Which Mesh Setup

[Karlb1483]

I am blessed to have a 1gb internet connection and my current setup is a Tenda MW3, however, it is only giving me wireless speeds of 100mbs. I have had the engineers round (I am currently living in Romania) and they have shown me the wired speeds I can get (980mbs) and they said my current set up needs changing.

I am aware that I won't get anywhere near those speeds wirelessly but I can get better than the 100mbs I a currently getting, therefore, I need advice on a new mesh setup that will at least give me faster than 100mbs. My budget is 200GBP I only need 2 nodes, however, I could use just 1 router (must have good range though) as I live in a small house. I have looked at upgrading to the nova MW6, the TP-Link Deco M5 and the Orbi Whole Home mesh system RBK 12 but the wireless transfer speeds are slow or thy say my internet is too fast.

Any advice on what would give me the best speeds would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BigT]

I think you might need to reset your expectations. £200 + mesh isn’t going to get 1Gbps wireless speeds. In fact any mesh system without wired back haul isn’t going to get close I don’t think. Also you’ll need 4x4 MIMO support on the nodes too if you don’t want the whole thing slowing down. And if you’re going to have to wire the back haul then may as well go for two 4x4 MIMO access points instead of mesh in my opinion. Budget £300-£400, run a cable and install two UniFi UniFi NanoHDs or FlexHDs would be my suggestion,

Actually my suggestion should probably be to accept that gigabit is the preserve of wired devices, run Ethernet where you need those internet speeds and accept WiFi at 100Mbit is plenty for what wireless devices are typically doing be doing and save some money. If you take a step back, what does a home user actually make use of 1Gbps internet with? Probably game patches and Linux ISO downloads. Cable those devices in and know that streaming and browsing wirelessly will be plenty fast enough over 100Mbit WiFi.

 

[Rroff]

I think you might need to reset your expectations. £200 + mesh isn’t going to get 1Gbps wireless speeds.

Depends what the cost of that kind of kit is in Romania (I have no idea).

Getting reliable speeds even close to that kind of level is going to depend a lot on things like how congested local WIFI bands are, etc.

 

[WJA96]

My strong recommendation would be to wait for a proven WiFi6 option to come on the market, and plan all your future client purchases to be WiFi6 capable. Buying WiFi5 at the moment will get you 600Mbps maximum (4x4 MuMiMo) and that’s only if you have 4x4 MuMiMo clients (which you probably don’t) or more realistically 250-300Mbps with 2x2 MiMo clients (95% of all phones and tablets currently in use).

WiFi6 will get you a speed improvement with all your clients and I’ve seen over 1400Mbps in testing with a correctly configured WiFi6 access point and client.

As stated by other posters above, a cable will always get you 1Gbps and you’ll need an infrastructure in your home to handle WiFi6 so if you want to spend some money, spending it on cabling up your home would seem the smartest option for both now and the future.

 

[Karlb1483]

I would like to thank everyone for their advice, it has given me a lot to think about. Think I am going to go down the wired route as my house is cabled for ethernet just no switch or terminated cables, not sure why. Sourced a decent 5 port PoE unmanaged switch , rj45 connectors and a crimping tool today so that will keep me busy for a few hours. Then probably gone go down the access point route I think unless anyone else has a better suggestion.