to the front or does it merely extend the area where the signal can be picked up. I would like all five storeys including the basement flat to have the same signal strength if possible.

Any suggestions or advice on best make with as many nodes as necessary would be very much appreciated. Budget is not really a problem so best option would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

Vitor

- Budget is not really a problem so best option would be appreciated. - 

8 port 10Gig switch connected to Wifi 5 Hub 2 then run Cat 6 cables to every floor/basement and connect a good quality WiFi Access Point for each floor, something like a HPE Networking Instant On Access Point AP22 2x2 WiFi 6. All 6 can be managed via a web-portal.

oldernonethewiser

I've helped put in basic TP MESH devices in three old homes.  

Well worth doing as the improvement was excellent. 

Cabled however will always be better

RogerRizla

Unfortunately I can't run cables under floors at the moment.

I was hoping for either a suitable extender or mesh system.

flaneurs_lobster

Poor decision we made 10 years ago when we moved to a 150 yo stone-built house - we didn't install Cat n cabling when we had the place rewired. It's going to bite us in the backside when the inevitable switch to FTTP is going to leave the router in a faraway corner.

Can just about get a Wi-fi signal in most of the house with BT mesh discs but they won't work with any other ISP's router.

RogerRizla

I think the point I'm confused about is if a wifi extender signal between the router and the next floor TV is much weaker than the original signal due to the thick stone wall it has to go through will a mesh system suffer a similar fate ?

victor2

RogerRizla said:

I think the point I'm confused about is if a wifi extender signal between the router and the next floor TV is much weaker than the original signal due to the thick stone wall it has to go through will a mesh system suffer a similar fate ?

With MESH routers they can be placed between the main hub and the equipment, so you might find it copes with the thick wall, or you can position it near doorways.

I bought an ASUS WiFi router because my Virgin Media hub WiFi couldn't reach the opposite corner of my house. I bought one with MESH capability to leave me the option of additional ones to utilise the MESH facility. Didn't need that, as it was far superior to the VM hub in terms of WiFi signal strength. Also bought it from Amazon with their free returns facility, so if it didn't do the job I could get my money back. Had it almost 4 years now, so I'm pretty content, even have good WiFi in the garden.

GDB2222

flaneurs_lobster said:

Poor decision we made 10 years ago when we moved to a 150 yo stone-built house - we didn't install Cat n cabling when we had the place rewired. It's going to bite us in the backside when the inevitable switch to FTTP is going to leave the router in a faraway corner.

Can just about get a Wi-fi signal in most of the house with BT mesh discs but they won't work with any other ISP's router.

I have BT mesh discs working with the router supplied by Zen, which is a Fritz box. One disc is connected by cable to the router and the other discs connect wirelessly to that. 

flaneurs_lobster

GDB2222 said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

Poor decision we made 10 years ago when we moved to a 150 yo stone-built house - we didn't install Cat n cabling when we had the place rewired. It's going to bite us in the backside when the inevitable switch to FTTP is going to leave the router in a faraway corner.

Can just about get a Wi-fi signal in most of the house with BT mesh discs but they won't work with any other ISP's router.

I have BT mesh discs working with the router supplied by Zen, which is a Fritz box. One disc is connected by cable to the router and the other discs connect wirelessly to that. 

BT discs come in two flavours, ones that work like regular mesh hubs that work with any router, the other sort are supplied as part of the (paid for) Complete Wifi setup and only work with a BT SmartHub. I stopped paying for the "Complete" bit years ago but the discs still work.

Used to be that the former were white and the latter black, don't know if that's still true.

debitcardmayhem

I have ASUS mesh and a plusnet ADSL router in modem only mode. Cat 5E/6 cables for backhaul would be be ideal, but cant at moment. However the ASUS kit has a dedicated backhaul wireless which works fine and using one node between doors upstairs gives good coverage for my needs, much better than powerline I used before. I didn’t go for wifi 7 since it is unlikely I will be buying 7 kit. anytime soon. 

Also the nodes have 1Gb ethernet for my upstairs printer and server and pi, plus TV and satellite box downstairs.

Also the ASUS kit comes with VPN, which I can control stuff from the pub/holiday/public wifi.

grandweb

The powerline adapter you mentioned has a max speed of 100mbps and generally the actual speeds you get are much much slower than the peak as these are under ideal conditions, which is probably why it's dropping to 20mbps. They now sell a 1000mbps one for not too much, although this will still realistically max out at 200mbps depending on your cabling.

Mesh routers generally work well and can get fairly high speeds over wifi, definitely exceeding your 65mps connection so this is probably the best option to go for if you're happy spending a bit more. If you ever did get ethernet to any room in the future, you'll also be able to plug the mesh routers in to improve speeds. You could also try combining them with the gigabit powerline, but this could end up being slower than the wifi connection.