Router or Mesh ... Advice Needed

[Radu-Andrei Solomon]

Hi All,

here is my problem. I am currently running a Linksys EA9300 which i got on a great deal at Christmas (60% off). Since buying I have added a few items to my home and the Linksys has become a bottleneck. My WiFi performance sucks when everyone uses it if I am alone is decent.

The router is in the basement and when I am on my second floor my cell or tablet constantly disconnects or says there is no internet available on the WiFi and 1 minute later it's connected again. While a device next to it can browse the internet no problem so obviously it is not an actual internet connection drop.

I did try a range extender with Linksys RE7000 Max-Stream™ AC1900+ Wi-Fi Range Extender but it didn't make any significant difference.

My current setup is:
- TP Link TC7650 - Cable Modem
- Linksys EA9300 - All 3 wifi bands under 1 SSID
- Netgear switch

In terms of devices, this is what I usually have connected at peak time
- Hue Lights Hub + 6 bulbs
- SmartThings Hub
- Synology NAS
- ecobee 3 thermostat
- 4 google Home
- 2 Android boxes
- Roku box
- PS4
- 2 smart TVs
- 4-6 cellphones
- 3 tablets
- 6 Sonos speakers
- desktop PC
- Printer
- 2 harmony hubs
- MacBook pro laptop
- FooBot air quality monitor
- 2 wifi picture frames
- 3 nest protect smoke detectors
- 2 Nest cameras

There are usually 3-4 people streaming Netflix, YouTube or from my local Emby server.

I have been reading reviews, performance specs, different forums and I am honestly stuck deciding which way to go.

My decision points in order are

- should I go with a new router or a mesh wifi system or something else?

- If router what would be the best option, this is what I am considering
- Netgear NightHawk x8 (R8500)
- Asus RT-AC5300
- Tp-Link Archer C5400 v2 --- Though some of the reviews are not stellar and there seem to be a lot of router dead stories after 1 year.
-

- If I went mesh as my option than what i have been looking at are:
- Netgear Orbi RBK-23 or RBK-53
- Linksys Velop Tri-Band AC6600
- Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD
- Asus Lyra ? --- Reviews seem mixed

Thank you in advance for any input, suggestions and help.

 

[thiggins]

Where did you put your extender? It should go about halfway between your router and the problem area.

Your best solution would be to move your router or any replacement you get out of the basement to the first floor. If you can't run Ethernet, you could try a pair of powerline adapters to extend the cable modem Ethernet output to the router WAN port.

If you try mesh, I recommend the original RBK50 series Orbi. It has the best backhaul performance, which is key for good mesh.

 

[Radu-Andrei Solomon]

Hi thiggins,

Thank you for your feedback. In terms of the extender, I tried to place it based on where the extender android app recommended me to place it which was on the 3rd floor in the hallway. But even there it was still within the green band. Granted I took this app to be accurate and followed its recommendations and really there was no place in my home where I was outside the green band on the too far side that would have allowed me to test and see how that worked. But when it was in the too close zone it had zero effect on the coverage.

Regarding moving the router on the first floor I have been looking into it but outside of powerline adapters, there is not much I can do. My basement is finished as well so trying to run a network cable up to the first floor with being a major challenge and also, unfortunately, my home was built before they were running CAT6 cables everywhere.

On the powerline adapters front. I used TP Link TL-PA511 and my experience was not great. When they worked they were pretty solid but all 4 of them that i had died with a year. The first one died in 6 months and then they slowly all died until I was left with 1 which I can only assume was still working but I had no way of testing it. Maybe things have improved since and maybe there are different brands that are more reliable so if there is some I would not mind giving them a try. I would try to look for some reviews see what I can find.

On the Mesh side, I was leaning towards the RBK50 my concern with it was being only 1 satellite so I was looking for maybe the 2 satellite bundle but I am not sure that wasn't an overkill. Thank you for the recommendation.

 

[thiggins]

Powerline technology has made some advances since AV500. Check our ranker. I'm suggesting you use only one pair to link the cable modem output and router WAN. This should work, assuming your internet service is not gigabit class.

I would start with one Orbi Satellite. Too many mesh nodes is not an advantage. If the signal coverage overlaps too much, devices may bounce back and forth between nodes.

 

[Radu-Andrei Solomon]

Thank you very much for the link and the feedback. I will give it a try and report back. My internet is 75/10 so no worries there.

I would also probably look at a new router. The Linksys forums seem to be filled with people complaining about the no internet issue and how the EA9300 performance degrades over time with large numbers of devices.

I am a bit torn between the Nighthawk and the Asus ... the Asus seems to be better reviewed than the hawk but the price difference is substantial at least in Canada 300 vs 400+.

Not sure if anyone had any experience with the Archer C5400 and how it stacks up and if it is indeed prone to hardware issues.

