WiFi networking can be a real challenge, especially in older Victorian properties that were never designed with modern connectivity in mind. Selfish Victorians! Our router is centrally positioned to optimise our fibre connection and provide good speeds across most of the house. However, the hallway and beyond is a major weak spot.

To solve this, we invested in a Deco mesh system several years ago. We’ve placed seven units around the house to ensure coverage extends to the garage and the north end of the house, which includes my office, TV room and guest bedroom.

While this setup means we have WiFi everywhere, we don’t have fast internet everywhere. I didn’t realise at the time that mesh systems lose speed at each hop between units. As a result, the TV room, where we stream most of our content, sometimes struggles with bandwidth despite having a 1000 Mbps connection. It’s frustrating, but it’s the trade-off for comprehensive coverage, and I don't think there's a workaround.

On the plus side, the Deco system does an excellent job of managing multiple devices. Even with a lot of connected gadgets, we’ve never experienced issues with the network being overloaded.

Well, we went ahead with the swap to Zen Internet who use City Fibre for their FTTP capability; we included VOIP services in our package and for rather less than half the Virgin monthly charges, we have a service that is at least 5 times faster on ethernet than we were used too! Zen furnished us with a Fritz!Box 7580 AX hub which I configured to talk to our Linksys Velop Mesh. Of course all that speed tempted me…… So we now have a Linksys Velop 7 Pro Router and 2 child nodes listening to it! WiFi speeds of 500 - 600 Mbps are experienced in places now!

I am still playing around with final positioning of the nodes for maximum signal strength / speed / consistency and reliability but have found the new mesh system has better coverage when dealing through cavity brick walls and room to room wall penetration. (The new BEM7003 kit was my early Christmas present to myself of course😉) My better half had 4 FritzFon C6 wireless phones as her early present - so all is fair! 😉 Toodles.

Getting a tad fed up with my system.  Living in a rural area landline broadband is a pointless exercise so we have a 4G router and Deco Mesh. This has worked well for nearly 4 years but has gradually become more and more flakey to the point where I'm having to power cycle the router at least twice per day and often more than that. A restart works but overall speeds are slower than they once were. Fairly locally a lot of new housing developments are springing up and I suspect that is sucking the life out of the 4G here. I have reached the point where I'm even considering the expensive option of Star Link satellite broadband!

@Morgan, if it’s just for browsing and basic streaming, Starlink could be a viable option. We often have Brendon (Heacol) on our podcast, and he uses Starlink in his rural location. While it’s significantly faster than 4G, it’s still slower compared to fibre or standard broadband connections.

@editor browsing and streaming.  Faster and more reliable than 4G will be good.  Fibre isn't an option here so in the new year I shall be looking for a Starlink installer.

Posted by: @morgan

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@editor browsing and streaming.  Faster and more reliable than 4G will be good.  Fibre isn't an option here so in the new year I shall be looking for a Starlink installer.

@countryman 
They do supply an app for that purpose.  I have trees around me and I'm not inclined to climb up to the roof and chimney to check it out. 😶 

'ere in rural Dev'n we been using two bits o' damp string runnin 'long hedgerow.

Zo I were sore pleezed when I 'erd Airband waz contracted t'nstall fibre to uz rural areas of Dev'n 'n' Zummerzet.

In '22 they did run zat fibre stuff 'long road, 'n' up there telecomz pole by neckz field.

Then zat team slung piece of blue polyprop rope 'tween there an' pole by my howz.
Toll me t' wait couple er month and 'nother engneer be 'long drekley to join that there fibre to me.

Well blow me, now I 'erd they ran owt money or zummat, and can't complete uz contract.

Want me t' zine contrak with'm to 'av that there sat'lite commune'cayt'n.
Dey thinx I been stupid or zummat.

Why would 'ee be spektin' me t zine contrak wiv cumpny which don't fulfill contrak with them Coun'y Couns'l jobbies, eh?

Posted by: @editor

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WiFi networking can be a real challenge, especially in older Victorian properties that were never designed with modern connectivity in mind. Selfish Victorians! Our router is centrally positioned to optimise our fibre connection and provide good speeds across most of the house. However, the hallway and beyond is a major weak spot.

To solve this, we invested in a Deco mesh system several years ago. We’ve placed seven units around the house to ensure coverage extends to the garage and the north end of the house, which includes my office, TV room and guest bedroom.

While this setup means we have WiFi everywhere, we don’t have fast internet everywhere. I didn’t realise at the time that mesh systems lose speed at each hop between units. As a result, the TV room, where we stream most of our content, sometimes struggles with bandwidth despite having a 1000 Mbps connection. It’s frustrating, but it’s the trade-off for comprehensive coverage, and I don't think there's a workaround.

On the plus side, the Deco system does an excellent job of managing multiple devices. Even with a lot of connected gadgets, we’ve never experienced issues with the network being overloaded.

@editor, I've been having a mull over this for a while and it feels to me as if there may be quite a lot of improvement you could make if you felt it worthwhile.

From your Home Farm videos about installing your mesh system you said your house is relatively long and thin in configuration with several thick walls getting in the way of wifi. Watching the first of those videos I must admit I'd've been inclined to tackle the whole problem differently and your post has me wondering if there's any particular reason you still want to stick with mesh.

Personally, I've always preferred access points to a mesh setup, largely based on the better performance you can expect. I can see any number of discreet alternatives that could be used for routing some ethernet cable from your router's location to the far ends of your home, thereby allowing for perhaps three (at a guess) access points to be installed at strategic points so that device to access point speeds are uninterrupted whilst access point to router speeds are reliable gigabit or better. Moreover, if you were to use a small switch instead of plugging the cables straight into the router then you'd be able to power the access points via PoE as well, thereby avoiding having to worry about power sockets. The expensive bit about structured cabling is generally the cabinet-related stuff and the labour, so if you did it yourself and didn't need a cabinet then it could be done pretty cheaply.

I agree.

I too use Access Points, conncted back to the VDSL router using hardwired CAT5e cable.

I have been working on network resilience for a while.

I use my own router/NAT/firewall device, a separate switch with POE+ that drives a WiFi access point and security cameras, then a NAS for media.  finally a Raspberry Pi running PiHole for outbound blocking and Unbound for DNS.

I have fibre into my home, so there is that fibre to ethernet box needing power too.

I split my power required for those devices over 2 small UPS.  Some non essential devices will shutdown elegantly on mains power failure, and the core essentials are split over the two UPS.

As much as possible is hard wired, but interestingly my ASHP control only comes in WiFi Comms now according to my installer.

Devices are secured over three VLANs, one control/admin (hard wired only), one for general stuff, and one for guests or weird stuff like kitchen equipment.

I suppose our ASHP will need to go on the general VLAN so the Mrs can set the heating schedule, or maybe not 😈

Your setup, @scalextrix, illustrates what I was trying to cover in my article. The extent to which we try to take work off the router - often a bargain basement item built for economy rather than reliability - will depend on our own individual circumstances. However, as you show, there’s a lot one can do to make the whole network run better and be less error prone.