Question Advice on how to get decent WiFi coverage ?

[Thorski]

So, I 'upgraded' my WiFi to a tenda mw3 (3pack) about 3-4 years ago, as my virgin media superhub 3.0 was providing terrible WiFi for my house, many parts of the house had no WiFi at all, including the office at the bottom of the garden, 20 metres away from main internet connection.
It made the WiFi marginally better in certain parts of the house, but was horrible overall (much lower speeds next to main mesh etc). I probably wrongly assumed that this was because the mesh was restricted to 100mbps (no gigabit port on this one). So at the beginning of this year I ordered a 2 pack mw5, which does come with a gigabit port. I then added the previous mw3's to these two mw5's as a new network, again probably wrongly assuming that they would gain the higher speed ability of the two mw5's.

This system is horrendous, on very rare occasions I have got the maximum speeds of my internet (350 mbps), but this has only happened twice. Generally the speeds we see are between 2-50mbps, but are often waiting for videos or Web pages to load because it's so bad. I've tried completely removing the mw3's and using just the mw5's but this just makes the network not reach all parts of the property on top of being ridiculously low speeds.

I am at my wits end with it, reading online about tenda mesh in general (both mw3 and mw5) it looks like it's not fit for purpose. Ideally I would hope to be wrong on this and someone possible knows of a fix for this network, but wife has given me permission to buy some other mesh, up to the value of £100 to fix this if need be.

Just to add, none of the other mesh are wired in, I simply don't have the cabling to accommodate that. I assumed that the mesh should be fine without that, or am I wrong?

 

[bill001g]

There are some houses wifi just gets absorbed or blocked by walls. People that live in apartments that have reinforced concrete interior walls can get zero coverage trying to get signal though walls.

I am unclear why you were concerned about gigabit ports, you seem to imply that you are not running ethernet cables between the router and the remote wifi units.

Running wires of some kind is always you best option to extend wifi. If you can't get ethernet and you have coax cable you can look at MoCA. Even powerline networks can be better in some houses that using mesh repeaters.

Wifi is actually very tedious to get to work well when you are trying to get both good coverage and good speed.

First you have to be careful having too much wifi is just as bad as having too little. The signals from all the remote wifi unit interfere with each other. With the cheap repeater systems like you are using even the main router and a single remote unit will interfere with each other because they transmit on the same radio channel. This is one of the key reasons you are going to lose at least half your bandwidth.
The reason good mesh systems cost so much more is they use dedicated radio chips to talk between the router and the main unit. This allows them to use different radio channels and not interfere with the traffic going to the end device. This makes the units much more expensive. When you look at some of the latest unit that support wifi6e They have 2.4,5 &6 radio chips to talk to tend users and then another radio chip that can run on any of those bands to talk between the unit. So when you buy a so called 3 pack you are buy 12 radio chips.

BUT just spending lots of money on mesh systems does not magically fix the problem. Unlike the marketing implies you can not just stuff magic boxes in the remote rooms and expect to get a good network. The signal might be strong but if the remote unit can not actually talk to the router it will not work well.

Key is the placement of the units. They have to be placed so they can get a very strong signal from the router and still provide a signal to the remote room. This might not exist in some houses if a wall absorbs too much signal. It is all trial and error. In addition when you have mulitple remote units you need to reduce the transmit power so they overlap as little as possible but still allow communication with the main router.

My first recommendation is to try to find a way to use a wired connection to connect the remote units. What you have will work on a wired connection. This will be better than any kind of wireless repeater/mesh solution.

 

[thx1138v2]

Keep in mind that the problem may not be the equipment you have but something in a neighbor's house/apartment. You don't say much about the environment you are operating in but WiFi is just a radio and is susceptible to radio interference like all radios.

The following link is the best one I've seen on the topic:
https://arstechnica.com/information...hat-a-deep-dive-into-why-wi-fi-kind-of-sucks/

The bottom line is don't use radio if at all possible.

 

[Thorski]

Alright, sorry for the delay in responding - been a VERY busy week with building a new room on the house.

A bit more about the situation.. So I have a room at the back of the garden and it has a very large front window, where one of the nodes was situated. It was in direct line with the other node, which also had a window infront of it but they were roughly 20 metres away. All other nodes (3 of) were in the main house, they didn't have direct line of sight, but they were not far away from node (roughly 3-8 meters away). One was direct above it through the wooden floor (2nd floor), the other is in the kitchen approximately 5 meters away with 1 single brick wall in front and the other was in direct line of the kitchen one in the dining room but has 2 walls including a cavity wall between the primary node.

I have since moved one of the nodes in the study at the back of the garden, it now has a direct backhaul feed from the primary node. I assumed that this would give it a really strong signal, however it is diabolically bad. As i've sat here and typed this i've watched my google home hub connect and disconnect probably over 10 times and speeds are no greater than 15-20mpbs (testing from my s22 ultra) and also while typing this my s22 ultra has disconnected from the backhauled node than a metre away and connected to the node in the dining room roughly 15 metres away. Just unplugged all the MW3's to see if that works (so just the 2 pack MW5's plugged in) and thats just as bad.