 

[Trip]

Hi Radu-Andrei. To continue on from Tim's suggestions:

Before buying/trying more powerline gear, if you have cable coax runs to other places in the house, including a good enough place centrally on the 1st floor, then MoCa could be a possibility, and in my opinion is always preferable to powerline, as I find it tends to run more reliably in most cases. ActionTec ECB-6200's are awesome in that case.

If MoCa is not an option, then try upgrading your powerline units. Extollo LANSocket 1500 or ZyXel PLA5456; namely, something that's newest-gen and based on a Broadcom chipset. Your old TA511's are not only older-spec but also Qualcomm-based (with likely poor filtering circuitry, to boot). The chip platform and filtering circuitry can effect performance just as much, if not more so, than the age of the spec alone. Don't take that as letter-of-the-law, but that's just what I've noticed anecdotally through several installs and also across many reviews.

If you can wire up to the 1st floor and hookup an all-in-one router there, you might be able to fix your broadcast issues with that move alone, in which case you're most likely done. Otherwise, you might want to replace the all-in-one with a newer model, like you were thinking. Further than that, if you still need to get signal further, perhaps try wifi-repeating like you did before. Further still would be a whole-house mesh system, like Eero (or Eero Pro), with either wifi turned off on the all-in-one or hooked to a proper wired router, like a Ubiqitui ER-X.

Hopefully some of that helps guide your forward!

 

[Radu-Andrei Solomon]

Thanks guys,

So if I were to go the power line or MoCa (still looking at what is available in my area), if i understand this right i would need 4 of them with the following setup

Cable Modem in the basement > PLA1 > PLA2 > Router on First floor > PLA3 >PLA4 > Basement Network switch. I looked at the 3 port TP-Links thinking i might be able to use only 2 but unless i am missing something it doesn't seem it will work. Am I missing/overthinking something here?

@Trip : Looking at prices in my area both Extollo & ZyXel are 1.5 to 2X more expensive than the equivalent TP-Link. Would you see the performance justifies the price or is just price hike in Canada?

 

[krkaufman]

Before buying/trying more powerline gear, if you have cable coax runs to other places in the house, including a good enough place centrally on the 1st floor, then MoCa could be a possibility,

@Radu-Andrei Solomon, when considering the MoCA alternative, keep in mind that another option is to keep your modem/router where currently located and use a wired MoCA LAN connection to connect to a wireless access point at/near your wireless dead zone, to improve wireless coverage. A wired connection to an access point is much preferred to a wireless extender, since the wired connection back to the router alleviates wireless bandwidth competition. For that matter, you might consider expanding your MoCA connectivity to more locations, to shift as much of the wireless traffic to a wired segment as possible, leaving wireless for the devices that have no other option.

As for exactly how you might leverage MoCA to improve your setup, it's difficult to say lacking knowledge of your available* coax runs (* i.e. whether currently used or not), where and through what components they interconnect, what devices are connected at each location, what devices could be relocated if advantageous to performance, and where you have Ethernet connectivity and through/for what devices. (Model info for modem and router are known.)

p.s. Separately, I'm curious why the modem & router are currently in the basement, rather than both being installed in some central location. (Moving the modem & router to a central location, perhaps replacing/upgrading the router in the process, might be the simplest solution, using MoCA to provide a wired connection to the basement switch from the router LAN ... and then optionally adding any additional MoCA adapters at coax outlets where a wired network connection back to the router would be helpful.)

p.p.s. Some MoCA adapter options are listed >here<, noting that the Motorola MM1000, when available, is currently the best value for bonded MoCA 2.0 (unless you know a FiOS customer who can proxy a purchase of an ECB5240M). The cheapest MoCA option is a MoCA 1.1 WCB3000N, at just $13 ... which, interestingly, might be worth a try as your wireless access point targeting your dead zone (with another at the modem/router location, its wireless disabled, as the main MoCA bridge) -- if you're OK with the MoCA 1.1 throughput of 170 Mbps.

 

[RogerSC]

Brought a couple of the Motorola MM1000 bonded MoCA 2.0 adapters on line recently. I use them to "hardwire" the remote nodes of our eero wireless system. With 3 eero mesh nodes, get great wireless coverage, and with the wired-equivalent backhaul, we get really solid wireless speeds around the house. Since cable TV outlets tend to be near one's TV's *smile*, if the placement is reasonable, makes a good place to put mesh nodes. We have a TV upstairs and downstairs, and have an eero node (plus a Roku) at both of these locations...the MoCA adapters are at these points as well. So it makes for really good wireless coverage, and the internet TV works really well also.

All it took to get the MoCA going was to replace an old splitter in my attic with a MoCA 2.0 splitter (wider bandwidth), and replacing the entry point amplified splitter with one that's MoCA 2.0 compatible. All working great, including the eero mesh wireless.