Wifi in an old house - blank spots/access point or repeater
Discussion
Hi All
My home office has been moved to the old part of the house. The wifi in here is dead, but ive been getting by with a Xiaomi repeater which i got for a tenner on ali. Now this isnt a long term solution so IT have recommended access point devices. Has anyone any experience with these?? especially in the context of an old house. what would you recommend?
Internet is as good as can be speed wise.
cheers
My home office has been moved to the old part of the house. The wifi in here is dead, but ive been getting by with a Xiaomi repeater which i got for a tenner on ali. Now this isnt a long term solution so IT have recommended access point devices. Has anyone any experience with these?? especially in the context of an old house. what would you recommend?
Internet is as good as can be speed wise.
cheers
boholoblanka said:
Hi All
My home office has been moved to the old part of the house. The wifi in here is dead, but ive been getting by with a Xiaomi repeater which i got for a tenner on ali. Now this isnt a long term solution so IT have recommended access point devices. Has anyone any experience with these?? especially in the context of an old house. what would you recommend?
Internet is as good as can be speed wise.
cheers
There will be a dozen views on this.... I live in a 14th Century house and the BT router is in a cellar.My home office has been moved to the old part of the house. The wifi in here is dead, but ive been getting by with a Xiaomi repeater which i got for a tenner on ali. Now this isnt a long term solution so IT have recommended access point devices. Has anyone any experience with these?? especially in the context of an old house. what would you recommend?
Internet is as good as can be speed wise.
cheers
I've tried most solutions - repeaters, wired access points, home plugs, wired.
Wired works best (obviously) and then wired access points in my experience. I've turned my BT Whole Home system into a mish mash of wired access points and wired to homeplug access points. Sounds mad, but it works.
It’s very very difficult to be anywhere close to definitive without knowing the floor plan & construction type at a minimum.
Who your isp is & what box thing you have & where it’s located in the home is also needed.
Wireless Mesh is often touted as the one size fits all solution for everyone & everything, but depends on the needs, the building the the specific mesh type.
Generally if you can get a network cable to the dead zone that is the most optimal solution, it gives the option of connecting the computer, printer, phone, etc either wired or wirelessly.
Some food for thought on options.
Who your isp is & what box thing you have & where it’s located in the home is also needed.
Wireless Mesh is often touted as the one size fits all solution for everyone & everything, but depends on the needs, the building the the specific mesh type.
Generally if you can get a network cable to the dead zone that is the most optimal solution, it gives the option of connecting the computer, printer, phone, etc either wired or wirelessly.
Some food for thought on options.
Captain Morgan said:
in general a wired connection will be faster & more reliable than a wireless one.
All mesh & access point solutions need at least one access point wired to the router
There are a number of different flavours of mesh systems. All of them need to be interconnected (backhaul), think of it as a chain, that chain starts (or finishes) at your wireless device, phone, tablet, laptop etc, that connects to a wireless access point be that a deco M5 or the access point in the 'router box', the type of interconnect (backhaul) can be a wired ethernet cable, it can be wireless or you can have something called powerline which uses your ring mains as ethernet, as you'd expect wired is generally the better performance but harder to physically install, wifi is easier but has the challenges of penetrating through walls etc.
wifi generally has a much easier time passing through normal joists & floorboards as opposed to bricks, for example I have had my 'router box' & now a single access point in my loft & it covers a home aprox the same size as yours perfectly well on both floors. This could be an option if you have power in the loft or/& the means to get a couple of ethernet cables up to it. If you think about wifi as a bubble that forms around the access point putting it in the loft allows the bubble to form without hitting any walls and then the bubble has a easier time passing through the ceilings and floors rather wnar trying to penetrate through walls.
wifi is a more like a two way conversation than say a lecture meaning that both the access point & wifi client have to be able to talk to each other, having one with a loud volume doesn't help if the other party in the conversation has a weak voice, this is often where folk get caught out they put a mesh node with a wifi backhaul connection in a dead zone & it struggles to maintain the conversation with the other mesh node('s) because its in a wifi dead zone.
Its much better to have the nodes closer together so they can maintain the conversation, think about the ripples on a still pond from a stone the farther they travel the weaker they get now use two stones you want teh nodes to have a strong conjoing od ripples but also resonable distance between them.
Whatever you do generally the client device will decide what access point it connects to, the mesh systems or access points have little involvement in which node a client connects to, thes means you can get situations where a client hangs onto a weak connection despite having a much nearer & stronger one close by.
if you have devices that you care about speed/reliability such as a 'office' pc you upload lots of data from try and get them wired rather than rely on wifi.
Some isp's force you to use there 'router box' some don't I cant figure out which type yours is, so we'll assume they are the former & you have to use their router, this is important as it effects how you set up the mesh system.
There are four main types of 'mesh':
You have the dedicated access point solution where these are often ceiling mounted, wired back to a switch & may or may not connect to a dedicated router, these generally give the best performance.
They kind of setup Wiley, blackal & I have.
