Wi-Fi in a Large House - Advice Appreciated!

Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:17
Last edited 15/04/2022 - 02:59 by 1 other user

Would appreciate advice about getting decent wifi throughout the whole house.

We have a 2.5 story quite large house with very thick walls. The phone line/modem is on the middle floor. On that floor we get 100/35Mbps consistently on the NBN.

The signal to upstairs is pretty poor - the modem plug is far away from stairs (but still the same room). Even with a wifi repeater, lucky to get 25Mbps upstairs. There's never more than 2 devices in use upstairs, but they're not always the same 2 devices.

The downstairs basement area has been a write-off in terms of getting a signal - we use a powerline ethernet connection which does the job for the computer there, but would be nice to get it connected there too so we can use the PlayStation etc down there.

Some thoughts & questions I had:
- Getting a powerline wifi adaptor upstairs, but I can't find one the same brand as our existing set up on Australia (TP LINK), and I don't know if a power adaptor would stop it working, and would a second one take away any of the speed from the first one?
- Would a Mesh system sort out the issue? I worry about the recommendation being 1-2 rooms away - the set up of the house means they're going to be on different levels with definitely no line of sight. Looking at the Nest & Eero 6, but open to ideas.

Money isn't a huge barrier (take away my OzB card) but prefer to keep it under $500. We're reasonably techy and could set up most systems. EDIT: getting extra cabling installed is probably more investment than we're willing to put in at the moment.

EDIT 2: Should mention I'm not after anything super amazing for upstairs. Just want to do Zoom calls and the occasional gaming session. Our NBN is maxed out at 100 in our house.

Many thanks for your help!

EDIT 3
Ended up with the Deco 55x. Getting great speeds upstairs now (100Mbps) and good enough speeds in the basement (20-30).

Thanks for the help everyone!

Internet

Comments

  • omguleh on 07/04/2022 - 21:26
    +1

    I have a 32 square home, my AmpliFi mesh covers it all plus the gardens and shed. Only have FTTN so can get full speeds everywhere.

    • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:27

      Is it a single story or multi story home?

      • omguleh on 08/04/2022 - 11:58
        +1

        Double story.

  • Jimothy Wongingtons on 07/04/2022 - 21:29

    Similar setup , I’m waiting for a good deal on x60 3 pack

    • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:30

      Why the x60?

      • Jimothy Wongingtons on 07/04/2022 - 21:36

        Trying to max out my 1000/50

        Atm getting about 650/ 50 max

        My Xbox is on other side of house and only getting 230/30 ish

      • FoxJump on 08/04/2022 - 09:05

        Idk but i have 2x x60s and i they work great.

        • [Deactivated] on 08/04/2022 - 10:24

          I am using 3 x M5's in a 370m2 house one level, but want the X60's for 1000/40 FFTH, what size house do you have would I get away with 2?

          • FoxJump on 08/04/2022 - 19:03

            @[Deactivated]: Idk. This place we're in is about 250sqm split across two floors.

            One for downstairs and one for upstairs

  • AndyC1 on 07/04/2022 - 21:31

    What are the floors made of? Is there reo in the floors?
    What are the walls made of? Is there reo the walls?
    How many power circuits are there in the house? Power, not lighting or hot water or stove/oven or pool.

    • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:36

      All great questions which I don't really have answers to 🤦🏻
      No idea what's in the floors. The walls are double brick.
      I have no idea how many power circuits are in the house. I must admit I haven't tried taking the powerline from the basement and plugging it in upstairs. Something to try before I put any more thought into that idea.

      • AndyC1 on 07/04/2022 - 21:50

        Next round of questions:
        1) Are there any areas where there is a cavity linking all the floors where you can run CAT 5 cable?
        2) I am correct in that you do not have CAT 5 cabling in the walls or between the floors?

        5Ghz wifi band is out of scope now that I know you have double brick and 2.4Ghz is okay for one wall, but two walls and it sucks, unless it can bounce down the corridor and slightly arround the corner…. Had a 1950 double brick single level house and used 2.4Ghx wifi and it sort of worked, but I ran CAT 5e and never looked back(1GB network using a small 5 port GB switch).

