Re-position existing BT Wholehome vs. Orbi?

[Arsenalfc74]

So I have been using a 3 disk BT Wholehome (BTWH) system for a year or so. It has been mostly rock solid, my house is a 4 bed detached over 3 floors but is not huge at circa 1500 sq ft. The original rationale for mesh was that some of the stud walls seems to have metal in them and I did see some minor drop off with a conventional router and of course the signal was weaker on the top floor. Most of my heavy lifting is wired with all my media players hooked into Ethernet. My current config. is as below (see also attached picture)


1 – Modem/Router – BT HomeHub. Wifi switched off (NAS connected directly) Cat 6 and 5e cables routed to kitchen and lounge

2 - D1 Kitchen hardwired cat 5e

3 - D2 Lounge hardwired cat 6 (via switch) Other devices such as Hive hub also connected to the switch

4 - D3 Landing wifi, I did try powerline and it worked fine but seemed un-necessary as the 2 disks downstairs get the most traffic. The top floor has so light use and any unit on the first floor services it just fine.


The reason I am looking to change things is my current set up is messy, the D2 in the lounge is behind my TV along with enough other cables to run a space shuttle it seems and I am really trying to reduce the clutter back there. The D3 is on the landing which due to the layout means I have to run a short extension lead (in trunking) and place the disk on a small table which looks messy too. Also my daughter is moving from bedroom 2 to the top floor so coverage on the top floor is a consideration now compared to before. So have been looking at a couple of options:

1. The Netgear Orbi – the RKB50 is the one to get obviously but even the lesser RKB30 should match my BTWH for speed and the plug-in nature of the satellite appeals as it would be nice and tidy in the plug socket on the 1st floor landing too. The thing is unless I have read it wrong with the Orbi I would not be able to access any of my networked devices over Wi-Fi as it lacks a bridge mode so to work I’d have to use the Ethernet ports on the orbi?



2. Reposition what I have – I know that if I was to forgo wired backhaul on the disks 2 and 3 I can be more flexible as to where I put them, I am also wondering as to the advantages of powerline back haul vs wifi ? (I have 2 pass-through BT 1000 flex gigabit plugs) If it is close then the added hassle and mess of another device plugged in 24/7 is probably not worth it but in theory powerline should reduce the any drop-off if I were to be looking at 2 hops on the top floor?



Have not ruled out the velop and the Huawei system also looks interesting but has zero reviews that I can find. It has also occurred to me that my house is really not that big that my BT HH is half decent and that mesh may be overkill?



Thoughts appreciated

 

[degrub]

Why not add an AP in the loft hardwired or with ethernet over powerline or MOCA ?

 

[Arsenalfc74]

Thanks for the reply. I am actually not even sure I need something up on the top floor and think a well-placed disk on the first floor probably works.

Having slept on it last night I think that if I stick with 3 disks then I’m not sure there is a better placement for disks 1 and 2 than where they are now as both downstairs living areas are well covered, sure I could probably find slightly better spots in those rooms but I am constrained by where the Ethernet is. I could also just move to a 2 disk setup and put disk 1 where the BT modem/router is in the hall and disk 2 somewhere on the 1st floor, only question is if one disk can cover all of the downstairs properly from there as I guess that on their own a single disk is still no match for a router.

Updated plan attached and I think that the new disk 3 location which is immediately below the top floor bedroom would serve that ok from there and at least I tidy up my landing!

As an aside I have to say I did some reading on the soon to be released products from Devolo (magic 2) and TP link (P7), not sure of the full specs but both look very interesting

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[Arsenalfc74]

So I did some unscientific testing at the weekend and it seems with the BT wholehome using powerline for the backhaul (BT flex 1000 units) is slower than wifi at least in my house.

The testing was pretty unscientific using the speed test app on an iPad pro and running each test 3 times to confirm consistency. The 2 wired disks showed a speed of 28mbps (about as good as my BT fibre gets these days but that’s another story) when tested in the same room, I also got the same speed in bedroom 1 where the iPad stayed connected to the lounges disk.

For the disk connected via powerline when I moved to the same room as this disk (#4 on the above picture) the speed dropped to 20 mbps and moving up to the top floor it was again 20mbps. I then disconnected the powerline and restarted the disk and did the test again and this time using wifi for the backhaul the speed was 28 mbps for both rooms. I also tested in the same room as disk 3 but with disk 3 off and even connected to the kitchen disk the speed held at 28 mbps. I suspect that whilst my internal walls may have metal in them that the floors do not which may make the vertical signal better than the horizontal.

Maybe over the long haul powerline will be more consistent but for now I cannot see any reason to use it over wifi for backhaul. In fact I think that 2 disks is probably enough for my house and that maybe a 2 node Netgear Orbi rbk50 other unit which offers more range/speed per individual unit) would be a better fit for my house?



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