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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Poll: How Do You Make Your Wi-Fi Go Faster?

How many times have you complained (or your wife, significant other, kids) that the Internet is too slow. After doing all the typical thinks (clear your cache!), you finally think it's with your IP. And, of course, you call them, and they say it's just fine.

 

Poll Question: How do you typically make your home Wi-Fi go faster? Click below or leave a comment.

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  • Excellent advice from all. I have tried various solutions over the years but I am satisfied to have finally settled in 2020 on the optimum blend of performance and price:

     

    I use 3 mesh wifi routers (DecoM5 ) with ETHERNET backhaul. This gives me software "encouraged" user device roaming and channel selection, with a single SSID on a single 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio channel - almost like one giant distributed-multi-room-antenned wireless router. The ethernet backhaul means no precious radio spectrum is used for unit to unit communication, otherwise one must spend more for a mesh unit with dedicated wireless backhaul channel (like the TP-Link M9).

     

    Now I get >80% of my max 500Mbit /s download speed everywhere in my Victorian 60cm stone walled building. I ran the ethernet cables outside the house and in the attic space = no re-decoration.

     

    The mesh software is key to making user devices "behave" and pick correct band and transmitter. Even on my few-years-old iPhone 6s I can walk around and see my base station mac address change as I go, ensuring optimum connection. And TP-Link Deco M5 is only UK £150 for 3 units in Amazon UK  right now.

     

    Note that mesh nodes all share a single wireless channel, whereas separate non-mesh routers could be set to different wireless channels, for a larger "theoretical" total house capacity. I tried that, but without mesh management software, moving user devices often stay too long associated with the first base they register with, even when a better base station is near.

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  • Excellent advice from all. I have tried various solutions over the years but I am satisfied to have finally settled in 2020 on the optimum blend of performance and price:

     

    I use 3 mesh wifi routers (DecoM5 ) with ETHERNET backhaul. This gives me software "encouraged" user device roaming and channel selection, with a single SSID on a single 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio channel - almost like one giant distributed-multi-room-antenned wireless router. The ethernet backhaul means no precious radio spectrum is used for unit to unit communication, otherwise one must spend more for a mesh unit with dedicated wireless backhaul channel (like the TP-Link M9).

     

    Now I get >80% of my max 500Mbit /s download speed everywhere in my Victorian 60cm stone walled building. I ran the ethernet cables outside the house and in the attic space = no re-decoration.

     

    The mesh software is key to making user devices "behave" and pick correct band and transmitter. Even on my few-years-old iPhone 6s I can walk around and see my base station mac address change as I go, ensuring optimum connection. And TP-Link Deco M5 is only UK £150 for 3 units in Amazon UK  right now.

     

    Note that mesh nodes all share a single wireless channel, whereas separate non-mesh routers could be set to different wireless channels, for a larger "theoretical" total house capacity. I tried that, but without mesh management software, moving user devices often stay too long associated with the first base they register with, even when a better base station is near.

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