Home Mesh WiFi Kit?

[FedPot]

Here's the situation:
The main router from the ISP is located about 2 rooms away from my own room. There's 2 doors and 2 sets of walls standing between my room and the router. Right now I'm using a simple TP Link Wifi Range Extender for a few months now and it worked great, until recently, it doesn't anymore.

I'm having unstable ping playing games and low speeds when downloading. I thought maybe I need better and stronger signal coverage?

I'm thinking maybe it's time to upgrade to a Home Mesh WiFi Kit. Either a TP Link Deco E4/M4 or something similar.

Before you say it, I'm sorry, going wired is impossible right now since this is not my house and I'm just renting a room. Therefore, I'm also not spending top dollar on a NetGear or Asus high budget solutions.

I just want to ask if a simple small Home Mesh WiFi Kit is a good solution here.

Thanks.

[LIGISTX]

4 hours ago, FedPot said:

Here's the situation:
The main router from the ISP is located about 2 rooms away from my own room. There's 2 doors and 2 sets of walls standing between my room and the router. Right now I'm using a simple TP Link Wifi Range Extender for a few months now and it worked great, until recently, it doesn't anymore.

I'm having unstable ping playing games and low speeds when downloading. I thought maybe I need better and stronger signal coverage?

I'm thinking maybe it's time to upgrade to a Home Mesh WiFi Kit. Either a TP Link Deco E4/M4 or something similar.

Before you say it, I'm sorry, going wired is impossible right now since this is not my house and I'm just renting a room. Therefore, I'm also not spending top dollar on a NetGear or Asus high budget solutions.

I just want to ask if a simple small Home Mesh WiFi Kit is a good solution here.

Thanks.

2 walls shouldn’t require a range extender at all. In a location that small, I don’t know if a mesh network would even help the situation. Either there is A LOT of congestion on the Wifi bands due to other devices, or your Wifi adapter is not very good. I suppose the ISP’s router is likely garbage tier, but still, 2 rooms is nothing.

 

Have you tried a machine on a wired connection just to rule out the internet itself not being the issue? 

[FedPot]

Well, before using an extender, it was much worse. the connection to the main router's SSID is unstable af for gaming.
fast.com test is being erratic with the speeds going up/down real bad.
connecting via the extender gives much better fast.com results although still far less than the advertised speeds.

it's around 10-15 meters in distance.

 

haven't done a wired connection, I'll get a LAN cable to test it out I guess.


edit: this is the main router provided by the ISP
https://e.huawei.com/en/products/enterprise-transmission-access/access/onu/echolife-eg8245h5

[Falcon1986]

54 minutes ago, FedPot said:

edit: this is the main router provided by the ISP
https://e.huawei.com/en/products/enterprise-transmission-access/access/onu/echolife-eg8245h5

That's an ONT with built-in router and AP functionality. Unless your ISP gives you the go-ahead, you can't replace it since it's your gateway to their fiber network.

 

That Huawei device is from the WiFi 4 era so is unlikely to support MIMO and is likely subject to a lot of interference from the 2.4GHz that it broadcasts on. Adding a range extender and expecting good performance is wishful thinking. It's only meant to extend the range, and will do that at the cost of halving whatever bandwidth you had coming from the Huawei device.

 

If you want to add your own mesh system you'll either have to run it in AP mode while connected to your ISP device or convert your ISP device to run in "bridge" mode and connect it afterward. I know for a fact from using similar Huawei ONTs that the latter isn't as easy as it sounds. What you end up having to do is manually turning off the AP, binding your own router/mesh's MAC to a static LAN IP, then creating a different subnet for your new router/mesh setup that won't conflict with that if the Huawei. It's not ideal since you end up with double-NAT, but it should work given the limitations.

[FedPot]

 

2 hours ago, Falcon1986 said:

That's an ONT with built-in router and AP functionality. Unless your ISP gives you the go-ahead, you can't replace it since it's your gateway to their fiber network.

 

That Huawei device is from the WiFi 4 era so is unlikely to support MIMO and is likely subject to a lot of interference from the 2.4GHz that it broadcasts on. Adding a range extender and expecting good performance is wishful thinking. It's only meant to extend the range, and will do that at the cost of halving whatever bandwidth you had coming from the Huawei device.

 

If you want to add your own mesh system you'll either have to run it in AP mode while connected to your ISP device or convert your ISP device to run in "bridge" mode and connect it afterward. I know for a fact from using similar Huawei ONTs that the latter isn't as easy as it sounds. What you end up having to do is manually turning off the AP, binding your own router/mesh's MAC to a static LAN IP, then creating a different subnet for your new router/mesh setup that won't conflict with that if the Huawei. It's not ideal since you end up with double-NAT, but it should work given the limitations.

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding the last paragraph. so are you saying that a wifi mesh kit but configured that way would work (work as in improve speeds and stability)?

 

[Falcon1986]

10 hours ago, FedPot said:

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding the last paragraph. so are you saying that a wifi mesh kit but configured that way would work (work as in improve speeds and stability)?

Those are 2 different things.

 

In terms of setting up the mesh kit to work with your existing hardware, it shouldn’t be a problem.

 

As to whether or not you’ll experience improved speed and stability is another thing. Theoretically, you should see some improvement if you’re moving to a newer generation of WiFi technology. But factors that attenuate a wireless signal (like physical obstructions and interference) can minimize the benefit of those improvements. Unfortunately, you won’t know what the experience is like until you test the setup.

 

If you want the best speeds and stability, nothing beats a strategically-distributed multi-AP system with ethernet backhaul to a central switch/router. Wireless mesh systems are the better alternative if you can’t run ethernet or have poor circuitry to establish Powerline. In my opinion wireless repeaters/boosters are inferior to mesh and should only be reserved for specific applications where you only want to extend the wireless coverage of your existing WiFi at minimal cost and have low expectations for stability and speed.

[FedPot]

On 8/15/2022 at 11:50 PM, Falcon1986 said:

In my opinion wireless repeaters/boosters are inferior to mesh and should only be reserved for specific applications where you only want to extend the wireless coverage of your existing WiFi at minimal cost and have low expectations for stability and speed.

so, will a wifi mesh kit also suffer from the disadvantage of halving/cutting bandwidth just like a repeater/extender?