Building a network for my house/workshops

I am looking to replace the system that comes with rogers to something a little more reliable.

I am looking at the following.

https://www.tp-link.com/ca/home-networking/wifi-router/archer-c60/

This for the main router.

https://www.tp-link.com/ca/home-networking/range-extender/re450/

And three of these to extend the wifi signal throughout the rest of my home. I also plan on putting another c60 down in my lower workshop running of a range extender in my upper shop.

Thoughts on this setup? I do not game, etc. Just want fast reliable wireless throughout my property.

 

Always save $ on cable modems.

Never go with a combined unit as technology changes and things improve at different paces.

For the Cable side I would go with a MB8600 / 4 ports / 3 year warranty / can also LAG the ports for up to 2gbps or load balancing if needed

For the WIFI side of things... the LAG option won't really work unless you go with something like the higher end $300+ routers that give you the ability to bundle 2 ports together on the WAN side.

If you're not bundling ports but want decent performance the Netgear R7800 X4S puts out a pretty good signal.

If you have a spare PC laying around and want to build your own then you can go the hostapd route on linux and grab a QNAP AC-2600 card that will allow you to make your own AP and give you more control of your network as well since you can configure the PC with the card in it to your liking from access permissions to adding on a firewall to secure things moreso than your off the shelf routers.

The biggest factor is going to be your house construction though. If it's more industrial in composition it's going to have signal issues w/o a ton of AP's being added in a mesh system. If it's a standard wood/drywall it won't be as bad. Also, it depends on what's around you for signals as well. If you're in a dense area there will be a ton of signals competing for your connection air space. Download an app for looking at channel quality onto your phone like WIFI Analyzer and walk around the house to check what's active for that area.

 

OK. I have a well built 2 story house with fully constructed basement. Furnished heated sq ft is 6000. I am on a 400x1000ft block of land with four neighbours on the same sized block of land. So there is plenty of separation between homes. My garage network is 150 ft behind my home and it takes signal wirelessly and pumps it to my workshop via gel filled cat 5 500 ft behind the garage. Right now I am getting my full speeds plugged into the cable modem, things go south quickly once on wireless. I am using the Rogers ignite cable modem and included wireless wifi. I am going to bridge the modem and use a separate router for wifi. I am now deciding on what one. Once I get that I can test and see how much extra hardware I need.

 

You might want to give some thought to putting your whole network on a VPN (with protected DNS, of course). Flashrouters does this, but I am sure there are other options.

 

I do this with my multi purpose PC that handles VPN/router/wifi/dvr/media/FW. Keeps things streamlined and with wireguard it's speedy. I can hit 97% of the gig speeds over the WG connection vs older OVPN methods.


As to the spaces / layout...
If available using Ethernet to connect the buildings to AP bridges is ideal to not lose speeds but extend coverage. Bridging the modem shouldn't be an issue and more ideal than using it for WIFI.... If you're renting it though save yourself some money and get a MB8600 for ~$150 instead of paying 10-15/mo for the rental.

If you don't want to or can't run Ethernet to the other property locations due to distance / costs then Ubiquity comes to mind. I was looking into them for some personal stuff and well as potentially for putting together a communal WIFI system in a building. They have been used in both consumer / business environments with good performance. It might be a bit pricey though depending on budget but, you can definitely get to where you want to be for coverage and speed with a mesh system of AP's controlled by one of their switches you would end up connecting to the modem. If you want to secure things a bit more then I would swap the switch for the EdgeRouter series. The ER series also let you bundle WAN ports if you decide to exceed 1gbps at some point down the road as well. It looks like they have a nanoHD now that would be a good option as well.

Pairing an ER + AP AC Pro will give you some amazing wifi if you place it in the right spot.. there are also some Beam units that can shoot the signal across long distances vs Ethernet being run. The problem comes down to how much to spend for the convenience. There's a solution for every budget though.

