I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?


--
Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

charles wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Lawrence Milbourn wrote:

thinking about a mesh system.

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

cat5 from router to additional APs ...

On 11/01/2021 17:23, charles wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

well there you go. ditch the tablet!


--
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered...
....than to have answers that cannot be questioned

Richard Feynman

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 11/01/2021 17:23, charles wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

well there you go. ditch the tablet!

Only a fool would do that when its so easy and
cheap to put an access point on the CAT5.

The sort of fool who is too stupid to even
answer an incoming call on a mobile phone.

On Tue, 12 Jan 2021 05:22:39 +1100, Fred, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rodent Speed, wrote:

FLUSH yet more of the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
pamela about Rodent Speed:
"His off the cuff expertise demonstrates how little he knows..."
MID:

On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:12:20 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

Cat 6 shielded is generally available for very little more than 5E and is
what I'd go for at present.

On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 09:10:09 -0800 (PST), Lawrence Milbourn
wrote:

I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

I use the BT variant. It isn't perfect but it has saved me running
wires or using multiple access points.
UNTIL
I wanted to plug in a TV without wireless (old one) which was away
from the mesh hardware. Then I remembered an old access point which
has 4 ethernet points so I connected that and wired the TV to it.
Works!

On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:23:13 +0000 (GMT), charles wrote:

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

USB-C to ethernet adapters are avilable.

I picked up a Belkin F2CU040 cheap in Aldi, my Nokia 6.1 "see's" it
under "Connected Devices" but says "Charging connected device". The
"USB Controlled by" is "connected device" and can't be switched. All
the "Use USB for" options (File TRansfer, USB tethering, MIDI, PTP,
No data Transfer) are all greyed out. B-(

The lights on the switch port come on when connected to the adapter.
So it's sort of talking.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my present system of wifi extenders and
am thinking about a mesh system. I don't need high speed
for gaming etc so do I need to go for the more expensive
tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT mini
looks adequate but are there any catches?

A click-bait title...

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...system-secrets

With a mesh, some bandwidth is needed for backhaul. With CAT5
cabling to your Extenders, you're avoiding doing backhaul
through the air.

You can see in their pictures, they're showing how
backhaul is "mixed in" with the regular usage on
two-band.

A tri-band has 2.4Ghz, 5GHz, and a second 5GHz, and
the backhaul is on the second one. Some of the channels
in 5GHz-country, are radar-sensitive - if a radar is
transmitting on that channel, the router must stop using
the channel. The mesh devices would communicate with
one another, what channels are available. There is
one section of the first 5GHz, that works regardless.
Other parts of the band plan are multi-use, with existing
band users having priority (radar). And this theme has
been consistent over the years - the radios back off to
"Safe" operating modes, depending on what is sensed
in the environment. Someone on a farm in the wilderness,
is the only person to ever see "whizzy Wifi rates".
If the device has an 80MHz channel capability, with no legacy
equipment present, the farm gets excellent rates.
If you're in an apartment building, with many Wifi routers
around you, all you'll get is 802.11N rates.

You'll notice that a lot of the articles on this site,
are shameless plugs for product. The Orbi line here,
might have been one of the first mesh products to be
working. The firmware in the initial releases by competitors
were rather bad/sad (situations where backhaul was
affecting fronthaul with embarrassingly bad thruput).

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...-wireless-mesh

For the average user, a person owning a bunch of
computers with 802.11N radios in them, just about
any Wifi serving purchase is overkill. The nice
thing about the mesh, is buy two or three boxes,
plug them in, and you're "almost done". You'd still
have to fiddle with SSID, password, or the usual stuff.
But the mesh part might not need adjustment. But in terms
of owning a Wifi 6 serving solution, mixed with 802.11N
client computers, you'll never see any really impressive download
rates. Almost nobody owns a house full of computers
with nothing but Wifi 6 cards inside.

Paul

On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

I have friends who speak well of the Tenda MW3, but I have no personal
experience. I'm tempted to make the change to a mesh system so will
watch this thread with interest.

