[SOLVED] Which Mesh System Works Well for around £150/$200?

[ShadowDragon25]

Hello,
My and Wife and I are moving into a new property. We will be renting though and can't run Ethernet Cables around the house, my wife wouldn't let me anyway.
I am looking into WiFi Mesh systems. I was wondering what systems people have that work around £150/$200?
I recognise that wall thickness, type of doors, etc can change signal strength. And it isn't as simple as placing a mesh system in a room that has terrible signal and that fixes the problems.
I know you need it close enough to have a strong enough signal. I am more looking to see what systems people have found have worked well for them.
The system I am looking at is TP Link Deco P9 as it also has the powerline feature. But has mixed reviews online as to if the powerline feature does actually work.
Any recommendations appreciated.

 

[alceryes]

Difficult in that price range.
I would go with a separate, inexpensive powerline ethernet plus a WiFi AP for best results.

Powerline + extender AP > straight WiFi mesh, as long as your power lines aren't 100 years old and they all go back to ONE breaker box that's less than 50 years old.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

Difficult in that price range.
I would go with a separate, inexpensive powerline ethernet plus a WiFi extender for best results.

Powerline + extender > straight WiFi mesh, as long as your power lines aren't 100 years old and they all go back to ONE breaker box that's less than 50 years old.

How much would you look to spend on a mesh system? I am in London. We get max speeds of 80mbps. So don't need to fanciest of equipment. I can see there are some around £250-£300. Would it be worth looking at jumping up to that price point?

 

[bill001g]

Mesh should be your very last choice when it comes to getting better wifi coverage.

Best is ethernet with remote AP to provide the wifi. Next is to use MoCa if you have coax cables again with remote AP. The newest moca can get gbit speeds. Then you look at powerline networks with the remote AP. The newer powerline units with numbers above 1000 work well for most people.
You won't get more than about 300mbps but it is very stable latency.

These solution will always be better than any form of mesh/repeater because there is only the final wifi signal that can cause you issues. The extra signal back to the router is eliminated.

So if you REALLY are going to use a mesh system you need the ones that have extra radio chips in them to talk back to the main router. I do not stay current on mesh systems because I hate them so much so I can't give you a brand. What you look for are the ones that talk about dedicated backhual radios.
This will solve the problem the cheap ones have just like the previous version of repeaters. These older version transmit the repeated signal back on exactly the same radio channels causing interference with themselves basically.
Using a dedicated radio backhual solves the problem of you interfering with yourself but it makes the interference from neighbors much worse. Most these high end mesh systems are using every available radio channel allowed. That means you can have no neighbors using any wifi.

I think it is a conspiracy from the mesh manufactures. Every one who puts a system in interferes even more with the neighbors so they buy mesh systems to try to get better coverage and on and on.

Hopefully as wifi6e comes to market more this will be less of a issue. Because of all the extra radio bandwidth on 6g it is more likely more people can get large blocks to use without interfering. This means a weaker radio signal with no interference will work better without the need to put in repeaters.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

Mesh should be your very last choice when it comes to getting better wifi coverage.

Best is ethernet with remote AP to provide the wifi. Next is to use MoCa if you have coax cables again with remote AP. The newest moca can get gbit speeds. Then you look at powerline networks with the remote AP. The newer powerline units with numbers above 1000 work well for most people.
You won't get more than about 300mbps but it is very stable latency.

These solution will always be better than any form of mesh/repeater because there is only the final wifi signal that can cause you issues. The extra signal back to the router is eliminated.

So if you REALLY are going to use a mesh system you need the ones that have extra radio chips in them to talk back to the main router. I do not stay current on mesh systems because I hate them so much so I can't give you a brand. What you look for are the ones that talk about dedicated backhual radios.
This will solve the problem the cheap ones have just like the previous version of repeaters. These older version transmit the repeated signal back on exactly the same radio channels causing interference with themselves basically.
Using a dedicated radio backhual solves the problem of you interfering with yourself but it makes the interference from neighbors much worse. Most these high end mesh systems are using every available radio channel allowed. That means you can have no neighbors using any wifi.

I think it is a conspiracy from the mesh manufactures. Every one who puts a system in interferes even more with the neighbors so they buy mesh systems to try to get better coverage and on and on.

Hopefully as wifi6e comes to market more this will be less of a issue. Because of all the extra radio bandwidth on 6g it is more likely more people can get large blocks to use without interfering. This means a weaker radio signal with no interference will work better without the need to put in repeaters.

Thanks Bill. We aren't able to run ethernet cables sadly. What powerline connectors would you recommend? As mentioned in previous reply. We get max 80mbpsa down. All the companies that offer more are unreliable in the area of London we are in. Do most APs have ethernet ports you can connect to other devices? Like PCs or would you put that into the Powerline?

 

[bill001g]

Can't say exactly on he powerline networks they keep changing the way they number them. A lot of people like the tplink brand but other perform very well also. You are looking for unit that have a number above 1000. Used to be the number you look for was 1200 but some of these units now call this 2000,

There are many different options on powerline units. You can buy units that have the AP function built into the remote powerline unit. It is a ok solution but do as good as a dedicated AP.

A AP is more a name for a technology. You can use pretty much any router as AP. You do not need anything fancy because you are only using the wifi radio part. Using router will give you extra ethernet ports also. You can hook a switch to powerline units also if you need more ports.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

So we currently ahve a draytek vdsl modem going into a netgear nighthawk gaming router. I can't remember the exact ones. Then have a network switch. But if we had the router going into a powerline adapter. Then each powerline adapter extender is plugged into an AP. That would be the solution you would recommend?

