WiFi Routers - is it worth upgrading?

rinks wrote:

rinks wrote:I reckon I’ll be switching to a mesh setup soon. I’ve been using a power line extender for the last few years, which is great speed-wise, but the connection drops all the time, just long enough for things to disconnect. It’s been frustrating, but now I’m permanently working from home it’s going to cause real issues.

I’m guessing it’s interference somewhere along the electrical circuit. I’ve just set up connection monitoring - one on the extender and one directly on the modem. If this proves it’s the extender that’s causing the drop-outs, I’ll invest in mesh.

Well that was a pretty conclusive test. Zero disconnects at the modem over 24 hours. Across the extender - 30 disconnects. Time to bin this power line kit and get a mesh set-up.

Just a possible suggestion for anyone in this situation that can't afford to go mesh at the moment- I had a similar problem with the powerline adaptors dropping out all the time, and so I set up a automated ping from my PC at the router end to the other end of the power line to an old router I put down there to use as a hub.

ping -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of my downstairs router)

Every second it sent a ping which would seem to 'keep alive' the link. I put this in a batch file which is part of my PC start up.
I went from multiple dropouts per day to maybe one per fortnight.

A little while back I changed to a wifi extender that had an ethernet port on the bottom of it so it uses wifi rather than the powerline adaptors, as if it went wrong when I was out, my non-tech partner couldn't reset it (to be fair my upstairs studio has a ridiculous amount of cables, wires and adaptors doing various things).

So far it seems ok, I think we had one dropout in a week but it recovered itself, which the powerlines didn't seem to do for me.

Lime wrote:

rinks wrote:

rinks wrote:I reckon I’ll be switching to a mesh setup soon. I’ve been using a power line extender for the last few years, which is great speed-wise, but the connection drops all the time, just long enough for things to disconnect. It’s been frustrating, but now I’m permanently working from home it’s going to cause real issues.

I’m guessing it’s interference somewhere along the electrical circuit. I’ve just set up connection monitoring - one on the extender and one directly on the modem. If this proves it’s the extender that’s causing the drop-outs, I’ll invest in mesh.

Well that was a pretty conclusive test. Zero disconnects at the modem over 24 hours. Across the extender - 30 disconnects. Time to bin this power line kit and get a mesh set-up.

Just a possible suggestion for anyone in this situation that can't afford to go mesh at the moment- I had a similar problem with the powerline adaptors dropping out all the time, and so I set up a automated ping from my PC at the router end to the other end of the power line to an old router I put down there to use as a hub.

ping -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of my downstairs router)

Every second it sent a ping which would seem to 'keep alive' the link. I put this in a batch file which is part of my PC start up.
I went from multiple dropouts per day to maybe one per fortnight.

A little while back I changed to a wifi extender that had an ethernet port on the bottom of it so it uses wifi rather than the powerline adaptors, as if it went wrong when I was out, my non-tech partner couldn't reset it (to be fair my upstairs studio has a ridiculous amount of cables, wires and adaptors doing various things).

So far it seems ok, I think we had one dropout in a week but it recovered itself, which the powerlines didn't seem to do for me.

That’s some really good advice. Though I don’t want to keep a PC running for the pings (and I’m kind of set on getting mesh now). Something to consider, though.

You won't be making a meshtake.

OK, I need a little advice/confirmation, please.

My current setup is:
Openreach fibre modem > Plusnet WiFi router > TPLink power line kit

Issues with switching to mesh:
The Openreach modem isn’t configurable, and the PPPoE details have to be entered into the Plusnet router.
The Plusnet router can’t be set to bridge mode, so if I replace the power line kit with a mesh router, I’ll have double NAT, which I believe is undesirable.

Ideally I’d like to replace the above setup with a nice and simple:
Openreach fibre modem > Mesh

But some mesh kits (including Eero) don’t support PPPoE.

I’m tempted to go all-in and future-proof myself with the Asus kit like Jiggles has, but it’s overkill - I’m on a 76Mb connection (realistically more like 50), and there’s no likelihood of better being available for several years.

So I’m thinking of going for the Deco S4. It’s PPPoE compatible, fast enough, and very reasonably priced. But is it too cheap? Am I overlooking something?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-Deco-S ... B0851D6MXY

EDIT: Getting cold feet on that one. Some reviews say it doesn’t work as a proper mesh, with everything connecting to the base - pointless.

Thinking about these tri-band ones now:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N5M9NNB/ref=emc_b_5_t

EDIT2: Ordered. I dithered on Black Friday and missed the ones I wanted. Don’t want that to happen again.

rinks wrote:OK, I need a little advice/confirmation, please.

My current setup is:
Openreach fibre modem > Plusnet WiFi router > TPLink power line kit

Issues with switching to mesh:
The Openreach modem isn’t configurable, and the PPPoE details have to be entered into the Plusnet router.
The Plusnet router can’t be set to bridge mode, so if I replace the power line kit with a mesh router, I’ll have double NAT, which I believe is undesirable.

Ideally I’d like to replace the above setup with a nice and simple:
Openreach fibre modem > Mesh

But some mesh kits (including Eero) don’t support PPPoE.

I’m tempted to go all-in and future-proof myself with the Asus kit like Jiggles has, but it’s overkill - I’m on a 76Mb connection (realistically more like 50), and there’s no likelihood of better being available for several years.

So I’m thinking of going for the Deco S4. It’s PPPoE compatible, fast enough, and very reasonably priced. But is it too cheap? Am I overlooking something?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-Deco-S ... B0851D6MXY

Eero will setup a double NAT for you, you plu it into your Plusnet router and then connect everything to eero.

I have

BT HUB > EERO.

the eero has a LAN port too so you can LAN stuff too, the by hug does the web and only eero is connect, everything connects to eero and it does DNS and DHCP inside, it works out it needs to do it at setup and just gets on with it no input from you like.

But I thought double NAT was best avoided? Isn’t it better to take the Plusnet router out of the setup altogether, and have the mesh kit set up the PPPoE?

For the best possible performance and least potential headaches/points of failure, yes, you’ll want to be as close to the WAN as possible. Ubisoft’s site, for example, specifically calls out double NAT as a likely reason for connectivity issues when playing games online.

The ones you ordered will do the job

Nice one, cheers.

The plusnet modem routers are rubbish, it lags and drops out all the time.

I installed this yesterday to replace the rubbish plusnet modem at my parents home. I have the previous model at my own place too to replace the plusnet junk
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9189063 ... nk:16:33:1

This new one is pretty good, it automatically connects devices between 2.4ghz and 5ghz without me having to choose. The range is better as I am getting full 70mb download speeds at the back of the house. We use to have a netgear wifi extender but I sold that ebay now as don't need it with this.
But besides improvement in wifi signals the built-in VDSL modem I believe is much better resulting in a better internet connection as it is this that communicates with the Openreach green cabinet outside. I was getting like maybe an extra 8mb/s download speed with this.