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Router Upgrade Help

James

James

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Joined
Dec 29, 2017
Messages
5,100
Location
Norwich
Alias
James
Hello all,

I have the homehub 5 from BT and 3 of their extenders, and to be honest it isn't a very big house but my word they are in and out of any sort of signal strength like Norwich City and the premier league. To be fair to @Neil McRae - prior to Aliengate he actually did help me change the channles as I think being close to other people (we live within 30 meters of people either side). However, I cannot carry on with this crappy internet in my office (15m from hub max, through two walls). Any reccomendations, I would like something with range of up to 50 meters to get up to the pinshed too if possible which is through two walls again.

Budget up to £200.

Thanks all.
 
I have some powerline adapters, worth digging out. Not sure if the office is on the same ring as the living room though.
 
Powerline adapters are not the same thing. I used to run powerline adapters until one day they decided not to work. I have 6 BT Mini Disc Whole Home mesh WiFi thingy's now and they're great!
 
Rob zombie said:
Powerline adapters are not the same thing. I used to run powerline adapters until one day they decided not to work. I have 6 BT Mini Disc Whole Home mesh WiFi thingy's now and they're great!
Click to expand...
6 of em? Wow!

I came here to suggest DeWalt & Bosch. I'll get me coat.
 
The best way to deploy any wireless in a building is Ethernet cable to each WAP. More expensive but hey.... much better throughput.
Cable it back to your switch / router.
I only every set mesh networking using bonded 5Ghz in outdoor environments where I have LoS - line of site.
Main building to outdoor pinshed or setup a wireless bridge.
 
Isn’t the BT disc solution a “mesh”
Solution though and that’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.
 
Is cabling an option? If so that's the best option
Keep your current router, disable it's wireless functionality and then run a number of cables to your new access points.

AP wise you can't go wrong with Ubiquiti in a SOHO environment, pack of 3 was about £200 last time I looked, they're pretty simple to configure, and are very feature rich for the money.
But your issue will be getting the devices wired back to the gateway, if you can cable up a few locations and get back to your gateway you have loads of options, if not you have some options but they're not ideal (PowerLine adapters, which I cannot stand, would be one route to do it instead of full cable runs)
Domestic meshing devices I've no real experience of.

Scoping wireless blind is a very difficult thing to do, what kind of walls are they? Plasterboard is a very different thing than 2 foot stone, are you trying to get the signal to go round 90 degree bends in corridors with thick walls?
 
James said:
Isn’t the BT disc solution a “mesh”
Solution though and that’s as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Click to expand...
Yep and Ive had quite a few versions.
All failed in my house.
Ive had mains networks but they are troublesome.
This model seems really stable.
No drops and good distance

There is a newer version coming but probably a lot more money
 
+1 for wired cat5e to your APs and disable the wireless on your router.

If using PoE (power over ethernet) APs, you'll need a small ethernet switch to provide PoE power.

For APs, Ubiquiti are very solid (as someone mentioned above), which is what I'm using and they are very good.
 
Another vote for ubiquiti unifi aps
I use the LR ones, the controller software can be a bit buggy but they are generally a setup and forget about kind of thing, try wire as many of them back to the router as possible but they will mesh without cabling if needed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
James issue isn’t the mesh; as he says another mesh solution for him won’t make any difference; it’s the walls and distance and the limited power we are able to use, some of the other systems measured here have needed chipsets than in the system we pioneered 4 years ago (we have a newer one now) it may help but in my view:

Drill time and cable running time.

Nell.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Vimtoman said:
I have these and seem to be working out here. I have had the usual drops from Asus mesh systems and finally got something working.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-wireless-satellite-extender/dp/B01N4F1192/ref=sr_1_17?c=ts&dchild=1&keywords=Routers&qid=1622924577&refinements=p_89:NETGEAR&s=computers&sr=1-17&ts_id=430579031

Just dont bother using the app as its ****. Setup via cat.

Oh these are mesh 2.4/5 ghz so if you have any 2.4ghz plugs etc then setup is a pain for those.
Click to expand...

Had a quick look at some BT wifi extender stuff and they don't mention mesh plus they don't mention coverage. I've a large 5 bedroom house over 3 floors and lots of thick walls. The virgin wifi and (not virgin) extenders were very much like what you're complaining about. So I did something about it and purchased the TP link Deco mesh kit as recommended in an earlier post (up to 5500 sq ft coverage), no problems or complaints since. Very easy to install. Fed the router hard wired in to the first mesh network port then put the others in strategic places around the house. Use the network port on the mesh units so you don't have to use wifi to connect for faster speeds (eg laptop would be limited by laptop wifi speed but not if wired to the mesh). This system can handle multiple wifi devices up to a silly number, well over 100...
 
Yeah I might know the team that designed the BT version of this ;) we where first to do the mesh and maybe some companies license stuff!

