Need some advice on direction to take.

[Tom Brough]

Hello everyone, been a while since I visited, but I've returned seeking your wisdom once again.

My BT mesh wifi disc setup is starting to become very tired and glitchy, lots of dropped connections, reboots, low speeds and the such, but it's 6 years old and in our house with 3 kids it's served us well so no complaints.

I'm in the UK running on a 80/20 vdsl connection, currently my main router is a rpi4b running openwrt, feeding a TP-Link smart switch, which the primary BT mesh disc is connected into and provides me with wifi coverage.

So I'm now wondering if I should replace these discs with a newer version of the same thing, or replace these mesh items with some APs and power line adaptors, or do I use the time to replace it all and start fresh with a new wifi router and maybe an AP point for upstairs?

The house is an old 1800s farm house, thick stone walls, and we use a lot of network devices, we can have 4 tvs streaming movies from the Synology Nas, while phones are being used, games consoles etc... Even the silly dishwasher is connected.

I don't want to waste money, but I'd rather pay more and be reassured it's gonna do the job for a good few more years.

What's the thoughts?

 

[Tech9]

How's the 5GHz wall penetration in your place?
Any chance to go with wired APs around the house?

 

[dave14305]

currently my main router is a rpi4b running openwrt

Did you ever get nft-qos working again?

 

[Tom Brough]

Did you ever get nft-qos working again?

Yes it's working again...

 

[Tom Brough]

How's the 5GHz wall penetration in your place?
Any chance to go with wired APs around the house?

It's average, the BT disc things use 5ghz backhaul and they cope with it.. unfortunately wired AP isn't possible, rented house and no cavity walls means everything would need to be surface mounted and they wouldn't allow it, which is why I said maybe an AP with a power line adaptor.

 

[TheLostSwede]

For the kind of speed your internet connection provides, power line adapters would be fast enough, but the wired speed depends a lot on the quality/age of your power lines and if you're passing through any junction boxes.
In my case, they're useless, as we have a junction/fuse box on each floor and the signal drops to less than 10Mbps after going through one of those.
Just as with Wi-Fi, you don't get anywhere near the rated speed of powerline adapters, but I presume you know this already.

I guess something like this should do the job.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018993PSC/?tag=smallncom-21

It doesn't seem like there are too many options any more, but I would go with Devolo over TP-Link any day, based on my past experience with TP-Link hardware, or rather software.
Devolo released a firmware update in July this year, so it's clearly a product that's still being supported.

Their higher-end kit is nearly twice the price, which might not bring any benefits to the way you use the internet.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H5WYSBJ/?tag=smallncom-21

 

[Tom Brough]

That's my worry with powerline adaptors, the house is old, that means damp as no damp proof course, and the electrics are old... Last socket I went into had black and red cables, not even brown and blue lol.

The rpi4b is a great powerhouse for a router, but add in the need for a switch, and at least one access point, I do wonder if just getting something like a Asus ax11000 and couple of ax92 as mesh AP would do the job. Spoils £600 but shouldn't be a bottleneck for a good few years.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Sounds like a huge massive waste of money imnsho.
You only have an 80/20Mbps internet connection and unless you're using your network for something like backing up your computers locally to a NAS, going for honking steam iron routers, isn't going to be worthwhile.

Looking at the Merlin supported routers from Asus, I would go with something like a pair of RT-AC86U, as they can work in mesh and don't cost a bomb and are still going to be much faster than your internet connection and should still be good for three or four times your connection speed.

Another alternative would be to go for something like the XT8's, as you get a dedicated backhaul radio.

ASUS Mesh Roundup: Two Zens and a TriBand - SmallNetBuilder

SmallNetBuilder provides networking and IT news, reviews, help and information for professional and prosumer home, SOHO and small business users.

www.smallnetbuilder.com

I set up an "old" RT-AC68U last year at my stepmums place and although that was just a two bedroom flat, I got coverage a good 50 meters away from the router outside of the building. It kicked the snot out of the previous ISP provided Technicolour router, which barely covered the flat.

 

[Tom Brough]

Yes I do have regular local back ups, and stream media from a jellyfin server to multiple devices locally from my Synology ds920. It's not just wan traffic that I'm trying to maximize but also LAN traffic, since my BT discs have started playing up, I've found if all 3 kids are streaming films to there tv from jellyfin, even though it's using wifi not internet, the response from everything else takes a noticeable hit.

I did look at the XT8 and the newly announced ET8, I was worried the lack of aerials would restrict the signal penetration throughout the house as it's walls are stone.

But if you think they would be upto the job I will certainly take a look.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Oh wow, stone walls are the worst for Wi-Fi. I presume it's quite an old building then?
I have issues with concrete and metal. I barely get from the ground floor to the first floor, which is a little over 3 meters up.
The 2.4GHz band works ok, but the 5GHz is useless.
Going from first to second floor is somewhat better, as the ceiling height is about a meter lower, but the 5GHz band isn't useable on the entire second floor. The odd thing is that the router on the ground floor can be accessed from the parking garage below the house which is much further down than 3 meters... Wi-Fi signals can be funny that way and don't always work as expected.

Now, it might sound like I live in a massive house, but it's not, it's only about 30 square meters per floor, as due to expensive land, they build upwards here. I have one router or AP on each floor, by now they're all wired together, but the one on the second floor has been a range extender for several years and it lost connection from time to time on the 5GHz to the one on the first floor.

External antennas can matter, but on consumer routers you're only allowed a certain total transmit power, so where it might make a difference is more on the receiving end, as PA's can make up for the transmit bit, but LNA's on the receiving end can't make up for a poor transmission as much as a PA can make up for a smaller antenna.

The BT things look quite odd, as they seem to be ceiling mount AP's on a stand, but looking at a video I found of someone that popped one open, they seem to use four PCB antennas that point all over the place. A very strange product and I've never seen anything like it before. Then again, BT seems to have terrible routers either which way and they seem to like to lock them down quite a bit as well, at least that was my experience last time I used on a few years ago. Unfortunately it couldn't be replaced, as I had BT fibre where I lived then.

I guess you could always return the ET8 if they don't perform? Not sure what the return policy is of things like if you have tested them out. Based on the review I linked above, the AX92U's aren't looking great as mesh AP's either and start out at much lower speed over the wireless on both 2.4 and 5GHz. The XT8 seems to beat at least some of Netgear's Orbi products as well and they are generally the most popular mesh products from what I can tell. I doubt the ET8 will help you in any way, since the 6GHz band has even worse wall penetration. At least it's possible to get a third node for the ET8/XT8 if you find that you need it.

It's a tricky one and the stone walls really threw another spanner into the mix. Sorry for the waffle...

 

[Tom Brough]

Yes the house is old, it's 1800s, been adapted and extended on, but the main structure is very thick stone walls... The BT discs are odd things, no routing functions, purely a mesh AP set up, got 6 of them and despite many reports of troubles, mine have been superb since 2015... Only now are they starting to show gremlins, surprisingly at the same time they've released a wifi6 version, I think they break them with a secret firmware change to make us buy the new ones lol... Conspiracy theory.