Rock-Solid Mesh Wi-Fi System - for Low Speed nbn, but High Reliability and Coverage Needed

GoogleFroogle on 28/09/2023 - 04:14

I have looked at other threads; but my use-case might be unique.

My NBN sucks, and so that might the biggest rate-determining factor (and sadly telstra won't let me get home-5g as I am 20 metres outside the coverage area, even though I use it for mobile 5g). On a good day I get 30-35Mbps download and 5-9Mbs upload. Barely enough for me to stream on twitch, but just enough as long as it remains solid (which is my #1 priority)

Since getting a new modem from iinet, I get pretty close to that in the same room and in my stream-room which is adjacent to the modem's room.

My family can barely load a website once a single brick wall is in the way.

So I was looking for a mesh system, so my family can get reception through our 2 story brick house. But obviously, our internet speed is so slow anyway, as long as it won't reduce my current 32/9 (I keep hearing about a penalty for mesh systems and amplifiers, but is this actually a factor when there will be very little traffic from me to the modem?)

Thanks in advance for your answers/ideas!

Computing Modem Router

Comments

  • Love a bargain on 28/09/2023 - 05:50
    +1

    I'm in a similar situation (not with the speed provisioned but the internal walls affecting reception).

    Wired backhaul would be your best bet - because otherwise the wireless connection between the base and the satellite(s) will still have to travel through the same walls that are causing problem in the first place.

    Alternatively, getting a stronger router (than the modem router provided by iinet) might help to improve the coverage of your home network without a mesh system.

    Personally, I bought an ASUS router that 8s AiMesh-capable, with the view that if the router upgrade isn't enough, I could add another one to it and create a MESH (albeit only dualband, not tri-band).

    • mskeggs on 28/09/2023 - 07:59

      Wired would be great, but $100 for a mesh system is a much better investment than more money on a router. If your concerns are performance at nbn speeds, a mesh system is always going to do better than spending more on a costlier router.

      • Love a bargain on 28/09/2023 - 13:38

        There's no one size fit all solution and I was simply sharing my experience.

        1. Depending on the layout of the place, it might not be possible to arrange the mesh units in such a way that they're roughly in each other's line of sight without having to "talk" through the wall. (I know I'd have to rearrange furniture etc if I were to do that at my place. & even then they'd still not quite in each other's direct line of sight.)

        2. OP is using an ISP-issued modem/router. They are typically not that powerful. I'd even called the one I got from iinet useless. (Of cos, OP might have received a different model, which might or might not perform better.) A more powerful router should be better at penetrating the wall, hence I said it MIGHT help.

        3. My solution (to my problem) includes the option of expanding it to a MESH system if the network performance is still unacceptable.

        4. The price I paid for the modem (or rather if I were to get 2 of them) was comparable to how much I'd have to pay for a pair comparable MESH units.

        • mskeggs on 28/09/2023 - 16:15
          +1

          I guess I can’t convince you to give a cheap mesh setup a try, but the issues you are describing could be easily solved, without any messing around, trying to get line of sight or anything.

          It is such a step up from a single wifi router, and the difference between the $10 ISP special and the $300 super duper nighthawk whatever is minimal in wifi signal performance, while the addition of a $65 mesh will greatly expand coverage, and if poor wifi signal strength is the performance bottleneck, then speeds too.

  • mskeggs on 28/09/2023 - 07:59
    +1

    The penalty is to the maximum wifi rates, which are hundreds of mbps, not the traffic carried, as it uses some of the bandwidth for signaling.
    Any mesh system will be fine.
    I had good results with an old tenda system, then upgraded to to link m5. Either would be fine for your uses, so I suggest you get the next one on special.

  • soan papdi on 28/09/2023 - 08:34
    +1

    I like my tplink deco S4 but also consider Ethernet over power to create another wifi access point in the other floor.

  • netjock on 28/09/2023 - 09:08
    +2

    Picked up on gumtree 3x Tenda MW5 for like $65. I put one down the hall way and it pretty much solves my problem. Now the problem is internet reaches across the road so you can stream while mowing the front lawn.

