New Router or Mesh?

Firenze

Firenze

Firenze

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Joined
18 Nov 2009
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320
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At my PC
Hi guys, looking for a little advice. Currently I've got an old Netgear DGN3700v2 in the office with a powerline to a switch in the living room, (some netgear gigabit one), but often when watching Amazon/Disney+ (weirdly, Netflix seems to have no problems) on the TV (LG OLED C7V) the Internet on the powerline drops out, and I have to switch over to the wi-fi.
However the wireless signal is pretty poor, and we struggle to get a good signal over most of the house.
Its not an old house (around 2000 built), and there's very little brick internally.

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The router is in the corner of the study by the downstairs toilet, but struggles by the edge of the conservatory, and bedroom 3 is pretty dead too.

Now, do people think spending money on a new router would get a decent signal out around the house for me to sack off the powerline in the living room, or would I be better getting a Mesh solution? (We're only on around 80Down/20Up with Plusnet)

Primarily its for streaming up to 4k/Dolby Vision content, but it'd be nice to be able to follow the 2 year old out into the garden on Facetime with the Grandparents...

I'm not brave enough to drop ethernet around the house just yet, but could be tempted at some point in the future.

I've been eyeing up something like the Deco S4, or even could be tempted to the BT Whole Home stuff, but I feel like it wouldn't really be worth the extra cash. However I wonder if just getting a more up-to-date router would be more forward thinking.

I'm not a fan of a wifi-extender, since I've seen a world of nuisance with my dad's setups over the years.
 
Sadly, positioning is everything. The general rule of thumb is 1wall or floor between the wireless LAN client and the box supplying the WLAN is acceptable for good performance.

In your case, the top of the stairs is the only place that gives you that opportunity.

Drill an 8mm hole out of the study’s wall.

Drill a second 8mm hole in the underside of the soffit directly above that.

Run an external grade CAT6 cable up the wall and poke it through the soffit into the attic. Once in the attic run it to the central location at the top of the stairs.

Drill another 8mm hole and thread the cable through. Terminate both ends of the cable. I’d probably suggest a wall mounted RJ45 socket at the office end and an RJ45 plug at the attic end. Leaving a little loop for water to gather on at the bottom of the cable, pin the cable to the wall using 7mm appropriately coloured cable clips. Fit an appropriately coloured cable nose over the hole coming out of the study.

Then buy an access point of your choice and fix it to the ceiling at the top of the stairs. Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-HDNano are particularly good.

All WLAN signal strength issues are now solved.
 
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Thanks for your suggestion WJA96. I'd hoped not to have to do some DIY with this, but I guess it might well be the only way.

If I'm going so far as to run some cable to the loft, I'd be pretty tempted to run cable to the Living room at the same time...

Any reason I keep seeing the Ubiquiti hardware recommended again and again? Like what's it got over the competition?
 
Firenze said:
Any reason I keep seeing the Ubiquiti hardware recommended again and again? Like what's it got over the competition?
Click to expand...

It works properly. And it's part of a system that lets you control your entire system from anywhere, using one web page. It's very neat. And did I mention it works?
 
I'm delighted with my BT Mini mesh system I bought a couple of months ago. It was relatively cheap (£75 for a 3-node system - I saw Amazon had a 4-node pack for £100 a few weeks ago), and gives me full speed all around the house (approx 66 down - the Vodafone router itself was mostly only giving me half that over wifi!).

Previously, I had a range extender plug to bounce wifi into the living room for the TV, Xbox, and the gaming PC in there, but it was horribly unreliable an mostly slow. And we couldn't get a reliable wifi connection on our attic play room tv. All great now.

I hear that it's much better to CAT6 the whole house but, as a pretty basic user, mesh wifi covers all I need. Was easy to set up too.
 
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