 

Ok, LOTS of information here. I am looking for a mesh internet routing system that will provide at least 500mbps speed on 2.4 ghz and 5ghz. What ever networking equipment I need to acheive this is what I want to buy. Meaning at each "pod" I want 500mbps that I get at my main modem. what are some options?

 

Really any brand should work but Google seems to be relatively good for this purpose.
https://store.google.com/us/product/nest_wifi_specs

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-wi-fi-mesh-network-systems

I tend to go more for off brands other than say Netgear / D-Link / Linksys and so on. Prices tend to be better and performance is sometimes amped up to compete with the better marketed vendors. TP-Link / Trendnet are just as good as their counterparts for 1/3 of the cost.

Ideally look for a system with add on pods that aren't going to cost you as much as the start system does to expand coverage if needed. Any AC technology should suffice for 500mbps but if there's not much of a difference in price opting for the AX would be an option to consider for future proofing.

Of course the pro option is to run a point-to-point antenna between the buildings and attach a pod on the other end but that might be a budget concern and be affected by inclement weather such as a satellite would be if something comes into the line of sight.

 

I have a gel filled cat 5 going down to my shop from my garage so that's fine. The main thing right now is getting a mesh system for my home. Tp link is the brand I am looking at mainly. The x60 system. I am wondering do the pods put net out through the ports on the back to feed my shop, and can I put more than three pods on the system?

 

The issue I see is that most of the pod solutions are designed to have a wifi backhaul and not offer a hardline input to connect them to the main network like an AP would. So, if you have a hardline in place already then avoiding s mesh system and just adding an AP to the end of the cable would work better.

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-wap

TP has a couple of options but they're not going to get a good speed as they use older G/N signaling - https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/access-point/

On the list of course is the Ubiquiti but also some others. They should all preform fairly well but make sure to look through the details for speeds

For instance this other TP model does AC and speeds over 500mbps

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Adding pods shouldn't be much of an issue as long as they can communicate back to the base station wirelessly.... so, the shop wouldn't be able to hit those distances with the pods most likely. In the house though if you saturate the house with 2-4 pods they should work just fine depending on placement. The ports on the pods are for output to devices being attached to them.

The pods act more like a wireless bridge as mentioned on the AP link above. They're a bit limited in what they can do but they get the job done for a lower cost than deploying AP's around the house which requires cabling to each deployment. (adds up quickly unless you're doing it yourself)

 

OK. The shop is fed by a wireless extender in my garage. It's essentialy another wireless router that feeds from my main wireless. Wirelessly. Ha ha.

 

Internet <> Router <> Pod Base + pod + pod + pod + pod
<> Ethernet to garage (length of this will determine throughput as well) <> AP (should cover shop + garage)

I did find a nice AP though that is AX and reasonably priced NWA210AX - ($269) this one supports up to 2.5.gbps ethernet while the NWA110AX supports 1gbps ethernet for cheaper.($150)..... Standalone operability is nice to have when you don't want to deal with recurring license fees as you would in an enterprise environment.

 

Cool. Thanks. I have put an order in to Bell Canada for their new Gigabit fibe service. I am sick of this Rogers garbage ignite system. 5-10 times a day I lose service. The rest of the time I am getting slow junky speeds from it. Time to move on. I have 2 of 3 new emails set up. I just have to setup my son's new email on his computer now. Then we are a freakin gone from the 7 months of hell with rogers!

 

Another question, Using the bell wifi system can I just run extenders off of that signal around the house, and still get fast speeds?

I am looking at this one.
https://www.tp-link.com/ca/home-networking/range-extender/re650/

Also, can I plug a hardwire into this and have it transmit my wifi via that cable? Say to feed another router elsewhere?

 

If you want ultimate speeds and coverage it's better to use an AP or repurpose old routers as AP's to extend a signal since "extenders" cut your speed in 1/2 to communicate between each other unless you find a 3-band that uses the 3rd band as a backhaul for data.

