Our Ibiquiti Unifi Dream Machine Pro + U6-LR access points work a treat with an operating range of what feels like about 10 miles (probably 60 metres in reality) Video calls on an iMac and Tidal Hifi streaming to a Muso Qb seem to be totally reliable, every time.
We’ve also just bought BT’s Whole Home Wi-Fi to install this weekend in our daughter’s new home. It comes very well recommended and represents good value too.
Hope this helps, BF
Hi Bluesfan
Please let us know how BT Whole Home goes as it seems to get good recommendations and looks reasonably easy to install
Bob
Will do Bob.
I’m setting it up at our house on Friday, so that our daughter can demo it before we move it to her new home.
Best, BF
Be very careful with Google WI-FI - great solution - but not compatible at all with SKY Broadband (for example) as it needs a router than can be a bridge only. Neither BT nor SKY allow that, so you get all sorts of IP confusion. We had 1.5 years of pain with it.
We changed to BT Broadband and BT Mesh - not had a single issue since.
SQ - can’t comment but thought I’d mention the compatibility question.
This is certainly an issue to be wary of, and it has been raised as a connectivity here on a number of occasions. Certainly worth trialling before you commit.
(Personally I wouldn’t want a Google device controlling my LAN in any circumstances, given that they are such aggressive harvesters of personal data and seem to want to spread their tentacles around every bit of your digital identity they can find, but that’s another matter.)
I think you mean a DSL / Fibre router than can act as modem only… and then your router connects to your modem. You should only have one active router… which was probably your issue previously as you you were trying using to use two routers which were not designed to work together.
BT SH2 routers can connect to modems for FTTP, but they need to be BT modems for FTTP, not general purpose modems, however you can buy modems to use on the BT DSL network to use with third part routers… just be mindful they might not provide optimum DSL sync performance.
I think you have done the best thing and taken a combined BT DSL modem and router to use on the BT network… in my experience this path provides a really good and reliable performance, especially the BT SH2.
True this. I use a different search engine (than Google) altogether and do not use the Nest product(s) for any more than as mesh satellites. These days trying to avoid having your personal data harvested or monitored in some way by Big Tech and the gov is fruitless, but I try anyway for some illogical reason.
Regardless, in the context of the thread, it has been absolutely reliable (in the US, that is) for me where others have been utterly hopeless or frustrating at best.
Yes - you’re right - that’s what I meant. I’ve clearly been successful in putting the whole incident behind me!
Ive had very good wifi from my Google/Nest home system. The first time here in the new home I had a couple of pucks set up I tried the speedtest and was seeing 850 M over wifi from my ‘gigabit’ service.
Someone a while ago wrote that you get better wifi throughput when using one of the Google/Nest “routers” as a remote access point vs their less-expensive access point device.
I have ethernet in the walls everywhere I need it and, once they are set up, I connect the units to the wired network. Where I need more connections I use a little Netgear 5-port unmanaged gigabit switch. Except at my 500 system where I have an Ansuz switch.
All I would say is for mesh systems to work their best then need to be installed on a backbone of ethernet.
One lesson learned here, our cable comes in at one end of the house. The house is a long L shape, TV and stereo gear as far as you can be from the main router. Our mesh systems liked to pair every child node with the main parent node. Our furthest node (of three) kept losing its connection to the middle node, pairing with the parent. It then kept losing connection to the parent as the signal was borderline. The furthest node wouldn’t then reconnect to the middle node. They like to connect in a star pattern, cf. linear, and our Linksys nodes weren’t configurable otherwise, no way to force a particular pairing order.
In the end I had to wire the nodes together. Been rock steady since then.
I’d had literally hundreds of dropouts/problems over the years with my n272 (couldn’t use ethernet for various reasons) . Since I’ve used BT smart Hub 2 with black discs, with the N272 cabled into one of the discs , it’s been solid as a rock. Best bang for buck upgrade I’ve ever made.
Just installed BT Whole Home WiFi (3 discs) in a 3 story house which has a Virgin Media broadband router.
Virgin Media broadband we find to be fine once it’s up & running but they are a nightmare if you have to call them for support about anything.
By way of contrast, the BT Whole Home WiFi was completely straight forward, quick, easy and trouble free to install and run. The major care point was to install the app before connecting any of the WiFi discs. Installing the app first was very hard for semi-competent men to do, as we like to install as much as we can first before bothering to read any manuals…
The BT Whole Home WiFi was much easier to install & configure and less expensive than the Ubiquiti UniFi MESH that we use at our home. It was a pleasant surprise.
Best regards, BF
Thanks BF for the update and IT sounds an excellent way to improve wifi. Did you go for the Standard or Premium Whole Home version? I have an average sized U.K. home and no kids gaming or downloading big files so I am wondering if I need the Premium or whether the Standard version will be sufficient
Bob
We have gone for standard, not premium or mini.
Thanks again that will probably be the one for me as I don’t think we need the Premium version just want reliable wifi
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