[SOLVED] Question regarding mesh home network and WiFi 5 vs 6

McLovinHawaii

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Feb 1, 2014
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I want to setup a WiFi home network in my house and have been reading up on mesh networks. I currently have a 400 Mbit connection and it will be 1 Gbit in about two years time What I can't figure out is whether WiFi 6 is the way to go now to future proof the system as I don't want to upgrade the next five years or if WiFi 5 is still good enough?
 
Solution
Unless you want to be the test case for us I suspect you are going to have to wait on wifi6. Lots of things they say but wifi manufactures already put out massive amounts of deceptive numbers so I can't believe them now. The standard has only been final for a month or so. I suspect it will be at least 6 months before there is a lot of equipment on the market.

It should be faster because it uses more bandwidth. It might share the bandwidth between your devices better. The signal can't actually go farther because the legal output power is the same. I doubt it can solve the problem of your neighbors signals interfering with yours. This interference is the main problem more than anything else. Since it is using 2 times the...
Unless you want to be the test case for us I suspect you are going to have to wait on wifi6. Lots of things they say but wifi manufactures already put out massive amounts of deceptive numbers so I can't believe them now. The standard has only been final for a month or so. I suspect it will be at least 6 months before there is a lot of equipment on the market.

It should be faster because it uses more bandwidth. It might share the bandwidth between your devices better. The signal can't actually go farther because the legal output power is the same. I doubt it can solve the problem of your neighbors signals interfering with yours. This interference is the main problem more than anything else. Since it is using 2 times the bandwidth it makes interference chance higher. It is likely 100% in some countries because there is only 180mhz of bandwidth and it uses 160mhz.

You want to avoid any form of silly mesh things. They are just another slightly better version of a wifi repeater and suffer the same issues. The more wifi signals you have in the path the worse it is. You want to use ethernet cable with AP on the end to improve coverage if you have the cables.

Pretty much the reason for poor coverage is not the signal levels it is that your neighbors signals are coming into your house reducing the distance you get a quality signal. If there was no neighbors you can get by with very low signal levels and it still works well. Your neighbors also is likely adding mesh units which increases the amount of interference.
 
Solution

kanewolf

Titan
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I want to setup a WiFi home network in my house and have been reading up on mesh networks. I currently have a 400 Mbit connection and it will be 1 Gbit in about two years time What I can't figure out is whether WiFi 6 is the way to go now to future proof the system as I don't want to upgrade the next five years or if WiFi 5 is still good enough?
If you want to invest money in home networking, then pay a professional to install ethernet cabling. That is the only way you will utilize gigabit wan connectivity.
 

McLovinHawaii

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Feb 1, 2014
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Thanks for your replies. Sorry, I didn't know when Wifi 6 came out I just kept reading about it being a con that different systems didn't support Wifi 6, so I thought it was important :)

Would it make sense to setup a mesh network like Google wifi etc using ethernet cabling? I could pull some cable across the ceiling to a few areas in the house and connect them via my router
 
Mesh is some silly marketing term. What you are doing is putting a wifi radio (ie a AP) on the end of the ethernet cable not mesh. This has been the golden industry standard since wifi was first installed. You do not see silly mesh systems being sold to large enterprise business. If this worked so well companies that are willing to pay huge money for IT infrastructure would have done it years ago.

Now if think you get some silly seamless roaming with mesh that is a lie also. The end device not the network control what is being talked to. The reason something like a cell phone works so well moving tower to tower is it was designed from the very beginning to have this feature. Wifi was designed to allow wireless connectivity to a network there never was much consideration for roaming.