I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

I don't know about connecting the 2nd Deco by ethernet

I read a review that said using Ethernet between the decos gave much better speeds away from the main unit.

That would make sense. WiFi is a half duplex shared space, a cable gives you full duplex dedicated bandwidth. Plug as much as possible in with cables and connect as many APs together with cables too. Keep WiFi for things that actually move about.

Good to know. Getting really good speeds (for what I need) off WiFi only. Planning to just add additional decos as needed in the new house as it's so easy to do. If that fails I'll look more into cabling.

Looks like £60 per additional unit but the two packs are seemingly on offer in a few places for £70

When I was using the Virgin hub as a router it needed restarting occasionally. Doesn't seem to be the case using it as a modem.

Have you got a link for that?

Well, that was all very easy. I had to wait until this evening for the switch to be delivered, but only took about 20 mins to get the Decos set, the smart stuff talking to the new wireless network and the wired bits sorted.

A walk around the house with the WiFi Sweetspot app and coverage is bang on everywhere. Very pleased.

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/9180581

Ha, I use the Unifi/Ubiquiti stuff at home and setup doesn't sound like that.

Likewise... UniFi all the things and definitely took several hours and a bit of frustration to get it all right.

I have absolutely no clue when it comes to networking, so this was definitely the way to go for me.

Something else I think is worth mentioning is how good the Deco app is. I’m only just starting to play with it, but the UI is clear and logical and it allows me to monitor every device on the network, prioritise devices, set speed limits, etc. Also, with two teenagers in the house I can very easily set time limits and schedules for their Wi-Fi access. They’re going to hate me!

Also, with two teenagers in the house I can very easily set time limits and schedules for their Wi-Fi access

Do you pay their mobile phone bills?

All they'll do is start tethering and will exceed their bandwidth. You're going to hate them

Do you pay their mobile phone bills?

I do, but they can’t exceed their data allowance. Once it’s used up, it’s used up.

Easier to just remove phones and tablets and shit from bedrooms at night, no?

You can still save a lot of porn for offline use...

On the upside I recently moved house and, even though I don't have internet installed yet, it took about 5 minutes to plug all the stuff back in and get control of my Hue lights and Plex running and so on.

Also the Argos price for the Deco 4 twin pack makes it an appealing choice. I'd started pricing up the Unifi AP's and also other routers and it racks up quite quickly. Not to mention planning cabling.

We're in a 1950s semi so I'd expect two to be sufficient.

The only things I was hesitant on were being able to set up a VPN and my Pi-hole on them.

From a quick peak in the box they're smaller than I expected - not small, small, just noticed some online comments about their size. Just waiting for tomorrow evening to set up so I have a full clear day after to mitigate wrath and resolve any fuckups before my OH's next work day.

I tried nextdns and chucked pihole. One less thing to worry about and fiddle with.

Something else on my TDL. Started, but my laptop said no and that's as far as I got. Same goes for my VPN.

Currently my pi-hole is just lighting up the back of the TV and ad blocking ads to itself, my old phones and my personal laptop I haven't opened since lockdown.

Can you set nextdns at a router level for all devices on a network or do you need to set it up via an app etc per device?

You can do it router level no problem. However you won't be able to get per device stats on the nextdns web site unless you make a small tweak to each device to allow the service to idenfity the device. Easy to do for windows, android, ios and linux. Haven't bothered for any of my other devices. If you can't be arsed for device level stats, just enable on your router.

I have it set on my Edge Router X for all devices on my network. Very straightforward to do.

On my phone at least you don't need an app to set it up, you can just designate the private DNS in the settings. This is probably also true for other devices but I haven't bothered looking into it.

I do both :)

I do it on the router (for the total security), and I do it on per device where available (for granular stats and easier debugging).

I'm not too precious about per device though... because I have peace of mind from the router doing the work.

The main thing I have learned since starting to use nextdns and previously pihole is how many fucking times each day Philips Hue and my Samsung telly call home. Hundreds if not thousands of times per day. Or at least they did.

Netflix apps and their 30,000 DNS queries per day!

Had another crack at NextDNS.

Android phone is a piece of cake. Although Business Insider on Chrome and Brave won't let me reject the cookie settings. But Forbes and the Daily Mail seem clean.

On my W10 laptop though when I try to change the browser settings on Chrome:

Google Chrome

1. Go to Settings.
   
2. In the Privacy and security section, click on Security.
   
3. In the Advanced section, enable Use secure DNS.
   
4. Select With: Custom, then enter https://dns.nextdns.io/somethingikdifishudhide
   

But when I get to step 3 I get Chrome telling me that:

This setting is disabled on managed browsers

...although my browser doesn't say it's managed.

Any ideas?