After our original 24 month plan expires in August, my ISP wants to charge me 2.99€ a month on a 24 month contract to continue renting their AirTies 4930 range extenders. That's obviously a bad joke, so instead I'll buy a range extender for less, and own it.
But, what do I need?
The fibre line comes in at the very far end of the apartment, but there is a cat 5e running under the floor to the office at the other end of the apartment. I think what I want to do is put an extender on the ethernet cable and also have the cable pass through to my desktop which doesn't have a WiFi card. Does that make sense? What product does that look like? There are too many specs and choices for me to easily follow
I've no experience with that exact one but I have a few older (5+ years) TP Link access points that are going strong.
Do you know if it extends an existing WiFi network, or would I have two networks in the house? I've had that situation before, and if you walked from one end of the house to the other, your game would disconnect/video buffer/etc.
A_morti wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:44 am
Do you know if it extends an existing WiFi network, or would I have two networks in the house? I've had that situation before, and if you walked from one end of the house to the other, your game would disconnect/video buffer/etc.
Ah, didn't read the question properly!
You'll be wanting a range extender that supports Mesh, but I have no experience with them at all, sorry.
I have a similar setup (new fibre box 'installed in the wrong place' at the far end of the house) and I have an ethernet cable from that to the other far end (where my office is) and an old router as a slave with it's own wifi broadcasting. But that's just using what I've got, I'm not bothered about the slight reduced speed at my office as I dont really need it. If I could be bothered I'd buy a mesh system and I probably will do at some point, just because.
We've got a cheap Tenda mesh system as our house covers a fair few sq. ft and gets a shit wi-fi signal, however as the entire house is Cat5'd I plug them in and they act as AP's so we get interrupted signal around the house and half way down the garden.
v8-powered wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 2:34 pm
We've got a cheap Tenda mesh system as our house covers a fair few sq. ft and gets a shit wi-fi signal, however as the entire house is Cat5'd I plug them in and they act as AP's so we get interrupted signal around the house and half way down the garden.
I bought a ton of Tenda boxes on the recommendation of a mate. Were sort of OK for a few months but increasingly were nothing but trouble. Never got to the bottom of it, but essentially they'd just crash constantly. Endless marital/kid friction at home.
Finally bit the bullet and bought a TP Link setup and been fine so far.
I'm sure it's all cheap Chinese crap, but the more expensive cheap Chinese crap seems better than than the really cheap cheap Chinese crap.
v8-powered wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 2:34 pm
We've got a cheap Tenda mesh system as our house covers a fair few sq. ft and gets a shit wi-fi signal, however as the entire house is Cat5'd I plug them in and they act as AP's so we get interrupted signal around the house and half way down the garden.
I bought a ton of Tenda boxes on the recommendation of a mate. Were sort of OK for a few months but increasingly were nothing but trouble. Never got to the bottom of it, but essentially they'd just crash constantly. Endless marital/kid friction at home.
Finally bit the bullet and bought a TP Link setup and been fine so far.
I'm sure it's all cheap Chinese crap, but the more expensive cheap Chinese crap seems better than than the really cheap cheap Chinese crap.
Yeah we had a few issues initially - tweaked a few settings and been pretty stable since (about 3 years or so). Obviously they aren't cutting edge tech but do a good enough job....
v8-powered wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:08 pm
Yeah we had a few issues initially - tweaked a few settings and been pretty stable since (about 3 years or so). Obviously they aren't cutting edge tech but do a good enough job....
I tried every combination of options going and it never worked properly. Entirely possible it was just one of the boxes causing grief, but in the end it seemed that at least two would go wrong.
v8-powered wrote: ↑Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:08 pm
Yeah we had a few issues initially - tweaked a few settings and been pretty stable since (about 3 years or so). Obviously they aren't cutting edge tech but do a good enough job....
I tried every combination of options going and it never worked properly. Entirely possible it was just one of the boxes causing grief, but in the end it seemed that at least two would go wrong.
From memory I had to disable the option that limited number of connections though each AP and ensure that the maintenance reboot was actioned every night. We occasionally get one of the AP's play up got a switch off and back on resets it but that's only once in every few weeks. Perhaps also that we use them as AP's and not really as a mesh may also help?
