Router Replacement

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5 Feb 2022
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174
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Last year, I bought 3 Deco E4s. They have a 100mbps ethernet port, which was fine for my situation. Now I have 150mbps FTTC, and I'm likely to get full fibre when my contract expires in 2 years. There's also a chance it'll go over 1gbit. We pay an extraordinary amount of money for slow internet because it keeps the landline around. When landlines are retired in 2 years (which is the only way to stop the elderly using them), we may pay less for 1gbit, or the same for 3.

I'm in London, so it'll probably be Community Fibre. I currently use EE, and their Home Hub which uses Wifi AC. I thought of connecting a Deco M4 or M5 to the router, then using the E4s wirelessly, but I considered 2 things: the M4 and E4 are AC. A wifi 6 router would have bigger range, maybe making them redundant. Secondly, the 1gbit port on the M4 might bottleneck me in the future the way the E4 did.

Honestly, my mesh routers have been a letdown. They're slow to switch and I'm not getting the range I want. Plus the 3rd one feels redundant, and my stuff's so close to the main router, the upstairs one seems pointless too.

My phone and PC now have wifi 6e, but the cheapest 6E router, the Tenda AXE5700, is called slow, unreliable and potentially backdoored. Then there's the LTT video where he says at the end that his phones stayed on 5ghz, refusing to switch to 6ghz. I'm considering a better, cheaper, faster wifi 6 router. Budget for 6E was £100, but I'd probably be looking at £50 for a 6.

What's mandatory though are 2 things: parent controls and a guest network, controllable through an app that multiple people can log into. If it's TP-link, it can't have Homeshield Pro. HSP has a bunch of parent controls gated off with a subscription service. I bought a TP-link router with HSP, and couldn't believe they wanted me to pay for stuff my E4 did for free. You had slightly more fine-tuning, but nothing worthy of paying extra after you already bought the router.
 
Hmm. Are there options without DIY?

The problem is running the cable from the living room to upstairs. I've tried powerline, but it's unreliable through my old house. Sometimes it's slower than my old WiFi. Then there's where to plug it. If I want it central like the smoke alarm, it'll have to use the hallway plug.
 
TP-Link's Deco doesn't offer much settings to allow you to properly tune it. I was happily running the more expensive X60 set until 5GHz became more crowded in my area, and I couldn't change things like WiFi channel, width, etc. If you have a look at the Asus range they'll give you more control.

Just a heads up, you don't need WiFi 6 and 6e to make full use of 150mb GFast, on WiFi 5 I can see it peak to ~560mb odd on a gigabit line. If you do however change to FTTP in future, regular 6 gets pretty close to gigabit, I would only consider 6e if you do plan to go beyond that. But if you're waiting for your contract to end in a couple of years, WiFi 7 will be more common then.
Thanks. Does Asus come with app-based parents' controls and monitoring? I had one years ago that did guest networks, so I guess that's there.

ChrisD said the mesh was using too much bandwidth for backhaul, so I'm considering ditching mesh for the next 2 years. Who knows what'll happen in 2 years, but for now my decos get 80mbps while the ee hub gets 120.

Will any decent £50 WiFi 6 or even £25 WiFi 5 be enough to get me through? I know you said 6 is unnecessary for gfast, but there's a 300mbps gfast+ or whatever, that they may throw us on before the 2 years expires.
 
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