Replacing Powerline - Mesh Wifi system?

[Steviepunk]

I've been running powerline from downstairs near my Fibre (FTTC) router (with a small collection of LAN devices) up to my computer room upstairs where I have 5 or 6 devices connected by Ethernet.
Problem being that the Powerline adapters are interfering with the Fibre connection (causing a drop in connection speed overtime, currently down to 29Mbps from the 'standard' 40mbps)

In short, I want to get rid of the powerline adapters to prevent the interference - however running an ethernet cable isn't an option unfortunately, so the only other thing I can think of is to setup a Mesh Wifi system, however I'm not completely sure whether any Mesh devices actually support Lan bridging (any mention of bridging that I find relate to setting a router to bridge the WAN connection)

Is LAN bridging just a standard option for Mesh, so doesn't need to be mentioned anymore? Devices like the Linksys Velop and the Netgear Orbi have LAN ethernet ports on each satellite device, so it looks like LAN bridging would be supportted but I just can't find anything to confirm this and the reviews I've read don't seem to test this (it's all about Wifi signal)

From what I've read, it seems like the Mesh (assuming they work the way I think they do) should provide a connection that is as fast (if not faster) than the actual sync rate of the powerline between upstairs and downstairs.


Info relating to the Fibre interference, my connection had been 40Mbps for a while, however I noticed it drop off over time, eventually getting to 20Mbps. An engineer came out, rewired everything (at the house and at the cabinet) but eventually found that when the powerline was disconnected the Fibre sync was pretty much perfect, however when powerline was active it was generating thousands of errors on the fibre line. I've managed to run a cable round the lounge so that the powerline is connected around 2.5m away from the phone line now, the errors are reduced but not gone, so my Fibre is still dropping in speed over time


Any feedback or suggestions are welcome
Thanks

 

[BigT]

I don’t really understand why powerline would affect the speed your VDSL modem or router syncs at. Anyway getting rid of powerline is no bad thing. Bridging isn’t a feature of all mesh systems. For example Bt whole home doesn’t do it I don’t think. However you can buy a separate device that acts as a wireless bridge easily enough which will then connect to your mesh system. I’ve used a TP-Link device for less than £25 that did the job, albeit only at 300Mbps. If you have a cluster of wired devices then plug them into a switch and also a bridge into the switch and they will all connect to your new mesh system.

 

[Steviepunk]

I've not really sure why it interferes either, but the BT engineer went through various tests with me and it definitely is causing a problem

Already have a switch upstairs, so that is fine on that front - I'll have a look in the TP link thing, even 300Mbps is probably faster than the powerline.
Good to know that some Mesh systems do have bridging, will need to check into a few models to see - must confess that fewer devices to setup is a more appealing option

 

[bremen1874]

You aren't the first to report issues with Powerline adapters and VDSL connections.

Does the interference get in via the mains or the network connection?

 

[Pyr0m@nI@]{]

I switched powerlines and 2 routers for 2 amplifiHD routers to give me WiFi and extra ethernet ports upstairs wirelessly.
Performance and reliability has been much better

 

[Steviepunk]

@bremen1874 Not sure, I spent a while with the engineer as he was running line tests, and each time we unplugged the powerline, there were no errors on the tests.


@Pyr0m@nI@]{ Sounds like what I'm needing - is that an easy setup to have the 2 sides of the lan talking to each other?

 

[Pyr0m@nI@]{]

Really easy.
It's been plug and play for me.

The just made sure the routers would pair downstairs, then moved one upstairs for WiFi access and another PC on ethernet.

The app can tell you what the signal strength is like between them to check the best position.

 

[ubern00b]

2 ampliHD routers

This is the exact route I am going down when I move into my new house. Glad to hear someone else has done this and has good things to say about them.

 

[Steviepunk]

As it turned out, I found out about the "Devolo GigaGate 9969 Wi-Fi Bridge Starter Kit", which seems to be a device created to do exactly what I need - seems to get some good reviews though does have a few poor ones (the negative ones I saw were more about it not being a proper 'mesh' system), but at £90 I thought it was worth taking a chance on it.

At that price, it's cheaper than just a single AmpliHD device, never mind 2 of them - but if it doesn't work out then I guess I can sell it and try the AmplyHD route.

Once I have it setup and tested I'll let you know how it does.

 

[Steviepunk]

I got around to setting up the Gigagate tonight.

Setup was easy, comes out of the box already paired, all you need to do is connect your ethernet cables – the devices each run a DHCP client to pick up an IP address automatically. Where I have this setup, the base unit is in the living room, while the satellite is upstairs at my desk – so the signal is going through 2 walls and ceiling, maybe around 8 or 9m distance.

Testing network transfer - pulling big files from a NAS, which provides a solid 100MB/s transfer when connected to the same switch) – the baseline with the Powerline (TP-Link AV2000) was a pretty steady 18MB/s.
Using the Gigagate bridge, the transfer rate is a little variable, however I was able to get around 19 to 20MB/s reasonably consistently, though it was subject to some drops to the 15MB/s range during the course of the transfer

I did find that the devices are quite sensitive to positioning, when I initially set them up the transfer rate was peaking at 15MB/s however just rotating them so that the devices are ‘pointing’ to each other improved the signal to the level I got above.

I also suspect that I don’t have the devices optimally positioned, the satellite is sitting under my desk (far side of the room), so I suspect that if I can move that over the book case on the ‘near’ side of the room as well as adjusting the position of the base unit (sitting behind the TV) I think I could get to 25MB/s

As for latency, a ping from upstairs to the main router downstairs is coming back at 3 or 4ms, so not really any different to what I was seeing on the Powerline.

So far does seem to be pretty stable, I’ve had Youtube videos on the last hours or so while doing some web surfing and I’ve not had any issues so far.

Hope that is useful for anyone else looking for a Powerline replacement.

 

[Steviepunk]

Just to update on this, I've been testing for stability of the wireless connection, I had a PC running a VPN with no auto-reconnect from when I set it up on the evening of the 5th until the night of the 9th and the VPN remained connected. So looks like over those 4 days there was no drop in connection at all.