Router or Mesh system?

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188 posts

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#2332250 7-Oct-2019 21:33

When we got fibre (from Vodafone) I repurposed my old TP-Link router as an AP at the other end of the house, connected by powerline adapters. Made everyone in the house happy (in that there's been no complaints since, they were frequent before). Maybe you could scrounge an old router from someone.

everettpsycho

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#2332251 7-Oct-2019 21:33

The WiFi would still work fine on the access point. The trouble will be you'll always get a bottleneck. At the moment the orcon router is holding you back but fix that and I think the power lines will then be your weak link. The upshot of a mesh is you'll have one ssid covering the house and devices can move between them with no input from yourself. A decent mesh could see an improvement on your WiFi speeds but you have to keep in mind if something else is hampering your speeds this won't fix that problem.

When you say you get 65 on lan is that plugged in to the power line with an ethernet cable? That seems fairly low so I'm wondering if there's something else at play here also reducing your speeds. The WiFi in the orcon router is slow by today's standards but I've had no problems with the ethernet ports at all. Ethernet cables would see a huge improvement on your network performance and even help with a mesh as you can use it for the backhaul.

coffeebaron

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#2332257 7-Oct-2019 21:44

Also how many telephone jack-points have you got around the house? If they have been run with CAT5e cable, you might be able to utilise this wiring.

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unrlx

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#2332277 7-Oct-2019 22:40

jlittle:

When we got fibre (from Vodafone) I repurposed my old TP-Link router as an AP at the other end of the house, connected by powerline adapters. Made everyone in the house happy (in that there's been no complaints since, they were frequent before). Maybe you could scrounge an old router from someone.

How did you do this? I'm thinking I could use the old orcon router as an AP when it gets switched since they are sending me a new one?

everettpsycho: The WiFi would still work fine on the access point. The trouble will be you'll always get a bottleneck. At the moment the orcon router is holding you back but fix that and I think the power lines will then be your weak link. The upshot of a mesh is you'll have one ssid covering the house and devices can move between them with no input from yourself. A decent mesh could see an improvement on your WiFi speeds but you have to keep in mind if something else is hampering your speeds this won't fix that problem.

When you say you get 65 on lan is that plugged in to the power line with an ethernet cable? That seems fairly low so I'm wondering if there's something else at play here also reducing your speeds. The WiFi in the orcon router is slow by today's standards but I've had no problems with the ethernet ports at all. Ethernet cables would see a huge improvement on your network performance and even help with a mesh as you can use it for the backhaul.

Yeah that's plugging it in to the powerline adapter by TP-Link. I'm currently using this one - https://www.tp-link.com/sa/home-networking/powerline/tl-wpa4220/

It allows up to 300Mbps and 500Mbps on HomePlug. Possibly the wiring isn't as good in my house?

Was thinking if I go mesh and it gives me a higher speed than the power adapter then I'm happy really.

coffeebaron: Also how many telephone jack-points have you got around the house? If they have been run with CAT5e cable, you might be able to utilise this wiring.

I actually have a telephone jack-point in my room but that's only a for telephones? It kinda hangs off the ceiling so I just pushed it back in and sealed the hole off recently lol.

cyril7

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#2332310 8-Oct-2019 06:37

I actually have a telephone jack-point in my room but that's only a for telephones? It kinda hangs off the ceiling so I just pushed it back in and sealed the hole off recently lol.

But as Coffebarron asks, what kind of cable is it, if its cat5 or better it can be repurposed for ethernet.

Cyril

jlittle

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#2332351 8-Oct-2019 08:29

unrlx:

jlittle:

When we got fibre (from Vodafone) I repurposed my old TP-Link router as an AP at the other end of the house, connected by powerline adapters. Made everyone in the house happy (in that there's been no complaints since, they were frequent before). Maybe you could scrounge an old router from someone.

How did you do this? I'm thinking I could use the old orcon router as an AP when it gets switched since they are sending me a new one?

There's many videos on YouTube, I vaguely followed one. Change the admin address (if it's the same as the new router), disable any WAN or ADSL, disable DHCP, use the same SSID, and not use the WAN ethernet port on the router, connect the powerline ethernet to an ordinary LAN port.

kotuku4

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#2332364 8-Oct-2019 08:52

I have ufb 100/20 Big pipe.