The ports on extenders typically act as an additional LAN port for end devices. So, let's say your "Modem" w/ wifi is AC your highest bandwidth typically is 866.7mbps unless it's rated higher. Effectively you get knocked down to 433mbps by using an extender to add more coverage. If you used an AP you maintain the 866mbps connectivity throughout the house.

The RE650 appears to work a bit differently as it provides it's own AP if you plug in the Ethernet to the main router otherwise you would end up losing speed.

It looks like those are selling for ~$120/ea

$80 - NWA1123-ACv2
$82 - MikroTik wAP
$168 - EWS360AP
(not an exhaustive list)

$80 - 4-port POE injector

These might provide better coverage as they're more enterprise oriented. The issue with them tends to be whether or not you have POE or not. If you opt to not splurge for POE on either a switch or injector you can typically add a AC adapter to the mix for about $10 to power them. Most say mount them on a ceiling but you can put them anywhere you want whether a shelf somewhere or mount them on a wall.

You want to look at the antenna setup as they're listed as 2x2 3x3 4x4 or some extreme setups go to 8x8. You see better coverage / speeds with more antennae but some are able to put out more mw than others.

When you step it up to a decent AP you need less of them for good coverage vs the consumer options and they last longer.

It all kind of depends on planning your overhaul for future expansion / upgrades. You could go a bit more high end in the spots you use devices the most often and then throw in the extenders in lesser used areas. You could do high end everywhere to simplify roaming within the house. You could use the extender only out in the garage / workshop and upgrade the main house.

I would aim for the best bang for the buck but at the same time I tend to push the limits with the WAN side at 1gbps but, if you're running a NAS then the internal speeds make a difference more so than the outside. If you're streaming internal media from a nas/server good link speed / coverage helps for a smooth experience.

 

I had an alert pop from Amazon for a POE switch for $59.... so, you could go that route over a POE injector for cheaper as well. The only issue with some of these are that say you get a 5-8 port switch for the AP's but the switch only provides 65W of power that limits you to 2-3 AP's depending on the power draw needed for the AP's to use. If it's insufficient the AP's tend to reboot due to lack of sufficient power.

 

Well, Bell's fibre optic system is now installed into my home. at the gate, I am getting 950 up / down speeds. I am using speedtest and it's stating around 180 down and 400 plus up. That reading is weird as my pages and content load instantly where as on rogers, it was sluggish and slow. On my roku using rogers wireless show's would be pixelated for the first minute or so, now, it's instant high def with no lag at all. Same goes for my websites. It's just so much faster.

 

180/400 seems a bit odd as they normally would be reversed.

I would test it connected with a cable directly where it comes in before even hitting your router. Then I would test through the router and compare the results to see if the router is a bottleneck.

In the past I've had routers w/ gig ports only test out at 250mbps and replacing / bypassing them proved the issue was in the router.

If it's time for a new router I have one for sale on ebay right now....

 

Test wired and let us know if you get similar uneven results. A few reasons I can think of why this can happen, I’m sure others can think of more or better ones:

Router: Cut Through Forwarding (CTF) / Packet Acceleration may be disabled due to things like traffic stats, QoS and in some cases even PPPoE being used on some older models especially on Broadcom based ones. Newer models I think have CTF active even with those features active. With CTF disabled the like of the Netgear R7000, Asus AC86U, AC3100U etc can have peak speeds drop to like the 300-500 range on the WAN side.

ISP: I know CenturyLink here in the states has issues like this in Fiber when too many people on the same node at using large amounts of downlink bandwidth and you can end up with uploads being much faster than downloads.

Other: Wireless AP / Client compatibility or driver issues, and other causes I’m sure others can list.

If it’s consistent even in wired tests it may be ISP fiber node being saturated or a hardware acceleration issue router side. Also test with QoS off if currently enabled just to rule it out.

 

I am going to contact bell this week once I get my account all setup on their website. Just to ask some setup questions regarding it. I was getting similar speeds on rogers, but it was SOOOOOOO much slower. Everything now is instant.