Mesh Wifi
 

My trusty old AC66u unfortunately does not provide great whole house wireless coverage.

I've been looking at either the Asus Lyra or the Linksys Velop

Not sure if the Lyra is compatible with my router?


Anyone own/used either of the above or can suggest alternatives?

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Depends how you want to do it, and how many cables you want to run

I got one of these a while ago : https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's POE - so a single cable going to it (it comes with a poe injector if you don't have a POE switch).
Gives me better wifi than my router did, plus does other stuff (like a guest network).
At the moment it's just sitting on my desk, but I'm aiming to mount it somewhere - and possibly buy another one for another part of the house.

... but it is a commercial grade AP - so set up isn't as straight forward (there's an app you need to use) - and then you need a controller - which can either be running on your desk top (but you lose reporting facilities if your desk top isn't on) - or (as I'm doing) run the controller on a raspberry pi - which then gives you a web front end for reporting, and controlling the guest network

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I'm using BT's mesh offering at work and it works really well. I'm tempted to use the ASUS version at home as I have a ASUS router but the cost is a little eyewatering and my finance dept would probably veto the idea :(

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Even if you bought her something nice? ;)

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I have a Asus Mesh solution which is working well, fast and reliable. I sold my AC66U and bought 3 second hand AC68U on eBay. These all use a Cat6 backhaul and provide WiFi throughout the house, one on each floor. The latest ASUS firmware seem solid in the Mesh configuration. On my iPhone I can get my full broadband speed over wifi: 382/21 so the AC68U although a few years old seems more than capable enough.

A friend tried the low end Tenda MW3 3 pack solution at ~£80 from Amazon. He seems very happy with it. Only a 100MHz LAN port but if this is fine then a good cheap house-wide mesh solution. Their MW6 is the next step up but is approx £150 ..

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I could go commercial as i have a ton of meraki stuff and licensing :D :D

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

You've changed man, it used to be just about the wifi, and now you've gone all commercial....I don't even know who you are anymore.


Meraki I hear is good, but after the licensing runs out you're left with an expensive paperweight.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

We just changed over to new hardware despite renewing Meraki licensing for 3yrs (because interfering from the heavens...) so I have loads of time the merakis can be sideloaded as well

I wasn’t sure if the Lyra and velop acted as repeaters and without cabling but if each unit needs a cable then I’ll go commercial because SSID block/spoofing etc :D

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

If you are happy with Asus then you just need to upgrade to a mesh wifi option

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-RT-AC6...36&sr=8-2&th=1

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I mentioned this above but I do not think he is interested.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Sorry i missed it. I was new to thread and read top and bottom skipped the middle.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

sorry both, my apologies for missing posts...

I have an AC66u so dont really want to buy a new router.

I was hoping the lyra or velop would need only cable for the first unit...

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Did you get a solution?

I’m thinking of buying this -

https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/netw...ue-mesh-system

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Friend of mine has the MW3 model and he is very pleased with it. The MW6 seems to use a single 5MHz channel for backhaul and client traffic but I doubt this will be a real world issue for most people.

If you are quick, Amazon have a "used" one for £129:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-...condition=used

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I've got this system and it works well. It's very easy to set up - you plug the first unit in to the router, set this up and the other units connect almost immediately. I currently have 19 devices connected (5 wired, 14 wireless including a V6 box) and it's totally stable, giving an 100Mb wireless connection for my phone using SpeedTest.

Any downsides? I once had the two satellites lose connection and had to reboot everything but this was once in a year. There isn't a web setup utility, you have to use a slightly clunky app but it covers most things. I had a small problem connecting a 2.4g kitchen device (Sous Vide Cooker - first world problems) but that was due to the phone I used to connect being on 5g. Once I sorted that, it was all good.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I’ve bought a mesh system - Google WiFi Mesh System (3 pack).

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

show off :P

is it any good?

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Which one?

https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/test-c...stems-3661110/

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

It arrives tomorrow - I'll let you know.

---------- Post added at 17:18 ---------- Previous post was at 17:18 ----------

Google Wifi, 3 pack - it was reduced by £70 on Amazon.

https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/test-c...#toc-3661110-9

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

It's not _that_ good then :)

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

For all you ASUS folks out there, Merlin has started onboarding AiMesh for his value-add version of the stock firmware:

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/ex...openssl.57489/

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

It arrived at 15:50, unpacked and installed* in by 16:10 (all 3 nodes), 15 minutes for the latest software to download and install, and it's working beautifully.