Simple 3 bedroom house, 120m2.

AmpliFi HD (AFi-HD) with router and one mesh point repeater.

Family of five and this WiFi only system works very well for us.

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MileHighKiwi

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#2332380 8-Oct-2019 09:43

We have Google wifi (mesh network) and its brilliant.

unrlx

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#2332407 8-Oct-2019 10:28

cyril7:

I actually have a telephone jack-point in my room but that's only a for telephones? It kinda hangs off the ceiling so I just pushed it back in and sealed the hole off recently lol.

But as Coffebarron asks, what kind of cable is it, if its cat5 or better it can be repurposed for ethernet.

Cyril

OK just looked at how it looks like if I can convert and I remember when cutting the wires of the telephone line it doesn't have cat5.

kotuku4:

I have ufb 100/20 Big pipe.

Simple 3 bedroom house, 120m2.

AmpliFi HD (AFi-HD) with router and one mesh point repeater.

Family of five and this WiFi only system works very well for us.

MileHighKiwi: We have Google wifi (mesh network) and its brilliant.

I keep hearing mixed reviews about these two its driving me nuts lol.

I guess ultimately I can get a mesh system and if it doesn't work well I can still refund it?

My other question is that is everyone using the router that your service provider provided? What worries me is like someone said that there will be a bottleneck somewhere or rather and I don't want to have to buy another new router after spending a ton on the mesh.

baplaski

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#2332485 8-Oct-2019 12:09

I read very mixed reviews on Google Wifi. It's not a power user tool definitely, but I had a recommendation from the friend and the 3 pack was available from Dick Smith at a decent price. Be aware it doesn't do VLAN tagging, so you will probably have to retain your current router. It seems great to me, easy to set up, easy to manage, does self tests, can do a guest network and implement parental controls etc.

everettpsycho

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#2332510 8-Oct-2019 12:53

Running a mesh off your ISP router should be fine. You'll find the orcon router outputs gigabit so I'd plug the primary node in directly for the best connection. The issue will be if you want to do wired backhaul to the secondary nodes, based on what you've said so far you may be better off with the wireless backhaul between them as it could be faster than your power line adapters. The thing to watch out with on a mesh in this setup is how good the mimo is. Google WiFi will use the 5ghz band for backhaul which adds traffic on the same signal as your devices are using, more advanced models have a dedicated band for this meaning better throughputs.

If you are thinking about Google WiFi Orcon do lease it for $15 a month or sell it for $400. Could be an option for an upgrade as I don't think you'll find it much cheaper than that.

Setting up though you need to make sure you have all network traffic behind a single DHCP router. So if you use your Orcon router you'd need to either use the Google WiFi in bridge mode or use the lan out to the Google WiFi then everything else in the house would need to be connected via the Google Sofia out port.

The tenda MW6 set I picked up are pretty good for what I payed. I did a lot of fiddling about and research on other forums to get the set up to work properly with wired backhaul but once it was set up properly it's not gone wrong at all. I'm tempted to put a thread up on them as for a day to day user I think you'd be hard to beat them for $60 a node.

MikeB4

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#2332540 8-Oct-2019 13:45

MileHighKiwi: We have Google wifi (mesh network) and its brilliant.

We have this too. It is working fantastically and we have a challenging home for both Wifi and wired Ethernet.

unrlx

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#2332903 8-Oct-2019 18:21

everettpsycho: Running a mesh off your ISP router should be fine. You'll find the orcon router outputs gigabit so I'd plug the primary node in directly for the best connection. The issue will be if you want to do wired backhaul to the secondary nodes, based on what you've said so far you may be better off with the wireless backhaul between them as it could be faster than your power line adapters. The thing to watch out with on a mesh in this setup is how good the mimo is. Google WiFi will use the 5ghz band for backhaul which adds traffic on the same signal as your devices are using, more advanced models have a dedicated band for this meaning better throughputs.

If you are thinking about Google WiFi Orcon do lease it for $15 a month or sell it for $400. Could be an option for an upgrade as I don't think you'll find it much cheaper than that.

