Non Weapons grade mesh Wi-Fi with parental controls….

[jimbouk]

Not looking for weapons grade, what I am looking for is, Robust mesh Wi-Fi for reasonable size detached house, 1m thick internal walls, 2 adults working from plus two teenage daughters…. Incoming broadband is 70mb

Currently have a mishmash of ee router, and some netgear boosters, hard wired cat5 to most rooms, it works mostly but a bit meh, flaky at times.

Got to the point where parental controls are required.

Was on the point of buying a 3 unit Netgear Orbi setup, only to discover it does not have their Circle parental controls available, shocked!

Want to be able to easily parental controls, control what is accessible per user and their linked devices, different accessibility and app us at different times and probably access history (as a last resort), think app control for this and non geek usability.

So what do people recommend? prepared to spend circa £300, but would prefer not too

Might as well try and benefit from the tail end of Black Friday…

[drmike37]

Tplink deco.
Had this for a while now and seems pretty reliable. Can add as many as you like to get coverage.
Just plug into whatever router you’ve got and set up via an app.

[Captain_Morgan]

drmike37 said:

Tplink deco.
Had this for a while now and seems pretty reliable. Can add as many as you like to get coverage.
Just plug into whatever router you’ve got and set up via an app.

Yeah kinda.

If you want to use the inbuilt parental control you have to use the deco’s in router mode.
That means you either put your existing router into modem mode or buy a dedicated modem to use with the decos

You don’t say who your existing provider is so all I can suggest is to Google how to put the existing ‘hub’ into modem mode

Normally I’d suggest tri-band mesh but as you say you have Ethernet cabling installed then you could go with the cheaper dual band option such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deco-M5-Coverage-Replacem...
(I’m assuming you’ll be hard wiring the decos and if you don’t already have a switch you’ll need to buy a small 4-8 port switch)

If you do want tri-band for some, reason then look at the m9 plus system

Edited by Captain_Morgan on Sunday 28th November 13:38

[miniman]

If you decide on Deco, I have 3 that need a new home.

[Rushjob]

We've got a Tenda MW3 system - works perfectly for our needs and has parental control. It's inexpensive too!

[eein]

I've just set up a variety of Asus mesh systems. I like that you can add all different models of their devices to the same mesh network, I was even able to add an old Asus router I had in the cupboard from 8 years ago!

For my parents I got the 3 node mini XD4 set for £217.99.

The Asus user interface is very easy to use and setup, but does have all the detailed settings if you want to go in to them - so works for non experts and experts.

Not the cheapest, but I've taken to liking them.

[Leithen]

We have been using Plume for a year or so. Backhauled as we have Cat 6 everywhere. It's subscription based, but works very well. Lots of control over devices etc.