BT line comes into one corner of my house and Wi-Fi struggles to reach into back room. This room is now being extended so looking to improve range of Wi-Fi or add in second access point. What is the best option for this? I can run cabling through if necessary. I’ve been using plug in range extenders for a while with mixed success.

Mesh WiFi is most effective at ensuring whole house coverage, though not the cheapest. Depending on the wiring in your house, a power line adaptor to share the WiFi is cheap, but may not be as effective.

Edit, the problem I’ve had with using a 2nd router is that devices wouldn’t smart switch to the strongest signal, so I would still get slow speeds until I manually chose the the network. Mesh WiFi smart switches.

Cool, since posting this I’ve been looking at the mesh and they seem idea. Anyone got a first hand experience of particular make that they would recommend?

There quite a few thread about Wifi/mesh regularly, the consensus I’ve seen suggest the expensive setups (ala BT) are expensive but work well, the cheap versions can work well but potentially not last. Hence I’m still on the fence and continue to use a powerline adopter and old router to extend my wifi

If you go mesh the bt ones aren’t a bad price and get good reviews. What sort if house? You might be fine with just a better router. I put one on my Virgin connection – massive improvement. Took me longer to think of network names and passwords than it did to set up.

We have the BT mesh thing which work wonderfully.

If your broadband is with BT, one of their products includes the mesh setup in its monthly fee.

I bought a TP link extender. Plug it into a socket and connect it to your wifi job done.

I got fed up with the family complaining about dead spots so went with Google mesh – not the cheapest but does a great job – nice phone app as well so you can admin it – nice when the wife phones and says can you kill the internet, as the kids wont get off it and do their homework. 🙂

Had Tenda Mesh. Gave it away to someone on here. Cheap, easy to setup but not enough coverage for our house (old thick walls, funny shape, etc).

Bought a Netgear Orbi and two satellites. That’s on the ‘expensive’ side of mesh networks but it’s been rock solid for the 8 months we’ve had it. Also as it has it’s own backhaul the wifi speeds are properly impressive. It’s as fast to back my Mac up to my NAS via wireless as it was on a 100meg ethernet cable.

I think you can get a Tenda kit for £50 or so. That’s not much more than a repeater. I wouldn’t go down the two routers road- as said above ^^ no auto switch of SSIDs and you’d prob have to use different wifi bands etc.

TP link extenders work really well – assuming your wiring is all on one circuit.

TP link extenders work really well – assuming your wiring is all on one circuit.

It’s the Wi-fi booster not the Powerlink.

The BT set up seems to be the way to go. They have Wi-Fi parental controls which, in a house full of kids, will give me God like powers.

I recently got the TP link Deco M9 mesh set up. Certainly not cheap but considering my last wifi router set up lasted well over ten years I figured it’s worth it. I want a 3 node setup so I can get good coverage into my back garden but have just started with two to see how I get on and can always add more nodes in the future. 2 nodes is probably adequate…certainly is for the home. Set up was really easy…genuinely plug in and play.

…until they simply start using the 4g you’ve kindly got them!!

TP link set up as an access point, run off a power line from the router…cheap and works well enough for a Zwift set up in the garage, I’d probably try mesh if looking to run multiple devices off it.

@sharkbait : “…until they simply start using the 4g you’ve kindly got them!!” – aye you’re right there – my 2 kids are on 3’s unlimited data (after a shocker of a Vodafone bill) – their customer service is great – quick web chat and the service is disconnected …ahh happy days 🙂

BT mesh system in old thick walled house, its btilliant, well worth it.

Tenda mesh ssytem here – works brilliantly and only about £50 for the two node one I needed.

Si

Mesh is the second best way to do this.
The best way is a cabled connection to an access point.
So seeing as OP says that a cable can be run, that is the best solution.

Had Tenda Mesh. Gave it away to someone on here. Cheap, easy to setup but not enough coverage for our house (old thick walls, funny shape, etc).

Out of interest, why didn’t you just add more nodes to the Tenda mesh?

Because it has no dedicated backhaul. No it’s slicing the spectrum to broadcast/carry frequencies from each unit. We had 6 at one point which all connected, but the usable bandwidth of the mesh fell dramatically. To the point it was less than our internet connection!

They also automatically interconnect so there’s a lot of traffic passing between nodes with two possible three other connections.

Hence switching to the Orbi which has a dedicated backhaul.

That’s not a great explanation ^^ sorry. I think this is the original article I read: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33023-don-t-get-caught-in-the-wireless-mesh

Orbi’s do daisy-chain now so you can run three. Which is good as two wasn’t enough. Most of the coverage stats from all vendors are on the optimistic side to put it mildly.

That’s very helpful actually, I hadn’t realised the effect of halving the bandwidth for each hop if you didn’t have a dedicated backhaul (which rules out plans to get a 5 or 6 node Tenda Mesh for at my parent’s house). The Zyxel Multy X looks interesting but seems limited to 3 nodes but even worse the config app only works on certain phones (and even though it connects to the access points via Bluetooth it doesn’t work from an iPad, sounds like it needs an active Internet connection to me which is a terrible design). Might have a look at the Orbi’s, although still sceptical about 3 nodes being sufficient in a fairly large old house with thick walls.

it depends on what your doing. Ive got a BT mesh and its great should have got it years ago. However it does have issues with things like music streaming and discovery of devices if you move nodes. the beta firmware helps

TP powerline adapters here. They work very well apart from for our Sonos.

