I used to understand this stuff as well 😉 Our house has very thick walls so we can’t run a single access point. At the moment we’ve got two with different SSIDs and we’ve extended one of them using power-extenders which support wireless.

That hub is dying. It’s an old BT one. The other one is an Apple tower thing that’s also a big hard drive we use to backup the Macs.

What I want is to link at least two and maybe three hubs with a single SSID. I know I can bridge it but I seem to remember this comes with some issues. I like the idea of a mesh but I don’t like the cost.

We don’t currently use the wireless so stream music but we’d like too.  I don’t think we can get the access points close enough together to ‘see’ each other without using the power-extenders.

Is there something simple we can do not involving hideous complexity. If that’s buying loads of apple hot spots, I’m happy to do that as they come up often on eBay.

https://www.ebuyer.com/841843-tenda-mw3-nova-whole-home-wi-fi-mesh-router-system-3-pack-nova-mw3-3-pack

£86 and well reviewed.  I’ll be getting some when my BT hub dies

Ta. That looks good.

BTW, if your router is dying, get onto your provider for a new one.  I’d expect it to be provided for free, with a “well, I’ll go somewhere else then, PAC please” if they want to take money off you.

Whole Home wifi is the way to go for sure. It costs more, but it solves the problems.

NETGEAR orbi is really good. RBK50 is the best

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-System-coverage-Tri-Band-AC3000/dp/B01KVRRSNI/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1534431483&sr=1-1&keywords=rbk50

Or if you want to do it cheaper, then you can get a mesh extender that will work on the same SSID as your existing router. These are different to traditional extenders in the fact that htey use the same SSID rather than creating a seperate one…which as you know is annoying.

EX7500

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-EX7500-100UKS-Nighthawk-Wall-Plug-Tri-Band/dp/B076ZM971B/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1534431679&sr=1-1&keywords=ex7500

or

EX8000

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-EX8000-100EUS-Nighthawk-Tri-Band-FastLane3/dp/B0756NR1C4/ref=sr_1_8?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1534431483&sr=1-8&keywords=rbk50&th=1

Can you get an ethernet cable to the places you want them (even via homeplugs if necessary)? If so, go for something “prosumer” like the Unifi ones. Not difficult to set up, you have the same SSID everywhere and all the proper handoff stuff so if you walked around the house on a skype call it would just hop seamlessly between them. You can do more advanced things too, proper guest networks, separate kids one that turns on and off at certain times, etc.

I’ve seen mesh work well where signal gets weak around the house after going through a few walls/floors, but I’d be concerned that thick walls that completely block signal might be more challenging for them.

Whole home mesh as above, nothing to add except Google Wifi is excellent.

@cougar – sadly we are on poverty broadband here and currently have two bonded ADSL lines on a couple of specialist routers across two different providers so no help there. Fibre is coming. Sadly it’s another year (so jus two years late then, I’m not bitter)

Everyone else. Thanks I’ll take a look at those links.

I just looked at our ‘old’ BT router. Homehub4. Think it must be 5 years old at least. So whatever we buy we’ve had good use out of the ‘free’ one.

currently have two bonded ADSL lines on a couple of specialist routers across two different providers

Wow.  And, ugh.

Yeah and that gets us a mighty 10 meg if it’s not raining. I can’t even write down how much it costs 🙁

I have the Orbi as mentioned above. Previously had 2 net gear extending plugs on different SSIDs and constantly complaining kids and wife. Since switching to the mesh Orbi system I have a happy family and less phone calls at work asking me why the internet is ‘down’.

Worth the money in my humble opinion.

Went with the cheaper Nova solution and it’s working really well. Two downstairs, one upstairs and we have full coverage with no random dropouts….