Preparing for new NowTV broadband install - Different options available for best wifi coverage.

[chef-borjan]

Hi all.

It’s taking ages, but finally our broadband should be activated in a few days.

But reading up, the supplied routers wifi performance is poor, and I fear how it’s going to work as it will be installed in the front of the flat in the bedroom and we will want connection all the way through to the garden, and the study of course.

Note that this is a rental property, so no extra wiring or drilling etc.

I’ve been looking into whether I should:

• get a replacement router/modem (will need to support Option 61)
• like an AX3 to handle the wifi as an AP (it will likely also just be hardwired and also kept in the bedroom)
• Setup mesh networking (compatible with one of the above)
• Give power lines a go.

Any thoughts/preferences? How important is wifi 6? Note that I am only going to be on the super fibre package so that’s 76mbps and there isn’t a huge amount of network traffic going on between devices locally here.

 

[Trig]

What did you end up doing with this?

I've got NowTV using their crappy router, I'd like to swap that to something that'll do 'modem' mode and then setup my own Deco mesh system.

 

[dl8860]

I have 72Mbps so similar speed, with sky, and a decent sized house. I'm using an AX3s, one main router and 3 other nodes. 2 of the nodes actually have a wired backhaul via powerline. One of those I tried just on wireless mesh but it dropped out maybe after a week everytime due to being on the edge of range, once I reverted to powerline I got basically the same speed, and completely stable. The other was always going to be powerline as it's in the office in the garden. Speed not great, but serviceable.

My recommendation is to try a mesh, and whack a powerline backhaul in it if you find you can't get a stable mesh with enough coverage.

 

[Trig]

I've got the NowTV router, then using the M5 Deco 3 pack in AP mode, I really would like more control over it, I might see if I can use an old Vigor I have to replace the NowTV and give me more control over things, I want to be able to whitelist/blacklist whats on the network and look at a bit of traffic shaping/throttling/management like I used to do back in the day when I was on Virgin, I had the VM router in modem mode directly into a dedicated NIC on my server which ran Sophos UTM and controlled all traffic coming into and out of the house via that VM but didn't have mesh back then, I want to see what else the Deco stuff can do before I decide to go down the new mesh update to Wifi-6 route..

 

[Turn]

I prefer having a few AP's hardwired in via Ethernet.
But I understand some people can't wire everything in for a number of reasons, so mesh's sometimes make sense depending on your conditions.

 

[Trig]

Depending on what AP's you use you can always backhaul over a PLA if you are desperate..

 

[ddoubleep]

I have been with NOWtv for a while but their wifi coverage from the router is awful. Any suggestions on what you guys ended up doing? Should I explore tri band mesh or wifi 6 mesh options?