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WiFi advice

Powerline extenders are horrible. They turn your mains wiring loom into a massive shortwave transmitter, make loads of AV kit buzz like crazy and the speeds they provide are completely subject to the vagaries iof your wiring. Awful things only to be used as a last resort. If you can, run a bit of ethernet cable instead.
 
gintonic said:
yes - if you need. Mine runs from my kitchen to my garage
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Sorry for numpty questions, but Is your router in the kitchen, or are you running a cable from an extender in the kitchen (like my BT disc) to another extender/disc/repeater in the outside shed/office?
 
ks.234 said:
Sorry for numpty questions, but Is your router in the kitchen, or are you running a cable from an extender in the kitchen (like my BT disc) to another extender/disc/repeater in the outside shed/office?
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main router (which provides whole house wifi as well) in the living room, then I have managed switches in all other rooms (apart from the bathroom).

So it goes Router -> wired (to kitchen switch) -> wired (to garage wireless access point)

I also run a firewall appliance between my VM hub (which runs in modem mode) and router. I have about 60 devices on the network at any one time
 
gintonic said:
main router (which provides whole house wifi as well) in the living room, then I have managed switches in all other rooms (apart from the bathroom).

So it goes Router -> wired (to kitchen switch) -> wired (to garage wireless access point)

I also run a firewall appliance between my VM hub (which runs in modem mode) and router. I have about 60 devices on the network at any one time
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Thank you for your patience, I now have a picture in my head to work from.
 
Deco M5 mesh system here too - faultless.

ks.234 - when you say 'extender disc', is it actually the BT mesh discs you are referring too? e.g. https://shop.bt.com/products/bt-whole-home-wi-fi-088269-CDXH.html

If so they have a good reputation also, and will work as a mesh system with any provider, they're not tied to use with BT.

They can be daisy chained wirelessly, but you'll get better performance if you can run ethernet cable to them (or some of them) if possible.
 
I think Sonos Boost is just a WiFi extender with a fancy label (it might be proprietary to Sonos). I am unsurprised it didn't play nicely with a mesh.
 
robs said:
Deco M5 mesh system here too - faultless.

ks.234 - when you say 'extender disc', is it actually the BT mesh discs you are referring too? e.g. https://shop.bt.com/products/bt-whole-home-wi-fi-088269-CDXH.html

If so they have a good reputation also, and will work as a mesh system with any provider, they're not tied to use with BT.

They can be daisy chained wirelessly, but you'll get better performance if you can run ethernet cable to them (or some of them) if possible.
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Yes, them’s the ones. Many, many thanks to everyone helping me realise that the solution has been at hand all along.

In the words of Big Chris, it’s been educational.
 
I've got a Mesh system in this house and that works well - it's just a cheap Tenda one.

In our cottage (which is a nightmare for wi-fi due to the thick walls) I use powerline adaptors from TP-Link that also create their own local wi-fi network (as well as having a couple of network cable connections) and those are also good.

To get wi-fi to my garden office (which has its own consumer unit so the powerline adapaters weren't reliable) I use a point to point wireless bridge (which basically acts as a ethernet cable but works up to 2 or 3 km allegedly, although I only needed about 30-40m) from KuWFi which is an amazing bit of kit for £75. That connects into a Netgear wireless access point (WAC104) giving my wired and wireless options.
 
If you are going to repurpose an old router as a second access point there are some things you need to reconfigure….repurposed router needs to be on the same subnet as the main router but with a different IP address. Set DNS to point at main router IP, disable DHCP, set SSID to a different name and put it on a different none conflicting channel?..
 
foxwelljsly said:
Powerline extenders are horrible. They turn your mains wiring loom into a massive shortwave transmitter, make loads of AV kit buzz like crazy and the speeds they provide are completely subject to the vagaries iof your wiring. Awful things only to be used as a last resort. If you can, run a bit of ethernet cable instead.
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Been using Powerline plugs for years now, for both audio and video, in three different locations. Never had any problems. I suppose it must depend on the quality of your wiring.
 