Each outlet makes it’s own network (I think). You give these all the same name/password so your devices can jump on the strongest easily.

For Sonos, each speaker is on it’s powerline adaptors’ network and so you can only “see” the speaker(s) that your phone/controller happens to be on the same network. Defeats the purpose somewhat.

savoyad

Member

Mesh is the second best way to do this.
The best way is a cabled connection to an access point.
So seeing as OP says that a cable can be run, that is the best solution.

This will have the same problem as what Drac suggested, hand-off is crap. Devices will try desperately to cling on to a bad signal rather than switch to one they’re right next to.

I would therefore suggest mesh with wired backhaul. Orbi, Linksys Velop and Google’s mesh all support this.

I believe the mesh devices use the 802.11r protocol for seamless handoff.

I have no issues with my to link deco m9’s. Not unusual for 4 or more devices to be streaming media With zero issues. He difference might be mine is a modern home with mostly stud interior walls sonpretry transparent for Wi-fi.

The TP Link deco can do backgaul via Ethernet, either by daisy chaining or by splitting from the base node (the one connected to the modem) and splitting via a network switch. I’ve not got mine set up like this but nice to know I can try this if I have issues in future.

Another to link deco m9 user here. Three nodes, one on each floor, with ethernet back haul.

I get full speeds across the WiFi and ethernet, including when accessing the NAS. App is easy to use, parental features are good, seriously hard not to recommend.

I did a couple of tests with our Orbi setup

– Connected via an Ethernet rather than wireless
– Test against Tenda using a Wifi Strength / BW analyser

The ‘heaviest’ app I could find to see if I needed a physical backhaul was the NAS running into one of the Satellites via the on board Gig ports. Perf difference between Eth/Wireless was not significant. More on how the NAS disk was doing I think.

Also tried streaming to max out our 60 meg internet connection. No difference either way (which I expected as 60 meg isn’t much compared to Wifi Performance)

Same tests with Tenda (obv no backhaul) and NAS dropped about 70% (Was now in a 100 meg port as that all the Tenda supports) and could only get around 30 meg on streaming. I mean these aren’t proper tests but I wanted to make sure I was solving the right problem (we’ve had internet issues…)

In terms of the wifi strength adaptor, Orbi connections 325-450Mbps (dropped off as I got closet to end of range) across both main unit and satellites. No difference between them and no difference swapping backhaul media. Tenda with 6 nodes – 20-30 meg at best and VERY variable.

Our house is 3200 sq.feet (old rambling B&B) and Orbi reckoned we needed 2. No way. 3 only just does it. And doesn’t get to the shed 40 feet away. Big old stone walls tho and the primary orbi is in the loft under the external BB antenna so not ideal config.

Anyway TLDR, for us the Orbi solution solved problems with the Tenda Mesh. Good job as it’s about 5 times as expensive.

BT now do two versions, one with dedicated (wireless) backhaul, one without. We went without as had network cabling around and about and so able to plug nodes into them.

Prior to mesh we had four routers running (3 as AP.) Fine when connected, but couldnt move round. 4 mesh nodes and all is good!

Another Orbi household here. We have a four bedroomed, early ’70’s built, house, so two Orbi nodes works well. Speed to the outside world is normally limited by the other end. We have Virgin 200 Mb BB and I can get that on some sites. Really easy to set up, and very easy for an IT person to fiddle with!

I do backups of my laptop to a NAS over the Wi-Fi and it just happens. Even when we are all streaming over Wi-Fi, no noticeable issues. If I am logged into teh Orbi, I can see devices moving between the nodes, but the person on the device sees nothing.

And teh next generation of Orbi’s is better!

This will have the same problem as what Drac suggested, hand-off is crap.

Hand off is crap with crap hardware.
I have a network of TPLink powerline adaptors with Apple Airport Extreme routers hanging off them. Hand off works beautifully and is a one click setup job. Apple did a nice job to make this work seamlessly and you can pick up used Airport Extreme routers for £25 nowadays (which weirdly less then Airport Express routers go for).

Mesh is great if you lay out the cash for a good system. But if you don’t want to shell out for it, I’d vote for the simplest option here: run Cat6 cabling to the new part of the house from the main router, then add a second router in access point mode, with its Wifi set to the same network name and password as the main router.

Cheap wifi extenders aren’t worth it, as the through speed is often awful

Those Orbi’s are massive aren’t they!!

They’re a bit of a statement for sure 😉

TP powerline adapters here. They work very well apart from for our Sonos.

Each outlet makes it’s own network (I think). You give these all the same name/password so your devices can jump on the strongest

I’ve just done the same with dlink adapters. £50 for the main unit and two extension points. Works a treat and very easy to set up as a clone of the router so no messing about with passwords.

Those Orbi’s are massive aren’t they!!

I’ve managed to hide ours with no real effort. And even though they are tucked away, they just work.

timmys

Hand off is crap with crap hardware.
I have a network of TPLink powerline adaptors with Apple Airport Extreme routers hanging off them. Hand off works beautifully and is a one click setup job. Apple did a nice job to make this work seamlessly and you can pick up used Airport Extreme routers for £25 nowadays (which weirdly less then Airport Express routers go for).

It’s not a question of being crap or not, it’s just that an access point usually does not support 11r(/k/v) which is prerequisite for seamless handoff.

An Apple Extreme router is very much not what I was talking about, which was a device like this:

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/range-extender/re650/#specifications

Orbi.  The buying was painful but haven’t had any problems since and haven’t looked at it for ages now