On 11/01/2021 19:50, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:23:13 +0000 (GMT), charles wrote:

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

USB-C to ethernet adapters are avilable.

Kind of defeats the object though.

On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:

I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

IME dual band is ok. Mesh has managed to get wifi into places that it
would not perform well in the past. The TP-Link DECO stuff seems
reasonable and is easy to setup. They also do some that can use homeplug
backhaul.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 11/01/2021 23:42, newshound wrote:
On 11/01/2021 19:50, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:23:13 +0000 (GMT), charles wrote:

Might not CAT5Â* cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

USB-C to ethernet adapters are avilable.

Kind of defeats the object though.

There is an object?



--
€œwhen things get difficult you just have to lie€�

€• Jean Claud Jüncker

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 11/01/2021 23:42, newshound wrote:
On 11/01/2021 19:50, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 17:23:13 +0000 (GMT), charles wrote:

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

USB-C to ethernet adapters are avilable.

Kind of defeats the object though.

There is an object?

Corse there is, a convenient and
very portable way to do stuff.

On 11 Jan 2021 at 21:18:48 GMT, "
wrote:

On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a
mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for
the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT
mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

I have friends who speak well of the Tenda MW3, but I have no personal
experience. I'm tempted to make the change to a mesh system so will
watch this thread with interest.

I've had one of those for about 6 months - very pleased with it. The cheaper
units are far from bleeding edge wifi speeds, but for my purposes all the wifi
devices (cameras, TV, phones etc) seem a lot snappier than my old repurposed
router solution.

--
Cheers, Rob

Be aware that if you do go to mesh and a highish power one, your neighbour
might be banging on your door saying they cannot connect to their wifi. I've
seen this effect many times and its perfectly obvious that the two bands are
getting full now. I think if its possible use wired connections, though of
course smart speakers etc, do not have sockets. My Samsung tv still has
connection issues at times and it is only four feet from the router!
I feel an extension net cable coming along in my future.
Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Lawrence Milbourn" wrote in message
...
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a
mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for
the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT
mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

On Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at 8:50:30 AM UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Be aware that if you do go to mesh and a highish power one, your neighbour
might be banging on your door saying they cannot connect to their wifi. I've
seen this effect many times and its perfectly obvious that the two bands are
getting full now. I think if its possible use wired connections, though of
course smart speakers etc, do not have sockets. My Samsung tv still has
connection issues at times and it is only four feet from the router!
I feel an extension net cable coming along in my future.
Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Lawrence Milbourn" wrote in message
...
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a
mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for
the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT
mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

I bought a three-pack Deco P9 kit and a lot of my issues went away overnight - freezing up on Zoom chats, dropping out when streaming iPlayer, general poor Internet performance. I've had to reboot it once in six months because thery stopped talking to each other, otherwise it's been 'plug and forget'. My modem/router has WiFi disabled but still runs DHCP and the mesh nodes are simply access points.

What has hapened is that my Hive thermostat now won't work if it gets too far from the Hive hub, because although Hive uses WiFi frequencies, it uses a different protocol and the mesh system must be swamping the Hive signals.

On 11/01/2021 18:22, Fred wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 11/01/2021 17:23, charles wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and aÂ* thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5Â* cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

well there you go. ditch the tablet!

Only a fool would do that when its so easy and
cheap to put an access point on the CAT5.

The sort of fool who is too stupid to even
answer an incoming call on a mobile phone.

The problem with multiple access points is that if you move around
roaming between them is a total pain. Devices seem to "stick" on a slow
AP. Total Pain.

Dave

Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote

Be aware that if you do go to mesh and a highish power one, your neighbour
might be banging on your door saying they cannot connect to their wifi.

I just set the Rottweiler on them if they try that.

I've seen this effect many times and its perfectly obvious that the two
bands are getting full now. I think if its possible use wired connections,
though of course smart speakers etc, do not have sockets. My Samsung tv
still has connection issues at times and it is only four feet from the
router!
I feel an extension net cable coming along in my future.

