I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

Stevo's excellent selling

Credit where credit's due. I was already part way through ditching Virgin until I got these. I was convinced it was a service to the house issue. Not had one hiccup WFH or turned off WiFi on my phone since.

Righto. Pay day this week.

How much were they selling for at Argos when everyone was talking about them? Can’t seem to find the link now

£70, now £90

£70 on ebuyer

https://www.ebuyer.com/877113-tp-link-ac1200-deco-whole-home-mesh-wi-fi-system-2-pack-deco-m4-2-pack-

Has anyone tried the Ubiquiti Router X and the Security Gateway? Is there much difference in how the two operate?

Got to a bit of a deadend, having moved into a new build. There’s no phone line, Virgin don’t cover the area for fibre and openreach have had us waiting for a month now, just to tell us they can’t do fibre, and it’ll be another month minimum to get cable. We weren’t able to check this before moving in as the address wasn’t actually registered with Royal Mail. Dongle doesn’t pick up enough speed for my partner to WFH. It’s only a short term let, do we have grounds to give notice early? Guess a good learning experience in the longterm, but right now she can’t work :/

Have you tried all networks for 4g broadband? We have almost zero vodafone and o2 here but outstanding EE and mediocre Three. Most networks will send you a free SIM that you can load with some payg credit to try...

When I connect a virgin superhub in modem mode to a USG do I need a straight through cable or a crossover?

I'd be utterly amazed if anything made in the last decade doesn't have auto MDI-X. You should be fine with either.

Do watch out for the cables some providers ship (eg Zyxel) which only have two pairs in the cable so are fine for 100M but not 1G.

Bog standard network cable.

I am trying this

Virgin superhub 3 (in modem mode) bottom ethernet port > USG WAN1
USG LAN1 > Unifi switch 8 port 1
Pi running Unifi controller > Unifi switch 8 port 1
AP PoE > Unifi switch 8 port 5

I can see everything on the controller, but get no internet connection from the hub to the USG

I get internet by connecting RPi to hub directly and disconnecting the USG

I've moved the LAN Gateway IP/Subnet from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.99.1 and I've attached some screenshots of my settings in the likely case I am doing something stupid

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Can't see any details of what WAN address the Unifi router is getting... presumably it's getting an external one and is able to see the modem (i.e. its gateway)

I have a Virgin hub as a router, and a Netgear R7000 hanging off it doing the rest. I don't have a switch connected currently (moved house, cables need to be run) but did previously and it worked fine.

Virgin Router 86.x.x.1 <-> Netgear WAN 86.x.x.29

Netgear LAN 192.168.0.1 <-> Switch/Wireless <-> Clients 192.168.0.10-99

no crossover cables, all just the nearest available length of Cat5/Cat6

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Have you tried a proper LTE router with directional external antenna?

Have you tried connecting something directly to the USG to see if the problem is with the swtiches or AP?

Can you see the Virgin modem (should be at http://192.168.100.1/ ) when you're connected to the USG? That should at least show whether it's the internet connection not working o it's not even seeing the modem.

On my Unifi controller, the DHCP Name Server is set to auto, and my router (an Edgemax - which I'm assuming does much the same as the USG, bar the security stuff) deals with DHCP and DNS

Have you set up DNS forwarding on your router / USG?

Thanks both, I'll give these both a try this evening.

I've had a read of the thread but my sleep deprived brain can't figure out exactly what's best to extend my BT broadband so I get good signal the back bedroom and garden.

On my last deal I got the BT halo mesh discs thrown in but they don't really work. I've seen unifi ap mentioned, the look just like the BT halo discs but are they actually good? Do I just need to buy one and use with the BT router or do I need to buy a whole unifi ecosystem?

I'm sure I could figure it out but I'm very tired and looking to London's friendliest forum to just tell me what to buy.

If at all possible run cable (Cat6) from where your router is to the back bedroom. Then buy a cheap POE switch and a couple of matching access points and connect it all up. That way your clients will connect to the nearest access point and not use the limited WiFi spectrum for backhaul. You can keep adding access points forever this way and cover any size house/garden. If you are feeling really fancy you can buy a waterproof outdoor access point and have brilliant signal in the garden.

If you can't run cable then you need some kind of mesh system which are a bit variable and need the access points to be close enough together to see each other so you perhaps need more. They should all match as I wouldn't trust them to interoperate.

Turn off the WiFi in your router.

Unifi needs a controller, I have them myself but if you aren't comfortable installing packages on Linux I wouldn't recommend them. The TP-Link Deco range seem popular here.

TP-Link Deco extenders worked a charm in my Mum and Dad's house. They even managed to get the setup without my help. This is a huge plus point in my book.

If you can't run cable, get the TP Link kit.

I could run a cable (and would be best in the long run but would be a bit of a ball ache) just need to figure out the best way.

@mashton if I choose the lazy way I'll give the tp link a try.

Cheers.

I've found the details of the WAN address, 0.0.0.0. Which probably means not getting anything?

I can remove the usg and connect the pi through the switch to the modem and see the outside world, which I presume means it's something to do with the usg configuration?

I can't see the modem when I'm connected to the usg

I've tried setting it to auto and adding in the virgin dns settings, but got no further.

194.168.4.100 and 194.168.8.100.

I've just finished getting everything back to factory and fresh install of the controller. Went through the configuration and I'm in the exact same place as before. Left it for a couple of hours and no difference.
Ps thanks for the replies so far.