Time to Sort the Wireless

[Bodhi]

Am currently with Sky Fibre, which means I am lso using that lovely Sky SR-102 Hub and it's notoriously excellent WiFi range. We currently live in one of those 3 storey town houses and have the Sky Router on the middle floor, and the WiFi is OK on that floor, and the half of the floors above and below that are next ot the router, but on the other side of the house it is pretty patchy, and as I'll be putting a PS3 and Chromecast Audio in one of the affected rooms it is time to sort it out.

I'll be keeping the SR-102 but turning the wireless off, keeping DHCP etc on the Sky Box, so whatever I get will be mostly used as an AP, however it would be great if I could get one that would cover the entire house.

Have a budget of around £150, so am looking at either the Asus AC-68 or the Netgear R7000. Would rather go down this route than try the Homehub idea previously discussed, but would they be overkill to use as an AP?

And is it best leaving it on the middle floor, or moving it to the top floor and connecting to the SR-102 through Powerline?

 

[smurkin]

I have a Netgear R8000 as my router - its quite good 3x3 mimo, but it never gets the advertised speed/coverage. It can run a DLNA server from a USB device which is quite cool for playing movies on the old smart TV.

I think you have to ask yourself - how much speed do you need? If you need to stream uncompressed blu rays, you'll need the 5g coverage - but 5g comes with a range hit so positioning the AP is really important. Trouble is, you never know the range and speed unless you give it a go. And in many cases, the speed is limited by the client.

I recently stumped up for a UniFi UniFi AP-AC Lite for the far reaches of our house which I wired directly into the nighthawk with a PoE injector. You can also get a long range version. I am pretty impressed with its look and performance, but it does need some setting-up. I haven't tried this as I only have one of them, but you can move around the house moving from one AP to the next without dropping the connection, which is pretty cool. If wires are no object, you could set up one of these on each floor. I fixed mine to the ceiling.

 

[Deebs]

I use Open Mesh for my WiFi needs. Can use up to 4 SSIDs and one is a guest WiFi which is natted (if not using VLANs) to stop them going near your internal network.

 

[Bodhi]

Must admit total speeds aren't too much of a concern - as long as it can match the 40mbit of the Fibre connection throughout the house I'll be happy. Looking at a couple of reviews, the Netgear looks to be faster but the Asus has better range, so leaning towards the Asus.

 

[Bodhi]

Heh, so of course, I've bought the Netgear. Not the full router, got the WAP version as it was 30 quid less, and don't need the router part. Plan is to turn WiFi off on the Sky router and let the Netgear sort that out.

 

[Embattle]

My Asus AC87u has been playing up recently for the second time, previously had a lot of trouble with Netgear products as well so today I'll receive a tp-link Archer AC3150 and see how that does since it offers most of the benefits of the Asus AC88u but at £100 less.

 

[Bodhi]

Well, that was easy. Turn WiFi off on Sky Router, connect to Netgear Range Extender, set up in Access Point mode. Set SSID and password to same as old Sky Router, wait 2 minutes whilst the Netgear configures itself, then watch all devices reconnect. Well, all except the Sky box upstairs which needed the WiFi details reentered .

Used to get about 12Mbs on Speedtest from the same room as the router, now get that in the garden. Rest of the house is on 35, same as I was getting over the LAN.

Job jobbed I'd say.

 

[Litmus]

get something like these? TP-Link AV1200 Gigabit Passthrough Powerline ac Wi-Fi Kit

 

[Bodhi]

get something like these? TP-Link AV1200 Gigabit Passthrough Powerline ac Wi-Fi Kit

Went for one of the below and plugged it in next to the Sky Router and am using it as a Wireless Access Point - 5 minutes work and good quality wireless throughout the house.

AC1900 - Nighthawk WiFi Range Extender

 

[Hawkwind]

get something like these? TP-Link AV1200 Gigabit Passthrough Powerline ac Wi-Fi Kit

Got those to pass internet into the garden/summer house. A summer house that now, thanks to the Mrs and a miscommunication with the electrician, has 4 double power outlets in a 5m x 3m space Good speed and coverage.

 

[Hawkwind]

My Asus AC87u has been playing up recently for the second time, previously had a lot of trouble with Netgear products as well so today I'll receive a tp-link Archer AC3150 and see how that does since it offers most of the benefits of the Asus AC88u but at £100 less.

Found that with every router I've had in the last 10 years they don't really last longer than 22-3 years before exhibiting issues or dying completely. Usually starts with intermittent internet over wifi loss and needing to reboot the router. Netgear, Dlink, Asus... all the same. My Asus Ac86U lasted nearly 3 years and was great but recently changed it to AC5300.