best mesh wifi

[wjwren]

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

[TheGuru]

Interested in this as well, and still unsure whether mesh is the way to go or to go with one of those huge routers with 8 aerials

[rednotdead]

wjwren said:

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

Why was that? I have wholehome and it hasn't missed a beat.

[rsbmw]

Orbi is very good

[wjwren]

I have random issues where family members say their device has disconnected. As i type this my phone says internet unavailable. Also yhe pause function is pretty useless as it often wont unpause and the only way to get it back is to turn it all off. The other week it randomly paused a handful of items on the network and i couldnt unpause them.

[randlemarcus]

TheGuru said:

Interested in this as well, and still unsure whether mesh is the way to go or to go with one of those huge routers with 8 aerials

Depends on the physical characteristics of your house. Old place with engineering brick in internal walls, and you could have sixteen aerials, blasting enough power to fry a pigeon and the signal won't get through

I've been beta testing some Linksys hobbies for multiple iterations and they are reliable, but not as reliable as the hard wired Unifi APs.

[wjwren]

I used powerlines on the BT hub to increase speed. The range is good on them but they seem to fall over a fair bit. There are pages and pages of issues on the BT community forums.

[wjwren]

TP link Deco looks good. Anybody have one of these?

[Podie]

rednotdead said:

wjwren said:

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

Why was that? I have wholehome and it hasn't missed a beat.

Likewise - absolutely faultless, after the debacle that was 3x Apple Airport Extremes.

[AC43]

Podie said:

rednotdead said:

wjwren said:

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

Why was that? I have wholehome and it hasn't missed a beat.

Likewise - absolutely faultless, after the debacle that was 3x Apple Airport Extremes.

LOL. Sounds like my recent (failed) attempt to get my Orbi's working with a Virgin Hub 3. The Orbi + Virgin combo seems to work very well for many people but I just couldn't get it to stop dropping out. I suspect the problem may well be with the Hub.

For now I've reverted to my Devolo Powerlines which are clunkier but they actually work with my Virgin set up.

I might hang on to the Orbi's to see if they're any better in the next place. I'll have BT infrastructure and a router from Vodaphone and hopefully will have a couple of weeks of testing time between the line going in and the actual move.

[recalluk]

wjwren said:

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

I see you returned this but just to check for others.

90% of the time this is caused but NOT switching off your hub wifi. You are supposed to use the Whole House system on its own, if you leave the hub wifi on then devices connect to it instead and pausing etc wont apply.

Also new firmware out yesterday seems to have solved the steering issue people were having with apple devices.

[AC43]

recalluk said:

wjwren said:

any recommendations? Had the BT whole home and returned it as crap.

90% of the time this is caused but NOT switching off your hub wifi. You are supposed to use the Whole House system on its own, if you leave the hub wifi on then devices connect to it instead and pausing etc wont apply.

I'd hoped that this was the case with my Virgin/Orbi problems but sadly not. The Virgin Hun would sit there in Modem Mode happily talking to the internet whist the Orbi sulked and claimed the Hub had said something rude to it. Or something.

[andyb]

recalluk said:

I see you returned this but just to check for others.

90% of the time this is caused but NOT switching off your hub wifi. You are supposed to use the Whole House system on its own, if you leave the hub wifi on then devices connect to it instead and pausing etc wont apply.

Also new firmware out yesterday seems to have solved the steering issue people were having with apple devices.

The issue with BT whole home wifi wasn't just related to not switching off hub wifi or apple devices. The old firmware worked fine for many, not for others. For me it worked with ethernet backhaul, not reliably via wifi connection (between receivers). With standard connection, got regular drop-outs of the mesh receivers and devices connecting to the whole home receiver but not the internet. Restarting the set-up resolved the issue for a day or so (as did moving to ethernet).

When it works, the BT whole home wifi mesh is great - but BT were very slow in getting a new firmware out and have no ability to revert to an older version.

Hopefully the new firmware is better, although BT have confirmed they know it won't fix in all cases and a further firmware update is required.

I was going to return mine, but checked the forums for the alternatives and they all seem to have their issues. If BT do get this sorted, then for the money its a great system.

[Bikerjon]

I think BT is still the best consumer level mesh system at the moment. Like all these systems there's been a few wobbles with the app/firmware updates, but for the vast majority of people who just want to "install and forget" then it works very well.

[AC43]

andyb said:

recalluk said:

I see you returned this but just to check for others.

90% of the time this is caused but NOT switching off your hub wifi. You are supposed to use the Whole House system on its own, if you leave the hub wifi on then devices connect to it instead and pausing etc wont apply.

Also new firmware out yesterday seems to have solved the steering issue people were having with apple devices.

The issue with BT whole home wifi wasn't just related to not switching off hub wifi or apple devices. The old firmware worked fine for many, not for others. For me it worked with ethernet backhaul, not reliably via wifi connection (between receivers). With standard connection, got regular drop-outs of the mesh receivers and devices connecting to the whole home receiver but not the internet. Restarting the set-up resolved the issue for a day or so (as did moving to ethernet).

When it works, the BT whole home wifi mesh is great - but BT were very slow in getting a new firmware out and have no ability to revert to an older version.

Hopefully the new firmware is better, although BT have confirmed they know it won't fix in all cases and a further firmware update is required.

I was going to return mine, but checked the forums for the alternatives and they all seem to have their issues. If BT do get this sorted, then for the money its a great system.

The comments on all of them seem to be 80% delighted vs 20% suicidal.

During the increasingly-limited times my Orbi's actually functioned properly I was delighted. Having a seamless 110 Mb/s all over the house and half way up the garden was a real eye opener.

I'm hoping a move to ethernet backhaul and away from Virgin will solve all my issues.

And maybe paying someone to set it up and then diagnose/fix any problems.......

[CAH706]

Just a bump on this as i need a solution in my new house and conscious things have moved on.

- 3 floors
- Not massive but WiFi doesn't reach everywhere
- Sky q
- Sky broadband getting c.50 speeds
- don't need loads of features. Ease, range and reliability the key

What's the best and simplest mesh to use at the moment?

Have seen Google mesh recommended but some complaints of range.

Thanks

[andrewjamesroberts]

Despite the OP I have had BT Whole home for a year now and works perfectly I’m on Virgin 100 and get anywhere between full speed (100mb) and 70mb depending where I am in my house which is Edwardian stone built with effectively 5 floors

I have 3 discs that cover this

[rednotdead]

BT Wholehome for nearly 2 years now. I occasionally log in to the app to check the updates but apart from that it has been faultless. 3 discs around the house provide seamless and fast coverage. Some good deals crop up on amazon occasionally.

[Cpl nobby nobbs]

I have the Linksys Velop Ac6600 that has 3 nodes.
I use wired backhaul over cat6 but is also works well using the WiFi backhaul.
Works faultlessly for me covers my house and garden in 5ghz wifi.

[anonymous-user]

I've got an Orbi system and it works well on my BT broadband package, 3 floors plus large garden and it's all covered. I turn off the wifi on the BT router, but there was another poster on here that had a nightmare with his Orbi system.

The only fly in the ointment is that I also have Sky Q and 3 Sky Q mini's and a couple of Q boosters, so my house ends up looking like a wifi battlefield with all these networks bouncing about. Sky Q mini's won't connect to an Orbi system, only to themselves via the main box or Q boosters.

With hindsight I'd just get Sky broadband and then use the Q Mini's as my mesh system instead to keep things simple.