        How much space is around the stair well? You may be able to link the floors via wifi in the stairwell. See if there is space and if it will look okay or suck.

        IMHO CAT5e will be the best option. If you cannot run it internally how about outside somewhere?

        • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 23:44

          Do you mean a cavity in the walls? There are existing ethernet cables running from each bedroom to the main bedroom. But these bedrooms are on the complete other side of the house to the nbn router on the ground floor.

          Good to know about the 5G. This is what I was worried about

          Hardware in the stairwell would look weird, but I'm not worried about that. It's a very open stairwell, but there's no PowerPoints

  • stirlo on 07/04/2022 - 21:31
    +3

    Can you get someone to run Ethernet cable for you? Ultimately nothing will beat extra wireless access points with wired backhaul for coverage

    • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:33

      When the house was built, all of upstairs rooms had ethernet ports installed. This was great before laptops, smart phones and smart TVs became a thing. Getting extra cabling installed is probably more involved than what we'd like to do at this stage though.

      • stirlo on 07/04/2022 - 21:41
        +4

        If the cables are there you can attach access points to existing cables super easily. If you already have cables I’d certainly look for a mesh with wired backhaul. It will be much faster and more reliable then wireless backhaul mesh systems

        • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 21:44

          Thanks - I know a couple of sparkles, I'll get them to have a look when I see them next

          • smashman42 on 07/04/2022 - 23:09
            +4

            @Pineapples: Even if it is only Cat5 and not certified to gigabit like Cat5e or better is, it may well work anyway or get 500mbps or something good enough for your usage. Cat5 can run up to 2.5g for really short runs, so gigabit over the distance between floors in a house isn't totally dreaming.

            If the cables are too old/crap for that and can only maintain 100mbps, they might be able to use them to pull new cables through which is much, much cheaper than doing it from scratch - but plug in some gigabit devices and do device to device speed tests to check them out. Look up using iperf3 or the like to check it out. Two laptops are ideal so you can move them around, and sanity check a direct connection with them next to each other to know your best case speed.

            If you can you want a 3 point mesh system with wired back-haul and a point for each floor.

            So it'd go main point as the router plugged into your NBN box.

            Then a main gigabit or better switch for every device on that central floor that can be hard wired - the more stuff hard wired the more bandwidth left for your remaining WiFi devices to share. At a minimum you'd have the three mesh APs - the outlet of the main router one, and the back-haul link of the other two - but every Playstation or other device that has ethernet regardless of floor that doesn't move should be hard wired if you can get cables to them without making a trip hazard.

            Then you'd use the current in walls ethernet to hopefully get gigabit or close enough upstairs, put a switch for any hard wired devices or just one of the secondary points if nothing up there can be hard wired easily.

            Same in the basement but if there's no ethernet down there already, use a gigabit switch via the powerline unit and then plug the current PC and the new basement mesh AP and anything else into it.

            • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 23:39

              @smashman42: Do I need more than 100Mbps through the cables in my NBN is capped at 100? (The max we can get here)

              • smashman42 on 09/04/2022 - 14:52

                @Pineapples: Same as with WiFi or any other medium, if you have a 100mbps backhaul it'll be a bottleneck when multiple things are trying to communicate over it - not just internet traffic but any internal traffic too. Though it'd be a smaller bottleneck than WiFi likely would on different elevations*, and like I said before even if it is CAT5 you'll probably get 200Mbps+ out of it. Even if it is only 100Mbps that's way better than you're getting now, right? It'd be internal data transfer once you have good WiFi where say streaming data from a PC or NAS if it is only 100Mbps wired you might be better off on WiFi for those things, even if the internet itself is the same either way.

                (*the antenna are setup in routers/APs to spread horizontally so directly above & below APs are usually dead spots, but the further away you get signal up & down spreads out, assuming the floors/ceilings don't block the signal)

          • salmon123 on 07/04/2022 - 23:10

            @Pineapples: You probably want to figure out where those ethernet ports in the bedroom are going. There's probably a patch panel in the garage or similar.

            I don't know that a sparkie will be any quicker to figure out the end point than you.

            • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 23:36

              @salmon123: They all connect up to one of the bedrooms which has a phone line in it as well (is that what you mean?)

              Served it's purpose really well 15 years ago

              • smashman42 on 09/04/2022 - 15:05
                +1

                @Pineapples: So is the existing wiring only on the top level of the home, meaning you'd need either a new ethernet run or a powerline unit to get you from the middle level to the top level that is hard wired?

                Also watch the powerline units, the cheaper ones are often only 100-200Mbps or something and also that is shared bandwidth with multiple units, which is fine for getting 100/20 internet around the house, but could slow down internal transfers eg: streaming from a PC/NAS or copying from one PC to another etc.

                Powerline units kind of work like WiFi over the electrical wiring rather than air, so they're a shared bandwidth thing like WiFi not dedicated like real hard wires, so obviously distance and quality of the wiring impact the end signal strength, and two sets from different brands could conflict on the bands they try to use - so it may be better to get a new 3 point unit for the host next to the NBN box and then two slave units for upstairs and the basement (if that is what you need)

                You should move the ones you have around to test your housing circuits before you put any money down though! A big 3 way kit might be more than a new ethernet run from upstairs to the middle level, so it may end up new ethernet linking upstairs and downstairs, existing ethernet upstairs for some stuff, then powerline to the basement. If multiple things in any location you can throw a gigabit unmanaged switch with adequate ports there to get more things working hard wired.

                • Pineapples on 09/04/2022 - 19:31

                  @smashman42: We're lucky to get 40Mbps through the powerline here

                  I had a chat with dad (who built the house) - they had heaps of trouble getting cables laid through the walls when they were constructing (for some reason) - he had multiple tradies give it a crack.

  • vince088 on 07/04/2022 - 21:48
    +1

    all you need is wifi mesh.
    wifi extenders or repeaters are old school now its instant 50% speed due to repeating the signal

    • AndyC1 on 07/04/2022 - 21:52

      Not in a double brick house. 5Ghz hates going through 2 x double brick walls.

      • Pineapples on 07/04/2022 - 23:39

        This was my concern

        • John Kimble on 08/04/2022 - 08:54
          +1

          You have double brick internal walls?

          I live in a small art Deco unit block with double brick external walls, but the internal walls are single brick.

          I have one google home WiFi and it works fine for my usage. I only have 25/10 though.

          • Pineapples on 08/04/2022 - 12:50

            @John Kimble: You're right - I was mistaken. External double brick, internal single brick walls.

        • vince088 on 08/04/2022 - 09:41

          Wifi mesh automatically runs 2ghz and 5ghz and switches the connection for each individual device for best performance

          Im waiting for wifi 6e to upgrade my mesh system to include 6ghz lol

  • [Deactivated] on 07/04/2022 - 22:01

    i think I live in a similar house you described. I have the sparky wired 2 x UniFi nanoHD(ceiling mount)+ 1 x in wall HD on ground floor(middle level) and 1 x AC LR in basement garage(suspended concrete, so no signal is coming through there to the floor above). After moving in, I realised I don’t get any WIFI signal in a corner bathroom on 1st level, while having no problem getting 250/25 in all other areas apart from some bathroom/WIR. So I ended up adding a UniFi FlexHD in a bedroom close to that blind spot. Now every corner is covered.
    I’ve gone all UniFi including gateway, switch and AP, no complaint at all after 18 months. Except I switched out the stock fan in the 48 port POE switch to Noctua ones.
    All my APs now are available in WIFI6(flexHD Wifi6 available overseas), so I’d highly recommend UniFi for ease of use and seamless wifi experience and mounting flexibility.

  • FreestyleScoop on 08/04/2022 - 06:24

    We are in a two storey five bedroom house and really struggled over the past 12 months with WiFi dead spots. Our NBN access point is in the furthest corner of the garage so my initial thought was to run a long CAT-5 cable around the garage and position the router somewhere closer to the internal door. That made zero difference.

    After a little Youtube research decided to bite the bullet and dropped $270 on a TP Link Archer AX73 AX5400 MU MIMO Dual Band Gigabit WiFi 6 Router. Absolute game changer!!