Setting up though you need to make sure you have all network traffic behind a single DHCP router. So if you use your Orcon router you'd need to either use the Google WiFi in bridge mode or use the lan out to the Google WiFi then everything else in the house would need to be connected via the Google Sofia out port.

The tenda MW6 set I picked up are pretty good for what I payed. I did a lot of fiddling about and research on other forums to get the set up to work properly with wired backhaul but once it was set up properly it's not gone wrong at all. I'm tempted to put a thread up on them as for a day to day user I think you'd be hard to beat them for $60 a node.

So let's say if I don't do backhaul on the Google Wifi I'll be fine? If I do backhaul, can I plug in the powerline adapter in to the Google WiFi? Or just go without would be better?

Yep was thinking about that $15 dollar option, I'll at least use it for 2 years or more so might as well buy it.

Do I just change the settings in the Orcon router to put Google WiFI on bridge mode? Not sure what you mean by everything would be connected via the Google sofia out port there.

As for the Tenda, I don't have multiple sockets that can give me the backhaul so might not be an option for me unfortunately unless I use powerline adapters which will be an extra cost again.

everettpsycho

614 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2333070 8-Oct-2019 20:55

Based on the slow power line performance you may be better using WiFi if you really can't run cables. You'd really have to experiment once you get it to work out what works best. I think you could actually use the Google WiFi ports to output to a computer from the secondary nodes, but as I don't have one I can't tell for sure on that.

Sorry I meant ethernet, it auto corrected to sofia. DHCP is the important thing as that issues devices their IP addresses. If you leave it on on the mesh everything must come back to that one device not the orcon router and that is then connected to your Orcon router, it would render all other Lan ports on your Orcon router isolated from your wireless network. So to run a cable to a second node or other room your would need to go
Orcon>Google (primary)>power line>Google WiFi secondary
DHCP can be fiddly though so I'd probably suggest asking someone with the same equipment exactly how to set that up to make sure it definitely works.

I don't think the tendas work very differently to the Google WiFi, they do restrict me down to a single port at one point in my network as it had to go in to the primary tendas wan port and back out on its Lan port for the secondary node to function but I had that restriction anyway so it just took one extra Ethernet cable and so far I haven't seen it cause any bottlenecks. The thing I'm unsure about is bridge mode, mine work well in it but I'm not sure Google offers the same functionality. On the tenda bridge strips out DHCP and removes things like guest network and parental controls, but the Asus router I have running the show can do all that too. I did run them in full mode using the logic I've written above and it was fine, but the Asus upgrade stuff gave me was wasted going this route.

unrlx

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#2333073 8-Oct-2019 21:03

everettpsycho: Based on the slow power line performance you may be better using WiFi if you really can't run cables. You'd really have to experiment once you get it to work out what works best. I think you could actually use the Google WiFi ports to output to a computer from the secondary nodes, but as I don't have one I can't tell for sure on that.

Sorry I meant ethernet, it auto corrected to sofia. DHCP is the important thing as that issues devices their IP addresses. If you leave it on on the mesh everything must come back to that one device not the orcon router and that is then connected to your Orcon router, it would render all other Lan ports on your Orcon router isolated from your wireless network. So to run a cable to a second node or other room your would need to go
Orcon>Google (primary)>power line>Google WiFi secondary
DHCP can be fiddly though so I'd probably suggest asking someone with the same equipment exactly how to set that up to make sure it definitely works.

I don't think the tendas work very differently to the Google WiFi, they do restrict me down to a single port at one point in my network as it had to go in to the primary tendas wan port and back out on its Lan port for the secondary node to function but I had that restriction anyway so it just took one extra Ethernet cable and so far I haven't seen it cause any bottlenecks. The thing I'm unsure about is bridge mode, mine work well in it but I'm not sure Google offers the same functionality. On the tenda bridge strips out DHCP and removes things like guest network and parental controls, but the Asus router I have running the show can do all that too. I did run them in full mode using the logic I've written above and it was fine, but the Asus upgrade stuff gave me was wasted going this route.

Alright I'll give this a try on Google WiFi and post back.

Hopefully it will work without having to do much tweaking to it.

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