 

[ShadowDragon25]

So if I got 2 packs (4 total, 1 into router, 3 around the house) of these, https://smile.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-...PA7017P+KIT+AV1000&qid=1639159332&sr=8-1&th=1 and then 3 of these, https://smile.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-...jector-Ethernet/dp/B087MSF7BR?ref_=ast_sto_dp these should meet the needs of 80mbps right?

I more only need 2 of the powerline adapters around the house. but they come in packs of 2 that I can find.

 

[bill001g]

That should work. Those AP are really a cheap deal. This is I suspect the same unit with a router function also. The main difference to you would be the AP only has 1 ethernet port and the router has 4

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WR940N-450Mbps-Wireless-Supports/dp/B003Y5RYNY/

For some reason it is hard to find single units for a good price. Part of the reason they sell them in pairs is they are configured from the factory to be pre connected to each other. The data in encrypted to keep people from adding a powerline to the network you don't know about.
Many people just want to take things out of the box and it work by magic without knowning anything. If you buy single units you must follow the trivial instructions to add them to the network. You are going to have to do that with one of units you buy to add it to the other network.

 

[alceryes]

That powerline set should work but that's not the best AP. Remember to buy the proper length network cables for your set up.
Also note that devices that can use PoE often don't come with separate power adapters.

Do you really need 3 of them? How big is the house?

 

[ShadowDragon25]

We haven't moved in yet. But apparently there are some deadspots in the kitchen and upstairs. Plus my PC is hardwired. I have enough CAT 5 cabling to make my own cables. What AP would you recommend?

 

[alceryes]

No way for me to know without knowing where it's going but maybe one step up to this? - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Archer-C1200-Wireless-Supports-Parental/dp/B0743HB9H2
For setting up routers as access points you'll either just use the switch side (don't use the WAN port) or select AP mode in the router settings (if available). Remember to give each one a separate IP on your network so you can log in and configure each separately, as needed.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

Thanks guys. Really helpful. Will see once in how the WiFi is. But I have an idea about what to do if what we have doesn't work. The big thing I want is that it's a seamless change to the closest WiFi AP.

 

[bill001g]

You will never get seamless change. The end device not the network controls where it connects. Even in the very best case you will get couple seconds of outage.

It is all based on the signal levels. In many ways having too much signal is the problem. You have to set the radio power on the devices so you have as little overlap as possible that way when the device detects a drop in power it will search for a better source. If you have too much overlap it will think its current signal is ok because it really has no way to know another signal exists and if it constantly checked you would get lots of little outages.

This tends to be a pain to run around your house measuring power levels and setting the devices. It tends to be simpler for you the human to know when to switch if the device does not. All you need to do is stop and start the wifi and it will connect to the better one.

Wifi will never have true seamless roaming unless they completely replace it and make it work like a cell phone network where the network is in full control of the end device radio. This type of plan would never would on a public wifi network because you could never trust someone else network with control of your device.

 

[alceryes]

Thanks guys. Really helpful. Will see once in how the WiFi is. But I have an idea about what to do if what we have doesn't work. The big thing I want is that it's a seamless change to the closest WiFi AP.

True seamless change of access points doesn't exist. The endpoint (your phone/laptop) is always the decider on when to drop the current connection and roam. However the best case scenario can be an unnoticed switchover if the video or audio you are currently watching/listening to has buffered sufficiently to account for the 10 second roam and AP switchover.

 

[gggplaya]

FYI people, the DECO P9 is a POWERLINE wifi system. They call it a "hybrid mesh" system. However, it's an AV1000 system. Personally I would prefer AV2000 or G.hn.

However, price goes up once you buy all this equipment separately(AV2000 + wifi access points/Router). So for this price, AV1000 is reasonable as long as you don't expect more than about 50mbps(could be higher, but keep expectations low), then you should be fine with the DECO P9.

What's the speed of your internet service going to be? If it's FTTC, then it's probably not much more than 50mbps anyways.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

FYI people, the DECO P9 is a POWERLINE wifi system. They call it a "hybrid mesh" system. However, it's an AV1000 system. Personally I would prefer AV2000 or G.hn.

However, price goes up once you buy all this equipment separately(AV2000 + wifi access points/Router). So for this price, AV1000 is reasonable as long as you don't expect more than about 50mbps(could be higher, but keep expectations low), then you should be fine with the DECO P9.

What's the speed of your internet service going to be? If it's FTTC, then it's probably not much more than 50mbps anyways.

The max speed is 80mbps and is FTTC. Therefore, in reality 50mbps regularly anyway. We could spend more and get faster speeds. But Virgin in my experience are not reliable. Their internet service regularly goes down.

 

[gggplaya]

For your internet speed, I think the AV1000 used in the Deco P9 should be fine. AV2000 powerline adapters will generally run you about $100 for 2, and maybe about $50-$60 for an addon third unit. After that, you still need to buy 3 access points. That's the same cost for just the powerline adapters as the entire DECO P9 with 3 access points, 155 pounds: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deco-P9-Powerline-coverage-Parental/dp/B07XSBGP7G

So considering your internet speed, the cost to go to the better AV2000 vs the DECO P9 AV1000 system. I'd say the Deco P9 is a good bet since it uses a powerline backhaul and has wifi. You might even get the full 80mbps of your internet, powerline varies alot from house to house.

 

[ShadowDragon25]

Thanks @gggplaya helpful to know. We are going to try the nighthawk gear we have and then see what is worth doing. But good to know you think the Deco P9 would suit our needs. I have found with Powerline adapters that it definitely varies from house to house. As some houses have very poor electric circuits in the house.