Mesh WiFi is it

[Cuellar]

Mesh WiFi I think.

But what is good system that isn't very expensive indeed?

[Jerzy Bondov]

I got a TP-Link Deco M5 set, I think it was pretty much entry level at the time (checks) three years ago! fuck sake. The software is good and it was very easy to set up. Works beautifully.

BT want an extra £15 a month or something for their own Mesh system but you can buy your own for about £100. Complete no-brainer.

[falafel]

I have a Deco X60 setup on the other hand, cost a fortune and drops connection every few days if not all linked together by ethernet. Which sort of defeats the object. Particularly annoying if in a meeting.

[Cuellar]

I got a TP-Link Deco M5 set, I think it was pretty much entry level at the time (checks) three years ago! fuck sake. The software is good and it was very easy to set up. Works beautifully.

BT want an extra £15 a month or something for their own Mesh system but you can buy your own for about £100. Complete no-brainer.

Yeah we just got YouFibre installed and one of the options was to add mesh WiFi for an extra whatever a month and I thought that's surely nonsense, you can just buy it outright yourself.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've got some unfi wireless ap's that can do this but what I didn't realise because I'm an idiot who didn't bother doing their research is they need a central server to control them, you can either buy a box for that or run it on a computer, they provide docker images to do it so you could run it on a pi or nas or whatever.

[Cuellar]

The tp-link ones look OK, although I will probably avoid @falafel 's X60.

[Zetetic]

I've found Deco M4s to be fine as wireless APs but haven't really tested the mesh stuff.

I did pick them because they seem well reviewed and decent for the price.

[falafel]

Hang on, how fast is your broadband? You should pay attention to the real-world speeds of any given mesh kit. If you have gigabit, almost all mesh systems will be a bottleneck to some degree, apart from the tippy top most pricey ones. And best to get them all hooked up by ethernet if you do have decent speeds. Or downgrade your internet package to suit your network speeds because it's a waste of money otherwise.

By the way, to pick up Zetetic's point my X60 setup is now performing a lot better - after my post I remembered that I had been considering switching them into AP mode (rather than them also trying to take over router responsibilities too) and they are doing consistently well so far. I have a feeling they were clashing somehow with my Orange router. I don't think it makes any difference to most people (certainly not me) and it is still doing the fundamental meshy things of seamless transitioning between antennae and so on, just not the firewall, DHCP and whatnot which is already built into the router anyway. I was an idiot for 18 months not changing it.

Will be back in here in 2 days saying it didn't fucking work after all.

[studpuppet]

+1 for the TP-Link Deco (can't remember which model I bought - either the E4 or S4 by the looks of things).

We had Wifi extenders but one of my kids had severe problems connecting because even though we reserved one extender for her exclusive use, it dropped out constantly and of course she had to reconnect to the main router every time she left her room.
Now we have three Decos and everything works perfectly for everyone. I was thinking of buying a fourth, but that would only be to get wifi to the very end of the garden, which seems a bit decadent.
The wifi copes with two people working from home and/or two people logging onto Netflix at the same time, so no complaints from us.

[Cuellar]

Hang on, how fast is your broadband? You should pay attention to the real-world speeds of any given mesh kit. If you have gigabit, almost all mesh systems will be a bottleneck to some degree, apart from the tippy top most pricey ones. And best to get them all hooked up by ethernet if you do have decent speeds. Or downgrade your internet package to suit your network speeds because it's a waste of money otherwise.

By the way, to pick up Zetetic's point my X60 setup is now performing a lot better - after my post I remembered that I had been considering switching them into AP mode (rather than them also trying to take over router responsibilities too) and they are doing consistently well so far. I have a feeling they were clashing somehow with my Orange router. I don't think it makes any difference to most people (certainly not me) and it is still doing the fundamental meshy things of seamless transitioning between antennae and so on, just not the firewall, DHCP and whatnot which is already built into the router anyway. I was an idiot for 18 months not changing it.

Will be back in here in 2 days saying it didn't fucking work after all.

Yes it is gigabit, but let me tell you my current set up (powerline adapter for my PC and the WiFi extender access point for the garage) is bottlenecking it TO FUCK probably because I got cheap powerline adapters and WiFi extenders, and my PC is upstairs on a different circuit to the router AND the adapters are going through plug boards rather than straight into the socket which they say don't do but it was always fine. With our shitty old plusnet connection I didn't care about the bottleneck too much, but now it's eating away at me that I'm not getting all my Internet. So even if it bottlenecks it, if it bottlenecks it LESS than my current setup I'll be winning.

I checked my speed on my work laptop (connected to my WiFi) in the same room as my powerline ethernetted PC and the WiFi was about 10x faster. So I think to start with I might just get a pcie wireless card for my PC, see how much difference that makes before shelling out hunners for MESH

[falafel]

Yes, even the best powerline will not quite get there. We used to have a deco P9 setup (quite a clever powerline plus wifi mesh setup, falls back on powerline if wifi is not available)  before fibre got here and it was fine - but did limit speed to something like 90mb/100mb in the real world at best case if I recall correctly. Which is still pretty nippy but definitely counts as a bottleneck. Still, that was maknly for those units out of range of the wifi.

There's a newer version of that out - the PX50 - which I have seen positive reviews of and maybe gets you up to 700mb-800mb in an ideal scenario. So that could be an option.

[Petey Pate]

Mesh WiFi I think.

But what is good system that isn't very expensive indeed?

If you have an ASUS router you can buy any additional ASUS router secondhand for cheap (doesn't have to be the same model) and set it to be a Wifi Mesh really easily.