Home Mesh WiFi options?

[LoganR]

Hi guys, I'm looking at setting up a mesh WiFi system in my home since the far ends of the house away from the router have little to no usable bandwidth

 

Quick Run down: 

-internet over cable, house has no wall Ethernet jacks

-ISP: Xfinity, 500Mbps plan,

-Speeds: Nearly 600 down on a desktop connected directly to the router, and 350+ down with an iPhone 11 Pro Max over WiFi when near the router.

-Home: 2 stories, over 3000 square feet with drywall only, no concrete or brick construction.

-Modem/Router: Xfinity provided combo unit, would like to continue using it.

-Router Location: It is essentially stuck upstairs and to one side of the house. 

 

I know the best option here would just be to move the router to another cable jack somewhere closer to the center of the home, but it is my only way to use Ethernet access on my desktop, so I cannot move it. I've also heard from various LTT and TechQuickie vidoes that repeaters/extenders are more or less a bad idea except for specific use cases. That leaves me with mesh WiFi. Xfinity offers a proprietary mesh setup that seems like it would work okay, except the nodes have a maximum throughput of 200Mbps in a lab setting. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but it isn't ideal.

 

What kind of mesh setup would you guys recommend? Or what have you done in your own homes?

There seems to be a lot of options out there with a lot of marketing material and not much actual data.

 

-Logan

[RadiatingLight]

I have Xfinity's mesh thing and it sucks. Walking between rooms (switching between nodes) causes a 15-second drop in the wifi, and it's really annoying when using VOIP or Video calling over wifi.

 

I've heard good things about Google wifi, (plus, it's also a google home, if that's a value-add for you)

[LoganR]

1 minute ago, RadiatingLight said:

I have Xfinity's mesh thing and it sucks. Walking between rooms (switching between nodes) causes a 15-second drop in the wifi, and it's really annoying when using VOIP or Video calling over wifi.

 

I've heard good things about Google wifi, (plus, it's also a google home, if that's a value-add for you)

Thank you! Good to know to avoid Xfinity's setup. Hopefully they'll revise them in the future but I can't imagine they're popular enough to warrant it.

[LIGISTX]

16 minutes ago, LoganR said:

Hi guys, I'm looking at setting up a mesh WiFi system in my home since the far ends of the house away from the router have little to no usable bandwidth

 

Quick Run down: 

-internet over cable, house has no wall Ethernet jacks

-ISP: Xfinity, 500Mbps plan,

-Speeds: Nearly 600 down on a desktop connected directly to the router, and 350+ down with an iPhone 11 Pro Max over WiFi when near the router.

-Home: 2 stories, over 3000 square feet with drywall only, no concrete or brick construction.

-Modem/Router: Xfinity provided combo unit, would like to continue using it.

-Router Location: It is essentially stuck upstairs and to one side of the house. 

 

I know the best option here would just be to move the router to another cable jack somewhere closer to the center of the home, but it is my only way to use Ethernet access on my desktop, so I cannot move it. I've also heard from various LTT and TechQuickie vidoes that repeaters/extenders are more or less a bad idea except for specific use cases. That leaves me with mesh WiFi. Xfinity offers a proprietary mesh setup that seems like it would work okay, except the nodes have a maximum throughput of 200Mbps in a lab setting. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but it isn't ideal.

 

What kind of mesh setup would you guys recommend? Or what have you done in your own homes?

There seems to be a lot of options out there with a lot of marketing material and not much actual data.

 

-Logan

Google WiFi (now Nest Wifi) is fantastic. I have it at my place, my parents two houses and business. It just... works. Plain and simple. The coverage from a single puck is astoundingly good, not even just for how small they are, its good compared to any router I have ever used. If you get the three pack, it will cover 3000 Sq Ft no problem at all.

 

Put the main router where it has to go, put the other two spread out across the rest of the house, should give plenty of coverage.

 

Just remember, they only have a single Ethernet for LAN, so you will need a switch if you don't already have one. 

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, LoganR said:

What kind of mesh setup would you guys recommend?

My sister has the Google WiFi as stated above. It works well enough for there purposes. Keep in mind that with a mesh solution you have a main router and satellite units. The reason I bring this up is due to the fact connecting a router to a router will cause double NAT. Keep in mind the Xfinity box acts as a router as well. So anything connected to the mesh WiFi will suffer double NAT, unless the main device can be run in AP mode (not sure if this is an option), the xfinity box is put in to bridge mode, or you replace the xfinity box with a standard cable modem. 

[Mad153]

I have a ubiquiti AMPLIFI system. It's very good and I love it and it's flexibility. The satellites struggle to do more than 80 down but stability is more important to me and my gaming rig is next to the modem anyway. Plus, updates are very frequent