Which Wi-Fi mesh?

[Doug71]

Have been thinking of getting a Wi-Fi mesh system for my house. House is quite large with a few steel beams in and thick walls etc. Currently have the router, 2 wireless access points (if that's the right term) and a wi-fi extender. Problem is when you move round the house you need to change networks, it's mainly the kids on their tablets and phones that moan about it. The televisions, game consoles etc are all connected with cat 5 so the mesh is only really for the portable stuff.

With Black Friday nearly here thought it might be time to invest, just looking on Amazon and there looks to be some good deals.

Anyone got any recommendations, needs to be easy to set up as I am not very techy? Some reviews moan that some don't work with DSL or PPPOE, not sure if that's me

Thanks in advance, Doug

 

[XH558]

Hi Doug,

I have got a BT Whole Home Pro mesh system. 4 disk system.
ISP is VM Hub 3.0 350+Mbps.
There was initially a connectivity issue between VM and the BT kit. BT sent me a Whole Home 4 disk kit while they resolved the issue with VM. Very good support from BT. New firmware from both resolved the issues. Very pleased with the kit. Even have one in the shed approx 20m away from the kitchen disk and get very good connectivity even though the disk shows and amber weak connection lamp. Good enough to watch YouTube shop videos..

Hope that helps. I would certainly recommend the WH equipment.

Currently have 24 devices connected to it and you wouldn't notice.

 

[Richard_C]

My router is a Fritzbox supplied by Zen. Few weeks back bought a Fritz 3000 mesh extender. Plug in, let it boot, press connect button for 30 seconds on router, press connect on extender, that's it. Brilliant, recovers itself from power cuts, no need to do anything on whatever device you are using. Replicates all 3 networks, 2.4, 5 and guest. Signal upstairs and in the double garage workshop in front garden now very strong.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Ubiquiti Unifi here. Not cheap but very good. I have a Unifi controller (appliance) too - I didn't get on with the Cloud version, though that would have worked too.

The switchover between access points for a client is usually seamless - I can walk around playing a YouTube video or FaceTime without any stuttering (iPad and my tablet are both 802.11 AC, 5GHz band). Everything is power-over-Ethernet, which makes managing it all really easy and the cabling relatively neat. I got better coverage than expected - budgeted for 3 APs but ended up needing only two - skipped the middle floor entirely. I'll probably put one outdoors to cover the garden too if we stay here, but expecting to move in a couple of years.

I found the Ubiquiti stuff very easy to configure too.

 

[DBT85]

I'm with Eric. If you've got the string in place to do it, use some Unifi. I have 2 in the house (very spread out bungalow) and then one in the workshop. All POE but rather annoyingly they are Ubiquitis own POE standard and not...the standard. Mine all convene along with the rest of the home network into a patch panel and switch in the loft.

Have also used the TP link EAP225 In wall APs and they work great too and do the same as the Unifi gear for a lower pice point. There may be things they DON'T do, but nothing I have wanted thus far.

 

[jimmy_s]

After trying a few others I ended up going with Unifi as well, work great.

 

[mg123]

Recently purchased a TPlink deco m4 (3 pack) and it has totally surpassed my expectation.
No dead spots and it is quicker than I've ever achieved with my EE (BT) router. I'm getting 71mb speed which is the maximum to the house speed. I have an 8 port gigabit ethernet switch in my home office room, on there I'm getting 67/68mb speed to my PC but using the mesh I achieve 71mb over WiFi in pretty much every corner of the house. Would never have expected quicker speed on WiFi vs ethernet. I live in a 3 bed semi and all areas of the house achieve pretty much top speed now, my workshop is around 20 meters away from the house and I still manage to get 40mb+ in there too.
The TP link S4 (same spec as M4 but slightly smaller) is on sale at Amazon now for £89.99 which is a good offer. Both the M4 and S4 have 2 gigabit ethernet ports on them. I'd personally avoid the E4 variant as these have 10/100 ethernet and are offer no £ saving.
I would recommend the tp link without any reservation. The app to set it up is really easy to use and very intuitive. You can also add any extra tp link mesh models in the future as they're all compatible.