Doesn’t work too well with smartphones.

"Lawrence Milbourn" wrote in message
...
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about
a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go
for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok.
The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

"Lawrence Milbourn" wrote in message
...
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about
a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go
for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok.
The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Assuming that Cat5 is not possible, then mesh is a good way of getting the
coverage.

We've got Linksys Velop devices, and we need 5 to cover an L-shaped house
(mostly single storey, with one end two-storey) where the phone point and
router is at one end of an arm of the L. Some of the house is pre-1900s and
may have thicker walls. The modern part is brick with windows that may have
heat-reflective glass that tens to attenuate wifi.

Our experience is that they work well, but they are a real bugger if there
is a power cut, because it's necessary to turn the devices on in a specific
order: if they are all turned on simultaneously when the power comes back,
some nodes fail to connect - and then nodes which depend on them fail to
connect...

The problem with our devices is that they use 5 GHz for the node-to-node
communications, but we need them to use 2.4 GHz as well to run devices that
have no 5 GHz access point (security cameras, an older laptop). This means
that you position the nodes so they are just within 5 GHz range of each
other, but this is so close that the 2.4 GHz networks from all the nodes
interfere with each other and it's difficult for the auto-channel selection
on 2.4 to find non-interfering channels. I feel a bit guilty that our house
uses the whole range of non-overlapping 2.4 channels 1, 6, 11.

If we didn't need 2.4, I'd turn it off and there wouldn't be a problem. But
there would be a greater chance of dead zones due to the shorter range of 5
GHz.

The aim with mesh is to have the nodes (if possible) so several all take to
one central parent node, rather than having a daisy-chain where A can see B
and B can see C but A can't see C. I've positioned the parent node
(connected by Ethernet to the router) where it has best line of site of all
the other nodes so *usually* all the nodes connect to the parent one rather
than in a line to each other. There doesn't seem to be any difference in
speed between the two configurations, but all-to-parent seems to give
greater chance that the nodes will re-connect automatically after a
power-cut.


I had considered Cat 5 along the two arms of the L, maybe with simple access
points to cover the bedrooms which are at the opposite end of the L to the
router. However getting into the loft is not easy and there are breezeblock
firebreaks which I'd have to drill through to get the Cat 5 through. It
would almost be easier to take the Cat 5 outside, run it round near the
gutters and back in again :-) Almost!

"Halmyre" wrote in message
...

What has hapened is that my Hive thermostat now won't work if it gets too
far from the Hive hub, because although Hive uses WiFi frequencies, it
uses a different protocol and the mesh system must be swamping the Hive
signals.

Ah. I wondered what frequencies Hive used. I wasn't sure whether it was 860
MHz, like some weather stations use. It explains why the historic
temperature graphs on Hive (one reading per hour for the last two days, only
accessible on the Hive web site, *not* on the Android app!) have occasional
gaps, suggesting that normal thermostat-to-hub comms is occasionally failing
even though the two devices are normally well within range.

On Tue, 12 Jan 2021 16:22:52 +1100, Fred, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rodent Speed, wrote:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

--
Website (from 2007) dedicated to the 86-year-old senile Australian
cretin's pathological trolling:
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/

FLUSH the trolling senile cretin's latest troll**** unread

--
More senile "wisdom" from the senile Australian bull**** artist:
"Some things are much harder to do than others."
Message-ID:

On 12 Jan 2021 at 09:28:35 GMT, "Halmyre"
wrote:

On Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at 8:50:30 AM UTC, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Be aware that if you do go to mesh and a highish power one, your neighbour
might be banging on your door saying they cannot connect to their wifi.
I've
seen this effect many times and its perfectly obvious that the two bands
are
getting full now. I think if its possible use wired connections, though of
course smart speakers etc, do not have sockets. My Samsung tv still has
connection issues at times and it is only four feet from the router!
I feel an extension net cable coming along in my future.
Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Lawrence Milbourn" wrote in message
...
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking about a
mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I need to go for
the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band AC1200 be ok. The BT
mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

I bought a three-pack Deco P9 kit and a lot of my issues went away overnight
- freezing up on Zoom chats, dropping out when streaming iPlayer, general
poor Internet performance. I've had to reboot it once in six months because
thery stopped talking to each other, otherwise it's been 'plug and forget'.
My modem/router has WiFi disabled but still runs DHCP and the mesh nodes are
simply access points.