2 channel wireless mesh this is what you have with the M5's this means the nodes have 2 radios in each node one on the 2.5Ghz frq, the other on the 5Ghz frq the backhaul connection is made on the 5Ghz radio & this is shared with any devices that also use that frq of wifi.
3 channel wireless mesh is as above but has a third radio also on the 5Ghz frq that is a dedicated one for the backhaul connection, which in turn improves the speeds for client devices on that frq.
Generally both of these types can be wired together with ethernet cables giving a wired backhaul & performance & placement options closer to the dedicated access point solutions.
The last type use powerline technology to use the domestic ring main as the backhaul between nodes, generally these speed of these are limited due to the nature of this tech to 200-300Mbs which shouldn't be a issue if you chose this route as it is close to your line speed anyway. They also come witht he freedom of placement you get with wired access points, however they don't work in all situations & rely on the quality of your electrical circuits.
Device placement:
As a first step think about the floor plan of the house & split it into the number of mesh nodes you have, so if you have four nodes split the home in quarters, if its three, thirds, then you place a node as close to the center of each segment as you can.
At least one node needs to be close to your 'router box' & be cabled to it, you may obviously want to bias key areas such as getting a node towards the rear of the house to see if that will cover the bbq area, closer to a office space etc.
Try that with wireless backhaul & see how the speeds and stability are before making the call to run more cables.
All mesh & access point solutions need at least one access point wired to the router
There are a number of different flavours of mesh systems. All of them need to be interconnected (backhaul), think of it as a chain, that chain starts (or finishes) at your wireless device, phone, tablet, laptop etc, that connects to a wireless access point be that a deco M5 or the access point in the 'router box', the type of interconnect (backhaul) can be a wired ethernet cable, it can be wireless or you can have something called powerline which uses your ring mains as ethernet, as you'd expect wired is generally the better performance but harder to physically install, wifi is easier but has the challenges of penetrating through walls etc.
wifi generally has a much easier time passing through normal joists & floorboards as opposed to bricks, for example I have had my 'router box' & now a single access point in my loft & it covers a home aprox the same size as yours perfectly well on both floors. This could be an option if you have power in the loft or/& the means to get a couple of ethernet cables up to it. If you think about wifi as a bubble that forms around the access point putting it in the loft allows the bubble to form without hitting any walls and then the bubble has a easier time passing through the ceilings and floors rather wnar trying to penetrate through walls.
wifi is a more like a two way conversation than say a lecture meaning that both the access point & wifi client have to be able to talk to each other, having one with a loud volume doesn't help if the other party in the conversation has a weak voice, this is often where folk get caught out they put a mesh node with a wifi backhaul connection in a dead zone & it struggles to maintain the conversation with the other mesh node('s) because its in a wifi dead zone.
Its much better to have the nodes closer together so they can maintain the conversation, think about the ripples on a still pond from a stone the farther they travel the weaker they get now use two stones you want teh nodes to have a strong conjoing od ripples but also resonable distance between them.
Whatever you do generally the client device will decide what access point it connects to, the mesh systems or access points have little involvement in which node a client connects to, thes means you can get situations where a client hangs onto a weak connection despite having a much nearer & stronger one close by.
if you have devices that you care about speed/reliability such as a 'office' pc you upload lots of data from try and get them wired rather than rely on wifi.
Some isp's force you to use there 'router box' some don't I cant figure out which type yours is, so we'll assume they are the former & you have to use their router, this is important as it effects how you set up the mesh system.
There are four main types of 'mesh':
You have the dedicated access point solution where these are often ceiling mounted, wired back to a switch & may or may not connect to a dedicated router, these generally give the best performance.
They kind of setup Wiley, blackal & I have.
2 channel wireless mesh this is what you have with the M5's this means the nodes have 2 radios in each node one on the 2.5Ghz frq, the other on the 5Ghz frq the backhaul connection is made on the 5Ghz radio & this is shared with any devices that also use that frq of wifi.
3 channel wireless mesh is as above but has a third radio also on the 5Ghz frq that is a dedicated one for the backhaul connection, which in turn improves the speeds for client devices on that frq.
Generally both of these types can be wired together with ethernet cables giving a wired backhaul & performance & placement options closer to the dedicated access point solutions.
The last type use powerline technology to use the domestic ring main as the backhaul between nodes, generally these speed of these are limited due to the nature of this tech to 200-300Mbs which shouldn't be a issue if you chose this route as it is close to your line speed anyway. They also come witht he freedom of placement you get with wired access points, however they don't work in all situations & rely on the quality of your electrical circuits.
Device placement:
As a first step think about the floor plan of the house & split it into the number of mesh nodes you have, so if you have four nodes split the home in quarters, if its three, thirds, then you place a node as close to the center of each segment as you can.
At least one node needs to be close to your 'router box' & be cabled to it, you may obviously want to bias key areas such as getting a node towards the rear of the house to see if that will cover the bbq area, closer to a office space etc.
Try that with wireless backhaul & see how the speeds and stability are before making the call to run more cables.
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