Mesh Wifi systems in old house?

Bin Ridin

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Hi,
Daughter lives in old house and Virgin router wifi signal is limited, presumably by wall thickness. I tried Devolo powerline units (use them myself in newer house) but no connection, presumably due the sockets concerned are not on same circuit.

Options now appear to be:

Run a cable or 2 from existing router to location in kitchen and perhaps upstairs too, installing wifi routers there with same ssid and passwords....
Buy a new mesh system (TP-link, BT, Google, ASUS or similar) and install it. Worried about this because it might hit the same limitations as the existing wifi....

Has anyone advice based upon experience in a similar situation?

Ta!
 
The wifi in my house was awful. Adding extra WAPs and range extenders worked up to a point, but was a pain having to connect to different WAPs in different parts of the house.

Eventually got fed up with it and installed an Orbi MESH system which has worked perfectly.
 
If you use the same kit, ssid and password roaming between access points should be seamless. I would go with running cable and installing extra access points. It's a bit of work though but is the way companies the world over do it.

Sent from my SM-T713 using Tapatalk
 
I've installed 4 Google mesh points on our three bedroom semi. Probably slight overkill, but covers all floors, including the loft. I was reliant on a cable running up the side of the house, through the loft and back down into the spare bedroom, but my rubbish cable termination eventually failed and I decided to shell out. It's done the trick. Definitely recommend mesh WiFi.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
 
Marki_GSA said:
If you use the same kit, ssid and password roaming between access points should be seamless. I would go with running cable and installing extra access points. It's a bit of work though but is the way companies the world over do it.

Sent from my SM-T713 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
If you're using individual WAPs or range extenders you still have to choose which one to connect to. MESH means you just appear to have one giant WAP everywhere in the house.
 
A lot of old routers can run DD-WRT firmware, which then can be configured to run as wifi access points, but you'll need to run cat5 cable to it. I use this set up to get wifi in my attic - cable ran up there, old router set up as access point. Works very well, and you can use the rest of the ports (inc the WAN port as a switch for wired devices).

You can run them as wireless repeaters, similar to a mesh network, but you'd need more of them.

Never tried a mesh network in my house, but it seems like a plan too...

D.
 
stolzy said:
If you're using individual WAPs or range extenders you still have to choose which one to connect to. MESH means you just appear to have one giant WAP everywhere in the house.
Click to expand...
Ah OK I better go break all the wireless networks I have installed over the last 15 years then because they work just fine!
 
stolzy said:
If you're using individual WAPs or range extenders you still have to choose which one to connect to. MESH means you just appear to have one giant WAP everywhere in the house.
Click to expand...

If it's set up correctly then if/when the current connection drops to a certain level, the device will join another AP of the same SSID and password that has a stronger signal.

That's the way mine works. So I guess I have tried a Mesh network, but without the trendy name.

D.
 
You could try wifi extender sockets

https://www.bgelectrical.uk/wiring-devices/moulded/wifi-range-extender#922UWR

ff3f807fa6286701dd27ac33e3b43e11.png


Bin Ridin said:
Hi,
Daughter lives in old house and Virgin router wifi signal is limited, presumably by wall thickness. I tried Devolo powerline units (use them myself in newer house) but no connection, presumably due the sockets concerned are not on same circuit.
Click to expand...

You might be wanting to get the earthing checked out on some of those sockets
 
I had a similar problem getting Wifi right through the house
Tried extenders and they were a miserable failure

My solution was to just upgrade my Sky to Sky Q which works as a mesh system

It actually ( and un believably) saved me a few quid a month as well
 
stolzy said:
If you're using individual WAPs or range extenders you still have to choose which one to connect to. MESH means you just appear to have one giant WAP everywhere in the house.
Click to expand...

Not true. So long as they are all configured with the exact same SSID and encryption settings then "WiFi Roaming" is possible whereby the wireless device you are using will automatically connect to the WAP with the strongest signal.
One other requirement in order to adhere to WiFi Roaming standards is that each WAP needs to be set to a different WiFi Channel. This makes WiFi Roaming work a whole lot better.


Essentially, these MESH devices are exactly what I have just described above but all boxed up in a somewhat plug n play product for tech noobs :D
 
If you run dual band devices, they can use one band, usually 2,4GHz, to connect to each other, and then you use the 5GHz band to connect to it, that way you get maximum bandwidth, although some is used for management traffic between APs, I don't think it's very much. Use cables to APs as much as possible though, mesh networks often seem slower than I expect.

Ubiquti Unifi stuff is good.
 
