Home WIFI Network Upgrade - Mesh System

[DRD]

I have used TP-Link ring main extenders for years. My house is old and has solid walls so wifi routers have always struggled.

The old TP-Link units worked fine but my ring main did not extend upstairs (which was OK as downstairs units covered this), to my detached workshop or my detached pinshed. If you moved around the house when using WhatsApp the call died when the phone switched from one router to the other - even though the system had one network name and password throughout the house.

An IT guy I know recommended that I upgrade to a Mesh network. He suggested that I bought a 3 unit TP-Link Deco system. He said that all the Deco models were very similar and that the more expensive ones offered little real world improvements. E4, M4, S4. The S4 is the dearest at about £130. The others cost around £100 for 3x units.

These things create a whole new network in your house with a different name and password to your main broadband router.

The thing is brilliant. It is very easy to set up using a phone-app. Less than 10 minutes. The range is vastly improved, so much so that it now reaches my detached brick workshop (25m away, passing through 2x external walls) and 50m down the street. WhatsApp calls are now seamless and do not drop as you walk around the house.

I was lucky and secured my S4 unit for £90 on amazon as part of a Black Friday deal.

https://www.box.co.uk/DECO-S4(3-PACK)-TP-Link-Deco-S4-AC1200-Whole-Home-Mesh-W_2913809.html

 

[Sako-TRG]

^^^ Glad this has worked out for you, def seems cheap enough for home use . Never been a fan of connecting kit to the ring circuits for a number of reasons, especially in commercial environments.
Mesh Wireless is actually typically designed + used for outdoor environments.
For indoor, where possible it is always better to get an Ethernet cable to each WAP (wireless access point) device back to your LAN/WAN for maximum throughput. Not a biggy for a few devices with little traffic of course but the reason I thought I’d offer some input was you mentioned the out building and thick walls.
If you have outdoor buildings it’s always best to bridge back to the main building for better throughput if you cannot get fibre. For example install WAP inside your workshop going to small PoE switch with an external wireless unit using bonded 5Ghz channels bridging to main building with same setup. The make/model/antenna is dictated by the distance between the buildings. More expense of course depending on what your trying to achieve.
These type of devices you've installed in the absence of an Ethernet backhaul will use the 5Ghz radio to relay the traffic to the root WAP connected to your LAN. You have mentioned you have really thick walls in your environment. One thing to consider which is why meshing not normally performed indoors for backhauling, due to the higher frequency the 5Ghz signal will attenuate more. How are you measuring the actual RF signal?
For clear VOIP industry standard, you would be looking at an SNR (signal to noise ratio) of circa 25dB and signal strength of circa -67dBm.
When you start going through brick walls the SNR takes a nose dive and a single brick wall, you can expect to lose 8db signal
Roaming will naturally work fine as you won’t be crossing subnets (changing IP) being typically in a home environment and the system appears to have IEEE robust security network authentication handover between each device to help with roaming. The reason being, when a client roams even between 2 WAPs on the same WLAN system, it has to re-associate and re-authenticate... to the next WAP- IEEE 802.11 methods are in place to ensure faster transition for security key exchange.
This is most likely why your calls were dropping on your your old system as it didn’t support this mechanism.
If you want to check the signal strength for kicks from your workshop to your next hop device
Download Metageek INSSIDER for free.
Get the MAC address of one of the radios of the next hop units inside your main home.
Fire up INSSIDER in your workshop and check the dBm signal strength of both the 2.4 + 5 GHz radio channels on your main home device nearest your workshop. You will easily identify it by the SSID and the radio MAC with the signal strength next to it in dBm.
I would suspect the system you have will show bonded 5Ghz channels due to the speeds they are claiming on their sales page