On 25/09/2020 17:18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 25/09/2020 16:43, Tricky Dicky wrote:
I am using a Sky modem/router which generally gives quite good WiFi
throughout the house even outside and in the garage. However in the
kitchen there is one smart socket that seems to lose its WiFi
connection on occasion and given time will usually re-establish a
connection. However it has sometimes been down when we required it
which meant waiting till it sorted itself out or manually reconnect
it. So I am looking at a solution to make it more reliable. I am
however confused about some of the hardware supposed to make the
system work better and have a few questions for those in the know.

1. What is the difference between a wireless access point, a WiFi
extender and a Mesh system?

WAP generally takes ethernet and broadcasts wifi. Extender takes wifi
and broadcasts wifi. Mesh is the same but does it intelligently.

You can buy cheap plug in devices that will do WAP or extender. Plug and
play they tend to be configured as Wifi extender by default - which is
easy to use but it may well rob you of half of your Wifi bandwidth since
it is Wifi in Wifi out. If you regularly cast things to the TV from
mobile device then you might have to go WAP (quite hard to configure by
following the incorrect Chinglish instructions) or Mesh.

Mesh has the advantage that all the nodes cooperate so you get full
bandwidth available everywhere and a bit of beam steering to clients
which always helps signal strength.

2. Which of the above would give the me the best result, crucially
without affecting the performance of other WiFi connected devices?
probably WAP, if you have nearby ethernet

3. What is involved in the installation of each of the above such as
connectionsÂ* and powering?
all need power. WAP needs ethernet

Incidentally, the smart socket is used to power some €œlanding€� lights
along the edge of the driveway to help reversing in the dark, using a
smart socket enables us to use the Alexa App to switch on/off the
lights as required.

Moving the smart socket to a slightly different location might make all
the difference if there is some local not spot in the kitchen. Stainless
steel splashback or white goods in the way of the signal for example.


--
Regards,
Martin Brown