Mesh Wifi - home install

[randlemarcus]

Morning all. About to move house, so time for a small project. House is a)rented and b) old, so don't really want to wander around pulling Cat6 through walls, so was looking at a nice Wifi Mesh. There seem to be a few crowdfunded ones out there that aren't near shipping, and the old open-mesh ones that look like they need a Cat5 each. Any recommendations for APs that just need power to play nicely?

[megaphone]

How many APs do you need? How big is the house?

[randlemarcus]

Allegedly 5000 sq ft, but its long, rather than large, if that makes sense. Up shouldn't be an issue, but from previous experience a lot of the internal walls will be old external, and thus quite resilient to signal. If possible, I'd like the ability to throw an AP into an outdoor socket without having to mess about with it as well as popping one in the outhouses to extend reach down the garden. Probably five or six in total?

[Bikerjon]

For a rented house I'd first check if powerline adaptors work. If they do, then just buy as many integrated powerline Wi-Fi adaptors as required.

Mesh Wi-Fi is good for when you already have *some* network cabling in place with which you can use to install the first batch of AP's. Then extra (non-cabled) ones can be added to extend/provide resiliency.

[TheExcession]

Bikerjon said:

I'd first check if powerline adaptors work.

^ This all day long. I know people hate them but they are a god send in these cricumstances.

I'd recommend TP-Link - I've installed dozens of them and they just work.

You can buy some that have inbuilt wireless at the none router end, or just buy a 'dumb' pair and fit your own AP - just turn off DHCP and set the same SSID & Password on each AP.

These have to be worth a punt to see if the existing mains wiring will support a decent speed.

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/1...

[Murph7355]

Bikerjon said:

For a rented house I'd first check if powerline adaptors work. If they do, then just buy as many integrated powerline Wi-Fi adaptors as required.

Mesh Wi-Fi is good for when you already have *some* network cabling in place with which you can use to install the first batch of AP's. Then extra (non-cabled) ones can be added to extend/provide resiliency.

I agree. Though in an older house the chances of powerline providing anything useful are likely to be slim.

I recently wired up for a bunch of APs that work together....significant improvement over a single wifi router as you'd expect. But still needs work to get the best out of it...

[randlemarcus]

Happy to consider the powerline wifi jobbies, but as said above powerline can be a tetchy little devil (currently have the odd dropout for thirty seconds now and again) and strongly suspect the external power will be on a different circuit. It's odd, as I would have thought it to be a reasonably common problem for SMEs, and for there to be a solution that didnt involve pulling Cat5 everywhere - a nice simple two radio, one listening, one broadcasting job. Rats.