My house isn't particularly old or large but as the incoming internet (via Virgin) is in the top front corner, the bottom back living area has always had poor/no signal.
So over the years I have used various WiFi extenders and what I have settled on is a hard-wired ex-Virgin hub in the diagonally opposite corner of the house and two or three cheap Xiaomi repeaters - these tinyurl.com/tbt5pxr
This seems to work well enough, the only problem being that the signal degrades in places but doesn't get bad enough for your device to recognise this and switch to another source = - just turning off/on WiFi does it though.
I see the current offering is a mesh network, and some are recommended using a "ethernet backhaul" - a sexy term for joining up the APs with cable (which kind of defeats the object IMO).
Anyway - are there other reasons why this would be an improvement on what I already have?
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We have an old property with the router stuck down in one corner of the house and all sorts of connection issues through stone walls etc. I had a mash-mash of extenders to improve the signal which were okay-ish. There were regular drop outs and connection problems. In the end I got so fed up with it that in exasperation I bought a BT Whole Home kit with three discs, thinking I could return it to Amazon if it didn't work. The discs were distributed about the house and barely a moments trouble thereafter. Well worth the £150 or so I spent on it. Even in my man cave up in an attic room, as far as you can get from the router I am getting an excellent and reliable signal. Now that we have fibre in the village I get 40+mbs download and 10 or so upload.
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Reports and experience leads me to the conclusion that a mesh network, from the same maker to include Router and satellites, set up and work very well. BT one gets good reports.
A mesh network build ad hoc with various bits is a PITA.
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The question was prompted as I saw a TP Link 3 piece system for about £90.
The urge to unnecessarily buy has now passed but thanks for the input. :-)
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having had FTP installed last summer I took the opportunity to have the new BT router installed in the middle of the house. Well worth it, have done away with the previously installed 2 additional APs. The latest router definitely has a better range than previous.
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Forgive my ignorance, 'FTP'?
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I suspect used instead of FTTP, Fibre To The Premises.
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Sorry sloppy keyboard use! FTTP.
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>> Sorry sloppy keyboard use! FTTP.
>>
Grrrrrr.
I'm still on semaphore here - waiting to be upgraded to dial up modem ;-)
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>> I see the current offering is a mesh network, and some are recommended using a "ethernet backhaul" - a sexy term for joining up the APs with cable (which kind of defeats the object IMO).
Bit of an old one, but basically mesh networks are for people that don't have any wired infrastructure. They use the Wifi network itself to communicate between the mesh nodes. The posher more expensive units use another frequency for this so that they they don't jam up the actual Wifi part with inter-node traffic.
if you have a ethernet wired points in various locations it is much, much better just to use a set of any old Wifi access points linked into the ethernet. (That's what they mean by ethernet backhaul - just that the mesh ones also allow this. But no real need for a mesh device to do this)
Just give them all the same SSID and password and your roaming device will jump from one to another as you move around and a better signal comes into play.
I have 6 such access points - even in the garden in the pond filtration room! It's possible to begin a FaceTime at one end of the property and just walk around the garden from the back of the house to the front with no dropout.
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Mesh networks - Lemma
