[SOLVED] New WIFI Setup Option....

[klolyn]

I have a virgin media fibre connection at home, which is fine, however their Hub 3.0 cannot provide a wifi signal to the front of the house due to a 5m corridor - with solid stone walls. I have a Linksys 6400 extender (in loft above front of house) connected to the hub with an .Ext SSID but it cannot achieve a sound/dependable connection from the hub. Speedtest often fail to find a server via the extender but are booming when near the hub 3.0.
I have been looking at the ASUS XT8 pair of WIFI 6 nodes - which appear to be able to connect via a WIFI6 Backhaul between each other, reviews seem to qualify that this may deal with my corridor issue - but this is constantly not available in stock to buy and the Orbi option is just too stupidly expensive. What do you think my options could be? A new router (turning the virgin hub into a modem only) that could be wired to an Access point at the front of the house would be an option (removing the wifi backhaul) the Gig limits of CAT6 would be sufferable! Or is there an alt option....?
Connected devices are typically phones,r Macbook laptop and a Ring doorbell

T.I.A regards
Keith

 

[bill001g]

Using the AP is going to be your best option. You do not have to change the virgin hub you can leave just hook the AP to that.

What do you mean "gig limits of cat6" . That has to be faster than any other option you are looking at and is likely faster than your internet.

 

[gggplaya]

Do you have coaxial cable outlets throughout the house?? MOCA 2.5 adapters will give you actual gigabit speeds if you can utilize a run of those cables in your house. Many houses have a splitter in their basement or attic. You can detach 2 of those runs from the splitter and tie 2 of them together(for each room).

I don't recommend powerline ethernet adapters for high bandwidth. They are very reliable, but bandwidth is 20-100mbps.

I would utilize the MOCA wired backhaul between access points, or run an ethernet line which is what I do.

Don't pay too much attention to WirelessAX(WIFI 6) marketing in terms of speeds. The speeds given assume you are right next to the router and have a full parrallel connection to all the antennas of the router. The problem is that most devices such as smart phones and laptops only have 2 antennas. So they can only connect to 2 of those antennas at a time, and speeds will be based on that. Gigabit ethernet will still be better, with more consistent speeds than wifi 6 for most people.

The only feature of Wifi 6 that i'm excited about is OFDMA. This seperates the signal into much smaller subchannels which will allow more reliable connections at lower signal strengths, better efficiency, less interferences from congestions and better average speeds.

 

[klolyn]

Using the AP is going to be your best option. You do not have to change the virgin hub you can leave just hook the AP to that.

What do you mean "gig limits of cat6" . That has to be faster than any other option you are looking at and is likely faster than your internet.

Hi. Thanks for the reply. My virgin hub WIFI, right now, is providing 95mbps which is fine. Main PC connects at 3x that over ethernet connection to the Hub. so i only really need to extend the WIFI service through to the front of the house. The adding of an AP, which is hard wired to the router appears to be the best performance option - though I'm not sure if the virgin hub 3.0 allows for an AP to be directly connected to one of the LAN ports to provide WIFi out of it (this is what has stopped me looking further into an appropriate AP and i don't see any setting required in the Hub config for doing this)

Do you have an AP to recommend..?

Keith

 

[klolyn]

Do you have coaxial cable outlets throughout the house?? MOCA 2.5 adapters will give you actual gigabit speeds if you can utilize a run of those cables in your house. Many houses have a splitter in their basement or attic. You can detach 2 of those runs from the splitter and tie 2 of them together(for each room).

I don't recommend powerline ethernet adapters for high bandwidth. They are very reliable, but bandwidth is 20-100mbps.

I would utilize the MOCA wired backhaul between access points, or run an ethernet line which is what I do.

Don't pay too much attention to WirelessAX(WIFI 6) marketing in terms of speeds. The speeds given assume you are right next to the router and have a full parrallel connection to all the antennas of the router. The problem is that most devices such as smart phones and laptops only have 2 antennas. So they can only connect to 2 of those antennas at a time, and speeds will be based on that. Gigabit ethernet will still be better, with more consistent speeds than wifi 6 for most people.

The only feature of Wifi 6 that i'm excited about is OFDMA. This seperates the signal into much smaller subchannels which will allow more reliable connections at lower signal strengths, better efficiency, less interferences from congestions and better average speeds.

Hi

I don't have any Coax links to utilise, only CAT6. I had tried a powerline extender before with no joy worth keeping. the Linksys 6400 struggles to pick up and maintain a link to the virgin hub, so i think a ethernet link to between the front of the house and router is the best option - considering the a mesh option may not get through the corridor issue in my home....

Keith

 

[bill001g]

Hi. Thanks for the reply. My virgin hub WIFI, right now, is providing 95mbps which is fine. Main PC connects at 3x that over ethernet connection to the Hub. so i only really need to extend the WIFI service through to the front of the house. The adding of an AP, which is hard wired to the router appears to be the best performance option - though I'm not sure if the virgin hub 3.0 allows for an AP to be directly connected to one of the LAN ports to provide WIFi out of it (this is what has stopped me looking further into an appropriate AP and i don't see any setting required in the Hub config for doing this)

Do you have an AP to recommend..?

Keith

If you really want a actual AP you can look at ubiquiti. The key feature of most AP is they run PoE which lets you mount the device where you do not have power. Many look like smoke detectors and you can mount them on the ceiling.

Most times you can take a inexpensive router and use it as a AP. Some routers have a AP function but pretty much any router can be used as a AP. You hub has no idea what is hooked ip via ethernet. It can't actually tell if you have a switch with multiple pc or something else. The AP main function is to convert wifi to ethernet. Once it is converted it looks no different than any other form of ethernet traffic.

 

[klolyn]

If you really want a actual AP you can look at ubiquiti. The key feature of most AP is they run PoE which lets you mount the device where you do not have power. Many look like smoke detectors and you can mount them on the ceiling.

Most times you can take a inexpensive router and use it as a AP. Some routers have a AP function but pretty much any router can be used as a AP. You hub has no idea what is hooked ip via ethernet. It can't actually tell if you have a switch with multiple pc or something else. The AP main function is to convert wifi to ethernet. Once it is converted it looks no different than any other form of ethernet traffic.

Hi. Thanks, have opted for the AC Lite. This should do the trick and i can cable and power it easily via the loft

Regards

Keith

 

[kanewolf]

Hi. Thanks, have opted for the AC Lite. This should do the trick and i can cable and power it easily via the loft

Regards

Keith

Ubiquiti hardware is different than typical home user. I recommend you create a login on the Ubiquiti forum on their website.
I have a full Ubiquiti system in my home. It takes some learning to optimize it.