AT&T U-Verse customer.
They installed the service in one corner of my house on the ground floor.
My home office is on the next floor up, opposite end of the house.
I’ve installed a WiFi extender that works somewhat in the home office; but there are still dead spots in the house; plus the extender creates a 2nd network, so as I move around the house sometimes I would be better served if I changed networks.
One option for the home office (which is the most important thing) is to be able to hard wire into the router. So I would have to to string Ethernet from the router to my office. What sucks about that is the overwhelming pain it would be to run a line up the 1st floor exterior wall, up the 2nd floor wall, into the attic, across the house, and back down into the home office. I wouldn’t get disconnects on my work VPN; but it does little to fix the other dead spots. Although, typing this out; I’m not so sure how worried I am about that.
Another option I’m looking into because it seems like it would be viable; is to use something like a Google Mesh network; but I don’t know anyone who has actually used one. The selling points are that it would be one network, supposedly I would be connecting seamlessly from one puck to the next throughout the house. However if an extender is occasionally giving me problems, would this suffer the same fate unless I just place maybe a 3rd ‘puck’ between my home office and my AT&T modem?
Look in your extender documentation or get one that supports wifi bridging; it’s possible to set one up that broadcasts on the same network as your main router so you don’t have to change networks. You also might want to talk to AT&T about moving the drop to a more appropriate spot in the house, either to the room that you care about most or to somewhere easier to run a wire to.
I am interested in finding out more about Google Mesh. My BIL got this I think, and I was thinking he had problems with connecting to the 5Ghz, but it says it does both.
I have the AT&T fiber and am using their modem with the built in WiFi. Do you just connect to your regular router, or do you have to do something else?
I have pretty good service in most of the house, but not always back in my daughter’s rooms.
I would try the bridge mode thing first. also look into ubiquity network equipment you can add access points for less than $100.00 If you do any hardwiring use solid copper cat6 or 5e stay away from cca cable.
From what I’ve read on some forums, it looks like you put your AT&T Router into bridge mode (or passthrough mode?), and hardwire one of the Google Mesh pucks directly into the AT*T Modem. But even though I’ve read that, I’ve also read that it’s not necessary to use bridge mode.
Effectiveness will depend on the availability of unfiltered power outlets near the router and the computer, and arrangement of the electrical branch circuits those outlets are tied into. Also your willingness to use an Ethernet cable on the computer instead of wireless. (In my case, a gaming desktop system, wired Ethernet is the only way I’d want to go, and my branch circuits are well-wired.)
Prices vary from about $75 to over $150 for basic single-drop connectivity.
get a bunch of wifi AP’s (ubiquity makes usefull stuff)
pull a lot of wire.
get a AP in the center of every room/floor as close as possible to the spot where you will be using your wifi-devices.
(optional:)get your techie friend to properly configure everything
switch off the crap wifi from your modem/router/switch/AP/DHCP server.
In wifi (esp. with 5G) you preferably need line of sight and less than 10m (30ft?) of distance for a useful connection.
Only look at mesh-like solutions if you cannot/will not/are not allowed to run cable.
“Mesh” solutions will never come close to what cable does. Every “hop” in a mesh network halves your bandwidth and doubles your latency.
I use Google Wifi with 3 routers (I think that’s what you mean by Google Mesh). One is plugged in to the cable modem, the other two just need power. It works seamlessly, as if it were one network - same SSID everywhere. I can walk around the house with my phone or tablet, and wifi just works everywhere.
The location of the access points make a big difference. Moving them away from outside walls & windows is a good start. Go core of house.
Use something like the free phone app Speedtest to see where the drop off in speed is happening and add a few more access points as needed.
Can you run cat-6 cables? Switches are extremely inexpensive and work great. Then when you add an access point to the switch it is getting full bandwidth.
I use powerline adapters. I have the base unit plugged into my router, synced to two others–one by an entertainment center with plenty of Ethernet plugs for all the devices, and another with wifi for the back rooms. I unplug that and plug in in outside when I’m grilling in the backyard with no difficulty.
You need to set up the network initially, but if you use the same network name and password as your router, your devices will choose the strongest network available whenever you connect.
I find I need to resync every few months. It’s kind of annoying, but really only takes a minute.
This article at Ars Technica explains why Wi-Fi kinda sucks in general, and points out that adding access points willy nilly can cause slowdowns because they can all be competing for the same channel.
I"m using Eero, with three Eeros throughout the house. The selling point for me on these was that they support wired ethernet backhaul, as I already have that. They also do sticky IPs, port mapping and other mid-complexity router kind of stuff. We have dozens of devices on the network.
I am happy so far, without a single dropout as I go throughout the entire house. Been running for the past week, so I will have more information as the months go by.
“no drop in power?” what has signal strength (which I presume is what you mean by “Power”) to do with latency or throughput?
If you think that a 2nd or 3rd hop in a “mesh” configuration has the same quality connection as a wired AP, I have a very exiting proposition about a bridge…
In the interest of fighting ignorance; Some real world testresults:
From my kitchen table. I have direct line of sight to a wired ap:
The same with a wire directly into my modem/router:
As you can see my wifi has ~2ms higher latency, throughput is a wash.
Will you do the same simple tests: connected to the second hop of your mesh network and directly in your router?
I installed one of those in a client’s house, and he has been very happy with it. I installed Cat-5e to each of the three nodes. I did have to put them into Bridge mode, and lost use of the Android client interface in order to not have a double NAT situation.
I’m assuming that’s because they have an ISP-provided router they have to use. That’s a pain in the backside, and it sure takes away from the ease of use.
I have FiOS and in order for certain DVR/TV functions to work their router needs to be involved–I figured out how to bridge theirs onto my network, so my own router is doing the DHCP/NAT stuff, while theirs is just another network device.
When I went to Eero, I took out my aging PFSense firewall and plopped in the Eero without much fuss.
We went with the eero system as well. Really simple to set up, cured all the dead spots and has a simple way to assign devices to profiles that can be easily blocked to control the kids internet time which my wife and I can control from an app on the phone.
I had one puck fail when I unplugged it to move it somewhere else (it powered up but it seamed to have lost its mind). It was replaced at best buy with no issues.
Not a cheap system though.
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I’d recommend getting a high powered router (approx. 1 watt transmit power) and using a Coaxifi kit (coaxifi.com) to distribute the signal to each room that has a cable outlet. Compared to Coaxiif, meshed extenders have several big problems that make their pricing seem absurd. Coaxifi is much cheaper. I found it after trying powerline adapters and extenders, and having problems with all those alternatives.
With meshed extenders, the throughput Mbps gets cut by half or more versus a regular router (because the transmission is duplicated between router to mesh unit and mesh unit to client), there’s destructive interference from hidden nodes (where one mesh unit can’t ‘hear’ another, but still congests the same WiFi channel), and the mesh units don’t always negotiate the shortest path (sometimes they’ll make 2+ network hops, so that adds latency). Coaxifi uses WiFi over coax to push the signal out hundreds of feet farther than a router or extender can, so the modulation and Mbps stay much higher over a large distance since there’s minimal signal attenuation.