What has hapened is that my Hive thermostat now won't work if it gets too far
from the Hive hub, because although Hive uses WiFi frequencies, it uses a
different protocol and the mesh system must be swamping the Hive signals.

FWIW, my Hive system seems OK with and since I've added mesh wifi. It has the
occasional 'can't connect' strop at the thermostat, but the phone app has
always worked.

--
Cheers, Rob

On 12/01/2021 08:50, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:

Be aware that if you do go to mesh and a highish power one, your neighbour
might be banging on your door saying they cannot connect to their wifi.

That is kind of the whole point of WiFi 6 as they now call 802.11ac. The
devices support a number of technologies that *reduce* the spill over
effects, and make much better use of the available channel space.

In particular band steering, beam forming & transmit power management.
So the router will automatically push clients off the 2.4GHz band toward
the 5GHz ones when it would help. They direct the transmission toward
the device and not omni directionally (done using multiple antenna
configured as a phased array), and they dynamically ad the Tx power to
be "just enough".

I've
seen this effect many times and its perfectly obvious that the two bands are
getting full now.

They can be very full in some areas. The problems tend get worse when
you have lots of clients trying to talk "louder" than all the others -
hence why tx power management is important.

I think if its possible use wired connections, though of
course smart speakers etc, do not have sockets. My Samsung tv still has
connection issues at times and it is only four feet from the router!
I feel an extension net cable coming along in my future.

I have had cases where there is plenty of signal level in the place of
use, but still poor throughput. Mesh kit often solves that.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 12/01/2021 09:41, David Wade wrote:

The problem with multiple access points is that if you move around
roaming between them is a total pain. Devices seem to "stick" on a slow
AP. Total Pain.

That can be a problem - especially with older iPhones I have noticed.
Some better WAPs support AP assisted roaming, which helps fix this.
Basically if the AP sees a device with a poor signal, but knows from
conversation with other APs on the same network that they can see a
stronger connection to the device, they kick the device off, so that it
re-pairs with the closer AP.

(they can also support a "strictly minimum" setting as well, that allows
them to kick of a client with a very poor signal even if there are no
other APs for it to talk to - saves it wasting resources that will give
it crappy connectivity that is no use to man or beast!)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"David Wade" wrote in message
...
On 11/01/2021 18:22, Fred wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 11/01/2021 17:23, charles wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
On 11/01/2021 17:10, Lawrence Milbourn wrote:
I'm fed up with my prese t system of wifi extenders and a thinking
about a mesh system. I don't need high speed for gaming etc so do I
need to go for the more expensive tri band offers or would dual band
AC1200 be ok. The BT mini looks adequate but are there any catches?

Might not CAT5 cable be cheaper?

not easy to run a tablet from CAT5

well there you go. ditch the tablet!

Only a fool would do that when its so easy and
cheap to put an access point on the CAT5.

The sort of fool who is too stupid to even
answer an incoming call on a mobile phone.

The problem with multiple access points is that if you move around roaming
between them is a total pain. Devices seem to "stick" on a slow AP. Total
Pain.

Yes but its even sillier to refuse to use tablets
because you cant plug a cat5 into them.

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 03:30:58 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

FLUSH the trolling senile asshole's latest troll**** unread

03:30, yet again? Just WTF is WRONG with you sick senile swine? Ah, yeah, I
know: you ARE sick and senile!

--
Website (from 2007) dedicated to the 86-year-old senile Australian
cretin's pathological trolling:
https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/r...d-faq.2973853/