Hey,

We’re moving into a new house soon, which is pretty large, with stone walls and we have a studio building about 50m away from the house that also needs internet.

I’ve been looking at wireless access points, which seems to be the best option. But… What’s everyone else using?

Or .. what would you recommend?

Cheers!

Ricks

Exact same situation here. A MESH system with 3 repeaters was the solution. Seamless connection outside in the house and outbuildings

We have a DECO system, but any MESH system is going to be better than WiFi repeaters, power line adapters etc all of we we tried previously.

Mesh – Got BT with 2 discs, with another disc on order

Nice. Seems to be loads of Mesh options.

How do they cope with the distances between buildings? Still full signal?

Prety good. I have BT hub in front corner of house (where phone socket is), one disc on opposite side of lounge near back window (covers back garden), and another out in my garage for Zwift. This one relays full signal out to the summer house where I’m working from home. Going to add another disc upstairs just to improve the signal near my daughter’s room.

For the studio, you could always run a network cable inside plastic pipe down the boarder/fence.

Yep, full signal and same upload/download speed everywhere. And devices automatically connect to the nearest repeater without having to tell them like you do with WiFi repeaters.

We notice when one of the discs get’s powered off (cats knock it off window sill) as speed drops on devices.

I’ve got BT Complete WiFi and it is very good. I didn’t buy the disks upfront, instead I pay £3 a month extra to get as many disks as I need (up to five I think) I have hub in living room corner of house, disk at back of house and one upstairs. It just works.

I think you’ll need a wired solution to outbuilding. You could run cat5 cable then plug in a bt disk for seamless connectivity. Just don’t tell bt as their complete WiFi guarentee won’t cover outbuildings

Sure you’ll get people telling you horror stories about bt but I have found them to be good and have bundled my families mobiles in to get cracking pricing. Use quidco to get cash back or phone them to haggle price. I’m paying under £50 per month for broadband and four mobile phones

Another vote for the BT WholeHome discs here; we have three which cover the garden and the extension at the furthest point of the house from the router and they work well.

The discs will mesh themselves via wi-fi but if the distance is too much they can talk over a wire as well, so you could put one in the house nearest to the outbuilding, one in the outbuilding with a wire between the two and you’d get wi-fi everywhere.

We had a hard wire run round to the back of the house and a second wifi router at the rear. The only faff is 2 wifi networks but most devices will just switch as needed, the performance is as expected with a hard wire – faultless. We had tried various others and all were rubbish.

I’d run a wire out to the outbuilding.

I’m in a very similar position. Seems to me to be a bit of a lottery in terms of up front order; what if I buy a 4-pack and only need three?

I didn’t buy the disks upfront, instead I pay £3 a month extra to get as many disks as I need (up to five I think)

BT as your ISP I assume?

BT WholeHome here as well. I r<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>an some cat6 cable to our outbuilding office and have 1 in there too I. tried without the cable at first but i think the foil backed insulation boards stopped the signal. Either that or it was just too far from the nearest disc in the house for stable connection.</span>

BT , mesh system here too, it’s superb. I have one out in the summer house, which as it’s behind a brick bomb shelter, had to run a cat5 cable out to it, just connected to the one at the back of the house, works brilliantly.

I bought a Google Nest Mesh setup for my house, and it’s excellent – completely sorted out my wifi woes. No outbuilding though – I’d have thought a cable out to that would be a better (and cheaper) option.

BT as your ISP I assume?

Yes.

My download speed isn’t great and tied to openreach infrastructure. I have been with various ISP’s over the years and BT always seem to get the best performance out of their cables.

would the BT discs work well with a virgin router…just plug and play???

DrP

BT Disks work with any ISP and modern router

Complete Wi-fi is the disk set up for BT Broadband customers, they are black disks
Whole Home Wi-fi is the desk set up for other ISP and routers, they are white disks. The black and white are not cross compatible.

I was in a similar situation. Infact I started off with BT Whole Home and needed ~5 discs and still only got patchy coverage in some rooms. We ended up hard wiring 2 Unifi access points back to the router. They have been faultless for over a year now, perfect coverage everywhere.

#blackdiscsmatter

Think i’ll go for the 3 disc setup…just in a flat at the mo, but want to get a house soon so 3 seems sensible!

DrP

Outbuildings are surprisingly easy to cover with WiFi, because In free air 50m of range is not unreasonable. The challenge is blasting through thick stone walls! But if you can get a mesh node with line of site to the outbuilding, possibly another node in the outbuilding, you should be good. The node in the house can be near or a window or better still in the loft. Works for me

Cantenna?

On the subject of mesh solutions, elsewhere on the Internet I’ve just been reminded of Ubiuiti.

I’d vote for TendaNova WiFi kits. I have the MW3 at home (which I think is now eol) but the MW5 has a higher spec and tends to be cheaper than most kit out there – just add on nodes as required.

Yeah, there’s line of site from the house to the studio. It’s basically another house, so proper walls, insulation etc.

Looks like a 3-disc mesh in the house, with a CAT-5 buried to the studio, and another disc in the studio to broadcast the WiFi.

Mesh inside the main house seems like a no-brainer – it’s just whats the best solution for getting to the studio.

The other options I’ve seen are using outdoor access points, or line of sight access points.

Thanks everyone, I’ve ordered BT complete WIFI. And I think I’ll run some CAT5 to the Studio / Main House depending on which line we use.

Oooh, I’m liking the look of those. There’s MW6 which I’m assuming implies 802.11ax? Handy for future-proofing if so.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tenda-Nova-Coverage-Parental-Configured/dp/B078NJ2QX2/

Tech specs:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91VhM5MYtmL.pdf

There’s MW6 which I’m assuming implies 802.11ax?

… or maybe not. Early days yet I suppose.