I have one node at the ground floor front right of the house (lounge), another upstairs at the first floor left (office), and the third at the back middle of the house (main bedroom).

I am getting over 100Mb/s in all the rooms with the nodes, and between 60 and 90 in all the other rooms in the house (4 beds, 4 reception rooms), and in the garden between 50 and 70 - very happy with those speeds.

*using the app, which consists of plugging in the nodes and pressing "next" - very, very user friendly.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I'm on a VM superhub 3, compared to the SHub 1 its ace, but... even in our 3 bed terrace it still struggles to reach the end of the house despite being sited centrally. I use power lines with minimal loss (80-90 of a 110 Mbit connection) but do have annoying infrequent dropouts and no way to control access like I could with the M5's through software (kids times, bedtimes etc)

I'm giving thought to the TP-Link Deco M5 3 pack.

I've discounted the Tenda rubik's cube things due to dodgy software etc.
Plus significantly poorer results.

Nova review: https://www.digitalcitizen.life/tend...-review?page=1

Deco review: https://www.digitalcitizen.life/revi...deco-m5?page=1


People are saying I should get the M9 instead of the M5 because it's twice as fast etc, but I'm not sure if they're thinking of commercial usage. My house isn't a typical PH Mansion and I'm only on 110 Mbit in any case. The Deco's also come with dual ethernet ports which would be good for my upstairs smart tv which as ethernet ports.

Cost is a consideration too, the 2 pack of M9 is a lot more than the 3 pack of the M5 (3 physical units with dual Ethernet ports would be more versatile than 2 as well)


Thoughts/Ideas?

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

My choice was the BT Whole Home Wifi - £150 for a 3 pack. Absolutely brilliant esp. if you can use Ethernet backhaul. I switched from the ASUS setup I had due to a number of 2.4 clients refusing to connect/stay connected. So far, the BT solution is rock solid and all devices connect.

The other benefit is that it is a wifi only solution so you can choose the router solution you prefer, in my case, a pfsense mini-PC.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

I do have the BT home hub as a close second choice, though the twin ethernet ports of the tp link sway it (I have things like smart tv's/ cctv that need ethernet and two ports are more versatile)

I'm only on the 100 mBit stream, and unlikely to ever get close to maxing out the devices ability for the lifetime of them.


I'm not sure what Ethernet backhaul is, and if I should need it especially. (I'm not running ethernet from node to node)

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Ethernet backhaul means the mesh system can used a wired network to route the traffic between nodes - see https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/f...m=select-local You get lower latency and faster throughput. However, this only make sense if you have the ethernet already wired near the node location.

Your ISP speed is secondary to what you might want to do on the (internal) network. For example, your CTV may be pushing high resolution video to a server/NAS somewhere in your home. You also may want to view the view the video over wifi all the while sharing the (wifi) bandwidth with other home users.

BTW, you can always have a local switch co-located with the node if you want to shared the wired access ..

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

True - I have 100Mb/s to the house, but get around 300-400Mb/s between the Mesh nodes and devices.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Finally bought a mesh system

Ubiquiti Amplifi 4-Ports Home Wi-Fi System AFI HD Wireless Router

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-Am...15033487&psc=1

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

do any of these options allow a Guest network via Ethernet cable? so it isolates the ethernet cable connected device from the rest of the network?

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Mesh wifi is all about wifi. I have never heard of guest networks via ethernet in the sense you are talking of. The only way you can do something like that is setting up vlans but you cant do that on traditional residential routers. You can try buying a cheap managed switch or an end of life cisco switch on the cheap.

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

Try looking at this post to find out what he wants.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...php?t=33709321

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

cheers both - I can consider a cheap managed switch if it gets me to where I want. Isolate certain ethernet connected devices so they aer treated as Guests on the network, unable to carry out sniffing or any other risks that come with being part of a private network. Can you help with example model number switches, and what specific settings are required? I'm aware of what VLANS are, but what specific settings would then isolate that vlan from the rest of the network to make the private network secure from that vlan?

Re: Mesh Wifi
 

If I remember correctly when you setup vlans you aren't putting the clients (e.g. a specific pc) on the vlan, you are putting the port on the switch on the vlan. So as an example, if you had an 8 port switch and put ports 7 and 8 in vlan 1 then any devices using ports 7 and 8 wouldn't have access to the other devices on the switch and I think that goes for any other devices connected to the switch on the router or down from there. It might be easier to put a very simple access control list in place which allows those devices access to the wan port/internet connection and automatically denies access to everything else.