Home mesh network

Author
Discussion

2ono

Original Poster:

569 posts

113 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Moving house soon, into an older, much larger house, looking at various home mesh network offerings, just wondered if anyone was using one or recommend a particular one.

Thanks in advance.

.:ian:.

2,284 posts

209 months

Saturday 13th January
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I've got some older linksys velop 2 band, but I don't use them as the router and they are all wired backhaul. Like this they are very reliable.
The routing is basic, so I switched to openwrt on a nanopi 4.

Before wiring them together they would occasionally lose one of the nodes, this was probably down to placement of the nodes relative to each other and the connectivity between them.

For any mesh devices, unless you can wire them together, they really need to be arranged in a star topology with the router in the middle.
The more nodes you pass through to get to the router, the slower the traffic will be.

If you are using wireless backhaul try to go for tri-band so there's less contention.

Chris Stott

14,269 posts

203 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
I put a Mercusys system in a clients villa a few months back. C.500sqm with brick walls and solid concrete floors upstairs.

A HX70 3pk from MediaMarkt (equivalent of Curry’s) was €99 and covered the whole house including the outside kitchen.

Super easy to install and very effective.

I’m sure (in true PH style) someone will be along shortly to tell you you need to spend 1,000’s on some rocket grade industrial system wink

thepritch

962 posts

171 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
I use the Google home devices and they were very simple to setup and they work brilliantly. My house has granite walls in some parts so wireless signal has a trouble ‘seeing’ past one particular wall : I have hard cabled two of the devices together to ensure a constant connection. They sell 2 versions - wireless only and it comes with built in speaker, or wireless with Ethernet port and no speaker.

Great to be able to use Google home around the house or transfer music from room to room.

I even used a Tplink to send a signal via mains power to an outbuilding so have a wireless setup there too on the same system.

I have 4 devices in the house, with three google speakers with a fifth wireless point in the outbuilding, with a central server hardwired in so it can be accessed where ever across the mesh. May be consumer level but no issues at all.



Edited by thepritch on Saturday 13th January 09:00

NDA

22,163 posts

231 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
I use a 4 disc BT Whole Home package.

It was quite flakey until I wired each disc via home plugs to the router. It gives pretty solid performance.

Having spent a long time, in several large houses, fiddling with wifi and broadband, I came to the inevitable and obvious conclusion that wired wins. Every time. If you can get a few wired connections put in discreetly, then access points will work superbly. Also worth adding that cheapie little switches from Netgear/Amazon work great too - very handy and can be easily daisy-chained.

Muppet007

433 posts

51 months

Saturday 13th January
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I have 3x Deco m9 and 2 extra m6 (i think) for some of the outermost rooms.

Works well. Bot had an issue in 2 years

Road2Ruin

5,401 posts

222 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
NDA said:
I use a 4 disc BT Whole Home package.

It was quite flakey until I wired each disc via home plugs to the router. It gives pretty solid performance.

Having spent a long time, in several large houses, fiddling with wifi and broadband, I came to the inevitable and obvious conclusion that wired wins. Every time. If you can get a few wired connections put in discreetly, then access points will work superbly. Also worth adding that cheapie little switches from Netgear/Amazon work great too - very handy and can be easily daisy-chained.
I use a BT 4 disc system too. No problems for me. Obviously the more discs the signal has to pass through, the slower the signal, but I am still getting 50Mbps at the furthest disc. That might be slow, for some, but more than adequate for what I need. We also stream loads of stuff to the TV over it, including UHD and have no problems.

s2kjock

1,746 posts

153 months

Saturday 13th January
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I have used TP Link Decos in a large old house and they worked very well. Simple to set up and reliable.

GlenMH

5,255 posts

249 months

Saturday 13th January
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Chris Stott said:
I put a Mercusys system in a clients villa a few months back. C.500sqm with brick walls and solid concrete floors upstairs.

A HX70 3pk from MediaMarkt (equivalent of Curry’s) was €99 and covered the whole house including the outside kitchen.

Super easy to install and very effective.
Another vote for Mercusys H70X in a Victorian house with wifi-impenetrable plasterwork. All on wired backhaul and less than half an hour to set the lot up.

Fore Left

1,480 posts

188 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
GlenMH said:
Chris Stott said:
I put a Mercusys system in a clients villa a few months back. C.500sqm with brick walls and solid concrete floors upstairs.

A HX70 3pk from MediaMarkt (equivalent of Curry’s) was €99 and covered the whole house including the outside kitchen.

Super easy to install and very effective.
Another vote for Mercusys H70X in a Victorian house with wifi-impenetrable plasterwork. All on wired backhaul and less than half an hour to set the lot up.
And another. I spent £70 on these. They've been rock solid for the last 18 months.

My son went for these wifi 6 units on my recommendation to replace some troublesome TP-Link Deco's. Solved the performance issues he was having and, again, absolutely no complaints.

gerlewis

104 posts

235 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
We have a few of these and it's pretty much perfect:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0041JNUAI?psc=1&...

We used to have ones that boosted signal via the household electric circuit, and they were poor.

richatnort

3,130 posts

137 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
I’ve got a 3 velops gathering dust in a cupboard that are on Facebook for £50 if you wanted them

2ono

Original Poster:

569 posts

113 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Thats great, thanks for all the advice.

Tim Cognito

486 posts

13 months

Saturday 13th January
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Another with TP link deco here. Linked them with ethernet cables and a cheap switch. No problems. I messed around with access points before and it was crap. Devices would cling to the barely accessible router despite being sat next to an ap.

Hoink

1,450 posts

164 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Another with deco here. Zero problems and easy to setup. It also made our recent switch from Virgin to Sky a breeze as all devices in the house didn't need anything doing to them.

2ono

Original Poster:

569 posts

113 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
richatnort said:
I’ve got a 3 velops gathering dust in a cupboard that are on Facebook for £50 if you wanted them
I've sent you an email.

What model are they?

Thanks.

2ono

Original Poster:

569 posts

113 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Being the lazy person I am I am looking to do wireless backhaul, so only really looking for advice from people that have got a stable network with a similar setup.

It isn't for gaming, but to extend wifi coverage across the whole property for SONOS, streaming from Netflix and the like.



x5tuu

12,095 posts

193 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Eero user here.

Got 3 Eero 6 devices here and they work great. Never had any downtime at all - the app works great too. Zero complaints or issues from my perspective.

bobthemonkey

3,991 posts

222 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
2ono said:
Being the lazy person I am I am looking to do wireless backhaul, so only really looking for advice from people that have got a stable network with a similar setup.

It isn't for gaming, but to extend wifi coverage across the whole property for SONOS, streaming from Netflix and the like.
There is a TP link Deco that has built in powerline for back haul. I’ve had them running in one place for a good few years now and have been rock solid.

If you are going as far as putting in Ethernet for wireless backhaul, I’d suggest you bite the bullet and go for a ubiquiti setup with a central router and access points, rather than a mesh setup.

Turn7

24,060 posts

227 months

Saturday 13th January
quotequote all
Tim Cognito said:
Another with TP link deco here. Linked them with ethernet cables and a cheap switch. No problems. I messed around with access points before and it was crap. Devices would cling to the barely accessible router despite being sat next to an ap.
How does one do that and what would I need ?

Deco M5 here and struggling to get coverage in the front extension