The thing is that the OP may not actually need a mesh network. It is important to place your access point (the thing with the aerials) as high as you can to improve coverage. Mine is in my office on the third floor of this detached house. Next is to have a decent WiFi 6 router - I use a Vigor 2865ax. This device provides coverage over all 3 floors of our house and into the garden and out-buildings. I have stayed with DrayTek for many years due to the reliability and performance. You pay more but you do get what you pay for.

If the OPs 'router' is located in a garage thats possibly the worse choice that can be made and its worth having Openreach lay a cable to a room on the top floor of a house or use the internal telephone extension if the house has one.

Another consideration is interference. The 2.4GHz band is most susceptible either through co-channel collisions or interference from other non-WiFi devices that also use this radio band. The 5GHz band is much better in this respect providing you use the correct channels. Track down inSSIDer3 (the last free version without strings) and this will show you the WiFi channels that neighbours are using and gives a performance rating so that you can tune in to the best 2.4GHz channel. Where I live surrounded by flats I often see around 30 or so WiFi station SSIDs.

DV
 
I looked into this thread because my current broadband (EE 4G mobile) is utterly useless.

Sadly, I barely understand a word of any of the posts - it might as well be written in Swahili. I think I might need to start from scratch.
 
eternumviti said:
I looked into this thread because my current broadband (EE 4G mobile) is utterly useless.

Sadly, I barely understand a word of any of the posts - it might as well be written in Swahili. I think I might need to start from scratch.
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Don't worry it is a complex subject and the engineers have done an excellent job of making this stuff mostly plug'n'play.

Its best to break it down into separate blocks. The first is your computer network connection which can be a cable Ethernet/USB or two-way radio WiFi. Doesn't matter which you choose or even both this becomes your local area network (LAN). This allows your computers, printers whatnot to talk to each other on your premises or even a factory or office block. This LAN is not related to the Internet and is a separate privately owned entity. When we need to connect to the outside World we use wide area network technology (WAN) and for the home user this is the low cost Broadband service provided mainly by Openreach although there are many service providers.

Next comes the 'black box' that allows you to connect your LAN to an external WAN. Wrongly labelled a 'router' years ago by those who didn't know what they were talking about. This box has several functions a) connectivity to your LAN usually Ethernet sockets and WiFi (wireless) via a couple of aerials b) a Firewall (this also has limited routing capability hence the use of 'router') to protect your LAN from those who'd like to barge in and take over your LAN and devices and c) a MODEM that converts your digital data into tones that go over the broadband.

The big confusion I see is that people automatically use the term WiFi to mean Internet connectivity such as 'Do you have WiFi?' They are not one and the same thing as shown above but its in general use.

Once you have a basic understanding of the architecture each bit can be addressed separately.

DV
 
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Darth Vader said:
Don't worry it is a complex subject and the engineers have done an excellent job of making this stuff mostly plug'n'play.

Its best to break it down into separate blocks. The first is your computer network connection which can be a cable Ethernet/USB or two-way radio WiFi. Doesn't matter which you choose or even both this becomes your local area network (LAN). This allows your computers, printers whatnot to talk to each other. on your premises or even a factory or office block. This LAN is not related to the Internet and is a separate privately owned entity. When we need to connect to the outside World we use wide area network technology (WAN) and for the home user this is the low cost Broadband service provided mainly by Openreach although there are many service providers.

Next comes the 'black box' that allows you to connect your LAN to an external WAN. Wrongly labelled a 'router' years ago by those who didn't know what they were talking about. This box has several functions a) connectivity to your LAN usually Ethernet sockets and WiFi (wireless) via a couple of aerials b) a Firewall (this also has limited routing capability hence the use of 'router') to protect your LAN from those who'd like to barge in and take over your LAN and devices and c) a MODEM that converts your digital data into tones that go over the broadband.

The big confusion I see is that people automatically use the term WiFi to mean Internet connectivity such as 'Do you have WiFi?' They are not one and the same thing as shown above but its in general use.

Once you have a basic understanding of the architecture each bit can be addressed separately.

DV
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As already stated I am a numpty, so please be patient. What is WiFi is not my connection to the internet? In other words, if WiFi is not the magic fairy dust that links this iPad to the black box in the corner of my room which links to a WAN, what is it?
 
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