    The rooms that sometimes reached 15Mbps if the wind was blowing the right direction now all hit 100Mbps without fail 24/7. I can even take the kids to the park a street away and still connect to the home WiFi. Best part for easy usage is it auto switches between 2.4G and 5G depending on the strongest signal. No more kids complaining that they're connected and nothing loads because they've moved rooms.

  • cashless on 08/04/2022 - 08:10
    +1

    This solved all my wi-fi problems for covering a large area. Works well. Look for a deal

  • stirlo on 08/04/2022 - 09:22

    You could get this: TP-Link Deco X55 AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Router System (3-Pack) $399 Delivered @ Amazon AU

    It supports the latest WiFi 6 standard, has 3 points so one for each level, and supports wired backhaul so you can figure out whether its faster plugging it into your old ethernet cables or just use the Wireless backhaul mesh if you can't get the cables to work. I suspect the cables will be much more reliable and faster but you could test both easy enough.

  • ak147ak on 08/04/2022 - 09:36

    I just purchased the TP-Link X20 2 Pack WIFI6 ($299). I have a big double storey 50sq house so coverage and speed is a must. I have 1 unit upstairs with my modem and 1 unit downstairs. I have 5g connection and get 200mbps in my office which is 10m away. Up close to the modem is 400mbps. However 200mbps is perfect for WFH.

    https://www.harveynorman.com.au/tp-link-deco-x20-2-pack-ax18…

    If you want a 3pack i think they are close to $400 which would be even better. Dont bother with recabling it will cost too much and this would give you good speeds anyway.

  • [Deactivated] on 08/04/2022 - 09:59

    I had a similar challenge in our last home.

    FTTN 100/40 and rock-solid speeds (node <500m away). 120 year old terrace house. Thicccccc walls everywhere (none of this fancy cavity brick malarkey) and devices needing connectivity everywhere from the garage (right at the back of the property) to the attic.

    I went the Ubiquiti route. Dream Machine router. 5 port POE switch. DIY lengths of cable from the switch to the garage, kitchen and upstairs study/spare bedroom. Each of those locations got a UniFi AC Lite or UniFi AC LR access point. Total wifi saturation and very reliable. Couldn't be happier….except for a couple of the super-dodgy cable runs - which were only really an eyesore for the neighbours.;-)

  • DoesntEvenMatter on 08/04/2022 - 10:01

    Best option is always wired AP. I'm running 4 UniFi AP which cover about 55 squares on 2 story and we are able to keep every device at full strength with seamless transition between the points. Since you to have existing eth ports, you could easy install in wall UniFi APs in a couple locations.. You can power them with a separate PoE switch (or upgrade your entire switch to a managed one with PoE) or inline injectors. Take a dive into Ubiquiti UniFi systems. Would transform your entire access

  • [Deactivated] on 08/04/2022 - 10:26

    If you are with iiNet you need the X60 for their ultra fast plan apparently

  • MeesusEff on 08/04/2022 - 14:29

    Google mesh worked really well for my house. My house is really open plan but for some reason I just could not get any signal upstairs. Thought it was just sh*t internet, but it's perfect once I got the mesh.

  • T-man on 09/04/2022 - 08:52

    My home is also large, 2 story and Telstra Gateway Smart 3 modem with 4 Telstra Wifi boosters are working well.

    I used to have the wifi extender/ repeater but not good and sometimes slower when you are far away from the access points, but the new Telstra Mesh system is great in my home.

  • Zippy7 on 13/04/2022 - 14:04

    I have a large double brick house with concrete flooring.
    There was stuff all signal penetrating the floor/walls.
    I bought 4 TP link PA9020 (powerline adapters) to a hub and some cameras - they worked really well for years.
    Then I got a tradie to put 1 cable in from upstairs to downstairs.
    Didn't make a massive difference to me - was using XB downstairs for years with little issue.
    Of course, YMMV.

  • jean claude reuille on 14/04/2022 - 11:44
    +1

    Also I recommend using same SSID all around to avoid disconnections while moving around the house.

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