 

[NewbieRaf]

+1 million for unifi, Anything you will end up replacing

 

[space.dandy]

I've had Google Mesh in my house for a few years now and I can't really fault it.

 

[paulrbarnard]

TPLink Orbi mesh here. It uses separate radio for the mesh and the users. It has proven to be very fast and reliable.

 

[porker]

I have the TPLink Deco mesh also in a large old house with thick walls and lots of steel beams. Works well and gives me good control over my kids access to the net during school days. Got fed up with Powerline and a mix of access points. When it worked it was fine but used to lock up about once a week. Now no issues - apart from a slow BB connection due to 3km of old copper back to the cabinet.

 

[pe2dave]

UK (if Yorks still admits to being UK ;-) ) - BT are selling their whole house system with guarantees?
https://www.bt.com/broadband/complete-wifi/deals

 

[Gazzarose]

I bought a Tenda Nova system in about June and it's been working well. I can now walk from the front bedroom out to the garage at the end of the garden and not lose WiFi. The nodes have got ethernet ports in them so if something hasn't got WiFi but has an ethernet port you can add it to the network, my wife is working from home at the moment so although her Pc has WiFi her printer is a network one with only a wired connection so we've got that plugged in to one of the nodes.

 

[--Tom--]

Another +1 for ubiquiti, recently got round to sorting my home network after years of waiting to get round to it. It cost a little more but has been faultless and being able to firewall off each of the wireless networks, set bandwidth allowances, is great.

Have seamless WiFi all through house and workshop now

 

[fezman]

Doug, I've been looking to buy the Devolo Magic 2 Wifi kit - uses powerline networking to link wireless access points. Was hoping for a BF deal today, but no joy.
I use powerline adapters at the minute, the oldest version, and get about 35mbps. These Devolo realistically provide about 4-600Mbps between the access points. Not the 2400Mbps they claim. I stick with powerline as I have a detached garage (aka workshop) about 25m away and the wifi doesnt stretch to there, but the powerline does.

 

[RGIvy]

We've used a TPlink deco m4 (3 pack) for over a year and very happy with it. My brother and son also use it - brilliant.

 

[Doug71]

Thanks guys, seems like most would do the job I need.

A friend has the BT ones which he is really happy with.

The unifi thing sounds good but might be a bit too techy for me, it doesn't sound as plug and play as the others?

 

[Markvk]

Unifi are excellent i have 3 in the house and one in the workshop, you will also need a cloud key to allow them to reset on power failure without any issues. They might be a little more complex to set up but not massively so. They also allow you to have a guest network. security wise this is a very good thing, it only allows people on the guest network access to the internet and any other places that you set up for them to have access to, they cant access any of your personal files on any other device connected.

 

[--Tom--]

UniFi is virtually plug and play to get it working, gives you a unified console with everything in one place.

Once working you can then at your leisure start tweaking. There are loads of great tutorials.

Unlike older kit you can do it through clicking through menus rather than having to use the command line.

The downside is price, a cloud key + managed switch + security gateway+ access points adds up.

 

[Sru]

If you want a simple tri-band system, the Amazon Eero Pro system is a good middle option. Supports the new Wifi 6 protocols and has 2 ethernet ports on each node to plug devices directly in. I have been using the first gen Google Nest wifi mesh system but it's coverage is flakey and the shed gets minimal signal. It also has random issues with Sky Go (doesn't everything!). I had hoped either Linksys MX10600 Velop or ASUS ZenWiFi AX AT8 would be on Black Friday offer. Both are exceptional Wifi 6 systems with many lan prorts but expensive. My other reason for needing to update is down to so many wifi devices in the home - over 30 at the last count. This causes significant bottlenecks.

For current generation WiFi, Netgear Orbi RBK50 is a very good mainstream option with even better coverage than some of the new Wifi 6 systems.