We have the same version as James at the legendary Flip Out London Pinball club and at peak it’s had 60+ users on it and covers the whole club and works beautifully.

Every house/building is different. The signal strength between these devices are typically the same because there is a law saying what it should be! with beam-forming on newer devices which might help but I predict over time won’t. But you spends your money and you takes your choices! Run £20 cable that will 100% work or spend £100s on something that might not work! Any marketing geek that talks about coverage is frankly talking ********. I could take any of these systems and watch them fail in my modern code metal lined insulated shed.

Pete if you are in Salisbury you should bin that virgin media rubbish and get on a proper network now that we have built FTTP to all of Salisbury.

Neil.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
There's a few vendors offering the latest WiFi 6 devices that might be worth experimenting with (don't think BT does any WiFi 6 devices yet though?)
 
The Netgear I have is Wifi-6

I have 9 inch walls and the Netgear is working great.

All prior routers just didnt work out of the box.
 
You are describing the same issue I have.
As a temp measure I have 4 Draytek AP903’s running from a core Draytek router in wired (not mesh mode) using Ethernet over Power (EoP) because I alway have another job to do than drill holes and run wires.
Yes, the EoP devices have latency and limit the overall network speed. However, I can get 1/3 the internet speed in the cabin despite that device being on a separate power ring to the main router one, plus carried on 50m of power cable from the house. Yes it is a fudge but it is one that is working and let’s me work from home via Citrix. It also allows me to walk around the house and grounds, switching between AP’s and keeping a video call going.

My plan is to hard wire out the EoP devices as I renovate the rooms and add more AP’s.

Grab those EoP devices from Rob (or I can post you some older ones to give them a try).
 
Wifi 6 does nothing with power or frequencies - if you had problems that Wifi 6 fixed then likely it was something other than frequency or coverage causing the issue. Wifi6 has a lot added to manage devices and the experience to be better.




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Life gets more complex with power when you have more than one AP too, with one you can set it to max and that's fine, but with many of them you need to configure the radios correctly and max may not be the best option otherwise you may have the APs interfere with each others zones and the client device may just spend its life bouncing between the APs.
With (proper, not the SME stuff) Aruba gear we tend to set them to a 6/18 where the max radio output is 30 and have sticky client detection on to push a client over to a new AP if it doesn't do it by itself.

Wifi6 is all good, but it's not going to fix a fundamental signal issue and you also need the client devices to support it of course.....
 
I believe hard wire is the way to go, to either direct to the equipment or a wired access point. I use Unifi WiFi6 in the House, Garden & Garden room wifi on the router turned off. I believe the BT discs hop the signal from disc to disc so you can lose 50% of the bandwidth per hop but the wifi signal of course stays strong.

Please correct me if I am wrong about the BT discs or any type of unwired mesh solution.
 
Nutty said:
I believe hard wire is the way to go, to either direct to the equipment or a wired access point. I use Unifi WiFi6 in the House, Garden & Garden room wifi on the router turned off. I believe the BT discs hop the signal from disc to disc so you can lose 50% of the bandwidth per hop but the wifi signal of course stays strong.

Please correct me if I am wrong about the BT discs or any type of unwired mesh solution.
Click to expand...
Apparently "BT discs are getting very good press - they have a dedicated backhaul radio, which reduces latency and stops the bandwidth halving per hop." ... and I can't say I've noticed any reduced bandwidth.
 
What I would say is, you can but them on Amazon and if they don't solve your problems you can just return them. Much simpler than drilling and routing cables.
 
Neil McRae said:
Wifi 6 does nothing with power or frequencies - if you had problems that Wifi 6 fixed then likely it was something other than frequency or coverage causing the issue. Wifi6 has a lot added to manage devices and the experience to be better.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...
Didnt say wifi 6 was the cure, just that this Mesh router has worked well when others hadnt.
I've had other mesh routers, BT ,Asus and they have not preformed as well as this netgear.
 
Rob zombie said:
Apparently "BT discs are getting very good press - they have a dedicated backhaul radio, which reduces latency and stops the bandwidth halving per hop." ... and I can't say I've noticed any reduced bandwidth.
Click to expand...
I guarantee any 802.11 mesh system will have reduced throughput per wireless hop.
The only way to help this is by using a daisy chain back to back configuration.
See attached from my studies last year......
 

Attachments

  • CCNP Wireless Mesh A R Gray.pdf
    270.6 KB · Views: 12
@James I messed around for a while with this stuff. As you know, my house is long and thin and no chance of coverage from just a couple of access points. In the end I went with a managed Ubiquiti AP setup from Unifi - Unifi AP Pros with a couple of Outdoor AC Pros and a Unifi Security Gateway. I have 7 access points in total currently (at least one more going in), all directly wired. I did mesh (for interest) on the AP Pros and it was dire.

You can definitely do this with consumer stuff - as per Neil above, probably need to wire in. The managed aspects of more professional gear help on tuning and frequency management but is overkill.
 
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