SOAA said:
... "WiFi Roaming" is possible whereby the wireless device you are using will automatically connect to the WAP with the strongest signal.

Although this is dependent on the device operating system. Android doesn't always connect to the nearer mesh node until it actually loses the connection to the currently connected node, and sometimes it hangs on for dear life. I've had to flip the WiFi on and off on the phone before now to force it to connect to the nearer node. Not the fault of the mesh network vendor though, they have no control over connecting devices in this regard. This wasn't the seamless operation I wanted, but does still give me good network connectivity through the house and garden.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
 
If you're using individual WAPs or range extenders you still have to choose which one to connect to.
Click to expand...

Nah. That is just a badly configured network.

SOAA said:
Essentially, these MESH devices are exactly what I have just described above but all boxed up in a somewhat plug n play product for tech noobs :D
Click to expand...

Exactly, I was going to ask what a "mesh" wifi is?
Mesh networks are slightly different (zigbee and the like).

Several access points for the same network have been the norm since the dawn of wifi... and you only access one network.
 
0ldman said:
Although this is dependent on the device operating system. Android doesn't always connect to the nearer mesh node until it actually loses the connection to the currently connected node, and sometimes it hangs on for dear life. I've had to flip the WiFi on and off on the phone before now to force it to connect to the nearer node. Not the fault of the mesh network vendor though, they have no control over connecting devices in this regard. This wasn't the seamless operation I wanted, but does still give me good network connectivity through the house and garden.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Very good point, I had forgotten about that "feature" of the Android operating system. I'm sure there was a hack going round where you could modify one of the OS files to improve the WiFi Roaming aggressiveness, but even that didn't improve things greatly :(


shugie said:
Ubiquti Unifi stuff is good.
Click to expand...

+1 for Ubiquiti. I've heard great things about their kit but have not had the chance to play around with any of it myself yet. It's something that is fairly near the top of my to do list though, when I get round to changing the WiFi set up here at home :thumb
 
Ubiquity is amazing kit for the money. It's not tplink cheap but then it's way better hardware and a bargain when you look at the competition like cisco and HP.

Sent from my SM-T713 using Tapatalk
 
Ive a house made of reinforced concrete. essentially a large faraday cage.I use the main incoming broadband router, then ran four rj45 cables around the house to different points, then used old routers and stuck them on the end of the rj45 cables.Ive now 5 different wifi points. use the same password everywhere, and Robert is your Dad's brother.You can also use old bt routers, which are very powerful, but tied in with bt, you fire the signal into one of the outlets and the wifi works and you get three more rj45s.It wont work if you put the signal into the inlet.it expects a bt signal i guess. i found it online.Ive also run an rj45 straight into my audio sound system and freeview box rather than use wifi.I felt there were so many wifis it would get a bit messed up.plus the router for the freeview is next to the freeview box, so just plugged it in.
 
Bought a range extender in Lidl for €25, found a spot in the hall where the signal from router is ok and the extender signal is decent in the kitchen and bedroom overhead (these are in an extension to the return off the back wall of the old house.) So far, so good. I also set up an old sky modem wifi router to a fixed ip address and dhcp off, and have tested this as a wired extension wifi, works well. However, for now, staying clear of the wired solution. Mesh would probably be better than extender but this seems adequate for now anyhow, let's see.

Useful Youtube,,,,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5QJb3O19zI
 
Marki_GSA said:
Ubiquity is amazing kit for the money. It's not tplink cheap but then it's way better hardware and a bargain when you look at the competition like cisco and HP.

Sent from my SM-T713 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

TP-Link hardware is actually pretty good, their RF design engineers know their stuff, but the firmware is shite. Running OpenWRT they are good. But for business applications I'm also a fan of Mikrotik kit, their point to point links are the dogs danglies, and the little hAP AC Lites are excellent value for the performance. But quite not quite as straight forward to setup.

And for best performance on 2.4GHz, using G/N only, no B, channels 1, 6 or 11 and 20MHz width. You'd be surprised how much difference those few setting make when you have more than one AP.
 
Just found this thread and am intrigued... I have an old house with thick walls and a large footprint, so my wifi is a bloody nightmare. Going 'mesh' sounds a very interesting possible solution to me.

Having just read up on a few websites about it, I'm still confused on the very basics - can someone enlighten me? If I were to install 3 mesh wifi nodes around my house, where do these devices actually obtain their network input? Wirelessly from each other? Or is it mains electricity-borne? Or via RJ45 cables connected to my network by whatever method?
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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