Wi-Fi/Mesh woes. Want a solution for my ASUS Wi-Fi 6 router and BT whole home that’s slow.

[johnw100]

Hope this is the right forum for this.

So story is, had bt and wholehome mesh x 3 about 5 years ago. Then Moved to virgin
And 600Mbs plan a few years back. router is crap kept using BT mesh but its bit slow these days. Got an ASUs rt-ac68u
Router which is quick if you have one wall and then the signal falls off fast. Just tried buying a second one but again it’s rubbish outside of one or two walls. So sending that back.
BT whole home can you get to the end of our 150 foot garden. As I have one In the office next to the router another in the living room and another in an upstairs bedroom.
But max download I get is 180Mbps, the Asus about 600Mbps in the same room. You really notice the difference.

We have just had a loft room converted and speed is ok but miss the fast ASUS speeds that it’s impossible to get up there.

Also SSID, I have two. One for the ASUs and one for the BT whole home. Should I just merge to one SSID, I notice my phone hanging onto the ASUS ssid when it’s a terrible signal.

Have about 60 devices connect various phones, computers and smart devices.
So plenty of traffic.


Thanks a lot

 

[johnw100]

It’s because the BT system doesn’t have a dedicated backhaul. You may be best with an AP mounted upstairs on the ceiling centrally.

Ok I did purchase a second asus router that was using the 2.5g from the same model of Asus plugged into next to the virgin router.
That was near the ceiling of the first floor but it was rubbish past one solid wall. Was slower than the BT whole home. Maybe just the wrong type and I should have gone for an asus mesh?

 

[johnw100]

60 devices????????????

Ha ok maybe I exaggerate and they’re not all connected and online. It’s a good 40 though when things are going. About 10 of those are light bulbs.

 

[johnw100]

A single SSID will help, but it will still be down to the individual device to decide when it wants to switch. If all of your access points were from the same provider then often they talk between themselves and will "nudge" clients across onto an AP with stronger signal. (e.g. Unifi APs or most enterprise systems)

A floor plan/diagram of the house/garden with where the router is located etc, would help with suggesting where to place APs and how many are needed.

Personally I would turn Wifi off on the router and play about with repositioning the BT Mesh, but as @ChrisD. said, ideally you want APs that are wired back to the router, rather than using wifi<-->wifi links between access points (as you end up wasting a lot of the theoretical bandwidth)

ok thanks yeah I did respond to them that I did have a 2.5g backhaul between ASUs routers but I just don’t rate the Wi-Fi on those compared to my 3 BT wholehome pods. Maybe a couple of asus mesh pods is a better option? Downside is quite expensive .

 

[johnw100]

So your complaint is you want 5 year old mesh that provides 180mbit via shared radio to do more? That's actually enough to stream a 4K REMUX, even the out of spec ones, but OK. You will need to run cable and use wired backhaul to achieve anything close to gigabit speeds and as such need a mesh system that supports wired backhaul. Personally, anything I need to pull a few hundred bit through regularly would be hard wired anyway, if it's important enough to care about, it's important enough to wire properly.

I think the main issue was phones seem to connect to whatever ssid they like and as I have two one for asus and the other for bt you get a situation where you have one bar of signal and. Having to switch to another ssid.
So maybe I should just merge them. You’re right the speed is actually perfectly acceptable. YouTube videos run instantly at 1080p or even 4k.

 

[johnw100]

https://imgur.com/a/QUBKDe8
here’s my plan of our house,and main areas of detail. hope you can read my scribbles.
just wanting to get better WiFi in the loft. Has wired Ethernet btw.

thanks

 

[johnw100]

If it was me, I would replace your BT nodes (the blue line means they are wired I hope) with Asus routers in AP mode. One in your office and one in your Loft room. I can't see how wide the house is so am guessing!

So - Current Asus router, 2 cables out (go via a Switch if needed) one to each other Asus in AP mode. Brutal but that is what works for me and the house looks a similar size. I would also run at least 2 SSIDs with one of them (maybe just from the Office AP) solely as 2.4ghz. I do this because many smart devices (Ring Cameras as an example) only work on 2.4ghz and setting them up can be a pain in my experience without a specific 2.4ghz network.

Not sure I'm helping here but hope it's of some value!

Thanks, yes blue lines are two wired bt pods, one in bedroom isn't.
Any particular Asus AP is should look at getting?
did look at these as they are similar to my router, and I can use parental controls, etc.
***Competitor link removed***

 

[johnw100]

Difficult to fully advise with only a single elevation of the house, but something like the below will likely be better:

Remove all the BT devices, place the ASUS access point on the first floor, in the centre of the house (ideally wall mount it on that central wall)



Either position the router as centrally as possible downstairs, or place it near the outside wall facing the garden (to improve outdoor signal).

1-2 access points will cover 99% of "normal" houses (i.e. not mansions and without any thick stone walls or anything else odd)

that's great, thanks for the illustration update
is it best to put it midway up the wall for the AP? I did have a second ASUS router on the opposite side, above the stairs in the office ,near the ceiling as we have cabinets in there, But the signal was only decent through one wall. then it was worse than the BT pods.

 

[johnw100]

I've removed your competitor link as OcUK do stock some access points etc

If you are spending that money, you'd be better off looking at Ubiquitu unifi APs.

I thought you had an Asus AP already?

thanks, sorry my phone got stuck sending, so it got posted twice

not I only have an Asus RT-AX86U attached to 3 x BT Whole home pods that I'd like to improve the speed of.

considering a couple of these Asus mesh devices. but a bit concerned of losing the coverage I have with the 3 BT pods

 

[johnw100]

ok as an update, I decided to purchase a couple of the Asus rt-ax92u mesh routers seeing as I already had an Asus router. At first I was impressed but with the help of iperf3 on a wired Ethernet laptop and then walking around the house with the phone managed to get a fairly steady 250-650Mbps . No idea if that's what I should be expecting lol. The BT Wholesome I'd max out at around 300Mbps.
thanks