Sorry – another router-ish question – MESH home wifi systems like BT or Google

Are they any good?

Finally about get to better internet into the house, and want to make sure it goes everywhere. I’ve not had much success with range extenders in the past, so wondering if MESH is worth the extra cash and are they as good as the marketing bollocks would lead you to believe?

And should I get a quality modem to plug into the MESH thing, or just the junky router from the broadband provider?

I’ve used the BT system and it was very easy to setup and vastly improved the Wi-Fi at my in-laws house. Used their Virgin media router but with the Wi-Fi turned off. Then used a power line adapter to get from the router to first BT disc, sited in the middle of the downstairs. This meant I only needed to use one more disc for upstairs. Thought I might need 3 at least but 2 did it.

They were purchased directly from BT and we were able to return the ones that weren’t needed. They’re packed in a way that makes repacking easy.

Range extenders *are* arse, which is why they’ve sucked.  Mesh networking actually works!

The junky provided modem will probably be fine, just turn off the wifi.  I’d recommend plugging the first mesh box into the router directly (I use powerline to join my modem to the rest of the house, and have to reboot at least one of one a month) and then the rest where needed.

I wouldn’t use the BT stuff as their technical support appears to be a bit suspect/slow. It took 3 months earlier this year to put right a buggy firmware release that knackered wifi on their kit. (Virgin are worse with their fix for Superhub3 nearly a` year and counting for the data flood knocking them off-line if you use it as a modem).

Asus and Ubiquiti make mesh routers and kit that’s more robust and cheaper than the Velop and Orbi stuff.

I’ve just changed from an Apple Airport Extreme ‘mesh’ system (two linked units) to a three node Google WiFi system.

Much much better and easy to configure/maintain.

Picked Google over BT as I prefer to look of the units.

Unfortunately the BT units can be picked up quite cheaply (wonder why?) But the Google ones are pretty expensive ☹️

Very glad I changed though.

I just put in a two unit google one. Its excellent, and the visibility into what devices are connected where and how much bandwidth each is using is excellent. You can also give priority to certain devices, and there is a family setting which allows you to add certain devices to a group and then block that group from the internet at certain times of the day (think kids devices at bedtime)

The advantage of mesh is that you can roam around your home and your devices will seamlessly switch to the nearest access point with no loss in connection. Extenders on the other hand, you connect to the nearest one and stay connected to it even if you move to another room, ie, its rubbish.

Anyone know if these conflict with sonos -over WiFi)?

We’ve got Orbi. It’s ace.

Google wifi is great.  Look like they finally enabled multicast iptv support in the June update, so no reason not to recommend them.

I’ve got 2 setup in my house, with a wired connection  between them (they need to be paired wireless when you first set them up).  Way simpler then my old AP setup I had before.  All configurable through a google app.

A point worth noting is that they don’t have an inbuilt modem.  So you’ll need either a separate modem (BT ones available cheaply on ebay) or a WAN output on your existing all in one router (and then switch everything else off / don’t plug into the LAN side).

Hmmm…. RE: IPTV multicast release notes don’t seem to say it, but reddit does.  I wonder if this is country specific?

https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/9034995?hl=en&ref_topic=6246512

June 2018 Release Notes from GoogleWiFi

Just had to google IPTV, what is the benefit on a small home network?

I think some of the BT set top boxes require IPTV multicast protocols for streaming.  Not sure on the details, I don’t have one myself.

No conflict between Sonos and mesh system (why would it…. Sonos uses the WiFi network, it doesn’t create it’s own)

No conflict between Sonos and mesh system (why would it…. Sonos uses the WiFi network, it doesn’t create it’s own)

not true, Sonos can set its own mesh network up, it depends how it’s set up, in some setups you can introduce spanning tree issues which can affect both Sonos and the network as a whole.

Googling ‘sonos mesh stp’ will give more info for anyone interested.

Been using the BT WholeHome thingy for about a year and a half, since a house refurb featuring steels and lots of foil backed products, insulation, laminate underlay etc, rendered my previously excellent wifi rather less than excellent.  Works well, especially after changing Virgin Router/Modem from superhub v2 to v3 and several firmware updates from BT.  Would have preferred the Linksys or Netgear solution but I was flat broke
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