  • rumblytangara on 28/09/2023 - 09:41
    +1

    Are you sure it's brick and not concrete walls? I've found that brick isn't too bad for wifi, it's concrete that really kills signal.

    My family can barely load a website once a single brick wall is in the way.

    What's the distance involved here? How big is the house and is it a long narrow shape or a square? You might be better served by mesh, or by powerline. It depends on floorplan and circuits. Or even by putting ethernet into cable raceways to connect APs.

    If you just toss mesh units around, note that they will have exactly the same problem as the existing wifi devices- they still have to get wifi signal through the exact same walls. There are a couple upsides though:

    1. You can move the mesh devices to 'smarter' places. e.g. position them so that the they can see each other through doorways. This is the big one.

    2. They might be smart enough to connect to each other on 2.4GHz which is better for wall penetration than 5GHz. 2.4 is slower, but your NBN speeds are slow anyway so this would be the better way. You'd have to check around that the APs will knock down to 2.4 if the 5GHz connections between APs is bad.

    I found this somewhere once when looking at signal attenuation, can't verify how accurate it is, but it is roughly inline with what I've experienced.

    Material Loss in decibels at 5 GHz
    8″ Concrete 55.15
    4″ Concrete 26.00
    Brick 15.28
    Hollow Masonry Block 14.92
    Wood 3.27
    Glass 0.06
    Drywall ~ 0
    Plywood ~ 0

    One quick and simple thing to try without spending anything yet is just to see how the home does with just the 2.4GHz band. Disable 5GHz or rename the 2.4GHz band to something else so the further devices can connect specifically to it. A good chunk of home routers allow you do to this, some don't.

    • GoogleFroogle on 28/09/2023 - 10:45

      Thanks for the replies.

      Pretty sure old brick plastered over. I'll try to figure out naming the 2.4 something different. My previous modem/router did (and also was much better), this new one didn't come like that default, but I'll RTFM and see if that helps.

      • rumblytangara on 28/09/2023 - 10:56
        +1

        Overall, mesh units are probably a good idea, but you still need to put them in the right places. It really depends on your floorplan.

  • Ozbar Gain on 28/09/2023 - 11:18
    +1

    I'd get a power over ethernet adapter to bring a hotspot to the 1st floor. This will make a hotspot and use the power lines as a back bone (up to gigabit speeds)

    • Ademos on 30/09/2023 - 08:27

      You mean ethernet over power. Power over ethernet is a wildly different kettle of fish.

  • keo on 28/09/2023 - 11:44
    +2

    What is your budget, how big is your home, and where is the router located in the home? Are you able to run ethernet cable in your home at all? Do you want to be able to stream twitch/4k far away from your router or are all the other areas just for browsing the web?

    • GoogleFroogle on 28/09/2023 - 14:42

      Other areas are browsing, though wifey is conferencing, which is important for her job (though not more than 1080, i'd imagine).

      House is 5ish bedrooms, one of them on the second story, and all the critical ones are within 8-12 metres of one another (as the wave flies), but maybe some hefty walls, microwave, fridge, etc in between (maybe solar panel even in the way of the second story room). Unfortunately the modem is a little to close to the side wall of the house as we rewired as direct as possible to get NBN to accept fixing the internet for us (32/6 IS a fix relative to where it was at least on this house which is far from the node).

    • GoogleFroogle on 28/09/2023 - 14:44

      oh and running cables is difficult through the house, but could possibly run 1-3 big ugly visible ethernet cables 12 metres through to my stream room (I guess or have a tiny switch in stream room, plus one cable)

  • ESEMCE on 28/09/2023 - 12:40
    +1

    Telstra 5G hack.
    Find an address roughly in line between your house and the tower.
    Enter that into the 5G address checker.
    If it's valid, proceed to purchase,using that address.
    Change the delivery address to your house.
    Bingo!