Using a wifi analyser (called "wifi analyzer" on play store) i've looked at the signals around and there is only my stuff and my next door neighbours being picked up. I don't think I have anything else in the house that has a radio signal.

I am unclear why you were concerned about gigabit ports, you seem to imply that you are not running ethernet cables between the router and the remote wifi units.

So, the reason I was worried about this is because the MW3's only have a 100mbps port, therefore limiting those nodes already due to my speed being 350+

 

[bill001g]

The reason many wifi units only have 100mbps ports on them is pretty much of a admission by the manufacture that all their wifi numbers are marketing lies.
In general most people see about 130mbps or so when running a single router at a reasonal distance. You can get more if you sit on top of the router. If you were to buy high end equipment like wifi6e you might get 300mbps or up to 600-700 if you sit close.

As soon as you start using any kind of wireless repeater your speeds will be cut in half or more.

Trying to get repeater to work is a massive amount of trial and error. Very tiny difference in the placement affect the performance. Wifi signals many times do not go direct, they might bounce around a wall and go though a door that than use the weaker signals that directly penetrate say a brick wall.

You would think that windows would always be the best option. Problem is some windows block wifi signals very well. The energy coating they put on windows are metal and even though you can see through them they block radio signals a lot.

I don't know what to recommend. Professional wifi installs in commerical building they have very high end versions of wifi scanners that can measure the signals level to give optimum placement. Then again you almost never see commercial buildings using wifi repeaters they use ethernet cables to connect the remote wifi units.

I would start with single units and try to get optimum signals in each area. Turn each off and do the next. After you think you have each tune turn them all on and see how much they interfere with each other.

 

[Thorski]

I would start with single units and try to get optimum signals in each area. Turn each off and do the next. After you think you have each tune turn them all on and see how much they interfere with each other.

That is exactly what i've tried to do. So right now I have only the primary in the living room(this is plugged directly into my router) and the other device in the study at the end of the garden, which is backhauled directly from the primary, both are getting about 10-50mbps.

I read that article that @thx1138v2 linked, and okay I do have SOME radio channels online - but when I started this about an hour ago, no one else was in the house but me, so only my s22 ultra and the two google hubs we have were linked at that time (they're both next to a node in both the living room and the study).
Thinking about it though, we have both an RF doorbell and an RF thermostat.. but would they only interfere when they're active? Ie, i've just told the thermostat to turn the boiler on or when someone presses the door bell.

 

[bill001g]

I am unclear what you mean "directly backhauled". Most times people mean they have connected a ethernet cable between them.

If you take a end device and stand exactly where you placed the remote repeater unit but leave the remote unit off. What speed do you get.
You can expect the repeater to cut that rate in at least half.

 

[Thorski]

I am unclear what you mean "directly backhauled". Most times people mean they have connected a ethernet cable between them.

If you take a end device and stand exactly where you placed the remote repeater unit but leave the remote unit off. What speed do you get.
You can expect the repeater to cut that rate in at least half.

So by directly backhauled I mean - the primary as the 'primary' feed directly from the router, and then the second lan port on the primary feeds the node in the study - i've found other threads on tenda nova networks detailing that it is the only one works, i havent tried it another way.

I've just done what you said and turned the remote one off and I cant even find the primary in the main house from here :/ Even on wifi analyzer it can't see the primary node from here

And I would take half the rate of my total internet speed... hell even a 1/4 would be much better than what im getting.

 

[bill001g]

To a point it makes more sense. You actually have a cable between the 2 units.

What speeds do you get if you take the cable that comes from your main router and plug it into a end device instead. Unless there is some issue with the cable this should be the same speed as a cable plugged into the main router.

Now plug the cable back into your secondary unit and then plug a cable between that and a end device. Again this should all be the same speed as the main router.

If the wifi is slow off the secondary unit it is something with the wifi. Make sure you are running on the 5g radio.

 

[Thorski]

I already tested that before putting into the node in the study - confirmed it was running at max speed of 360mpbs

The second test you mentioned I cannot do as this unit only has a single ethernet port, it's a bit different to the other ones as it plugs directly into the wall, but it is confirmed as functioning as the Tenda app denotes that it is running on an ethernet feed rather than wifi, as it was before.

I guess these units are just rubbish and I need to buy new ones no? :/ I can't believe how much of a nightmare this has been, but im beginning to understand why. Wish I had all this information before buying this units.

EDIT: Forgot to respond about the 5 g radio... so it looks like half the devices are on the 5g one and the rest are on 2.4 g but i'm not sure how to select between the 2.. I presume my samsung must be able to get on the 5g right? It's not, have noted atleast everytime i've looked its not been on anything but 2.4g

 

[bill001g]

I always use different names for the 2.4 and 5 that way you can force them.

It is not unusual to get only say 30mbps using 2.4.