    • GoogleFroogle on 28/09/2023 - 14:37
      +2

      Nice, funnily enough, I pleaded repeatedly for Telstra to let me have 5g (which works for across the road), as recently as 3 days ago (promising to not hold support responsible if service was imperfect).

      Out of desperation, I entered my address, and they have bulged the coverage map out to include ONLY my house from this side of the road :) I don't know if it was out of my pleading or not :)

      So for now, I am probably going to consider meshing the house regardless, AND getting 5G home, given I am reliant on good internet to do my job (as is my wife occasionally), and Telstra has a 1GB limit before capping (though hopefully upload still remains high, as that is the most critical.

  • mskeggs on 28/09/2023 - 12:41
    +2

    All the advice of doing cabling or eth over power is overkill for carrying under 50mbps of bandwidth.
    The $65 3-pack recommended by netjock above will solve your issues without any fuss.

    • Ademos on 30/09/2023 - 08:26

      It isnt. You arent getting the reliability and near zero lstency of EoP with wifi. Tailor your advice to the circumstances. Bandwidth is irrelevant to this user.

  • rumblytangara on 28/09/2023 - 15:49

    This popped up: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/802390

  • beeawwb on 28/09/2023 - 15:50
    +1

    I've got 6x of the TP-Link XE75Pro (so 2x of the 3 packs) in a brick 2-storey home. Setup is a little different to typical because I've got wired Cat6 backhaul throughout the house but even before we got that installed I was getting full speed from most places. There's 1 unit out in the shed so it's communicating wirelessly to the closest unit inside the house, so that's through metal, across the yard, and then through the brick before it hits a unit. Shed gets good coverage.

    They've also got the 6Ghz bandwidth reserved for wireless backhaul but given they're mostly communicating via wired I might consider switching that to allow 6Ghz devices in the future.

    Have got all of the units downstairs, with a provision to hook some of them upstairs but they've been fine firing upwards through the ceiling so haven't bothered.

    Probably a bit overkill for your situation though.

    • rumblytangara on 28/09/2023 - 16:07

      Sounds like heavy overkill TBH (but overkill can be nice). Are the internal walls also brick?

      Did you start with a smaller number and find that you needed to add more for proper coverage?

      • mskeggs on 28/09/2023 - 16:18

        We are a bit the same here, with 5 mesh clients. The 3 pack provides good wifi coverage, but I wanted an Ethernet port in the garage so added a 4th. Then I added the same brand DSL router, so everything is managed via the same app, which is convenient (though I don’t like the app).
        So I probably didn’t need more than 3…

        • rumblytangara on 28/09/2023 - 18:17

          I've got my parents' place of maybe 300 square metres covered with just 2 nodes. Drywall is great for wifi. Covers the yards and the basement too.

          But I totally empathise with overkill. I'm using mesh nodes simply as as wireless bridges because they're better than built-in wifi.

          Even using enterprise gear as bridges, it's interesting to see how unreliable wifi is- I'll get dozens of ping timeouts over a 24 hour period. And latency is all over the place, anything from 3-300ms.

      • beeawwb on 28/09/2023 - 19:47
        +1

        A bit of overkill and a bit of planning. Partner and I both work from home full time, so we wanted to make sure that our work computers each had a wired connection. Then we also run a business from the shed, so we wanted to make sure that there was a unit in the shed and a unit next to the internal wall to ensure a smooth connection since there’s a fair distance between the wall and the shed. By that point we had earmarked 4 units, so “we” bought a 3-pack and the business bought the other 3-pack. Currently using 5. The 6th one was the upstairs unit and we’ve got such good coverage that I just haven’t turned it on.

  • Ademos on 30/09/2023 - 08:24
    +2

    +1 to ethernet over power adaptors. Worked a charm at 4 properties now.

    Get your copper from your wall point tested or replaced. Most are ancient. Renewing the run from your wall to your property termination point can make a difference to speeds.

    Check if you're eligible for the free fttp upgrade nbn deals through Aussie etc

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