I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

Can anyone recommend a wifi-setup for my home + office. These are the requirements:

• 2 buildings, about 15 meters apart.
  
• Building 1 - our house - wooden 2 storey house with a massive chimney in the middle that kills all signals. This is the entry point for our fibre broadband
  
• Building 2 - office space - wooden 2 storey building, no chimney.
  
• there’s a CAT5 cable between the buildings
  
• 5-10 computers / devices online at any given moment.
  
  

Current setup is Apple airports, last gen, but they’re struggling. I on the other hand struggle to engage with anything overly technical so something with an intuitive interface would be great. If I can hide stuff it will be a bonus.

Thanks in advance you beautiful nerds

mesh ethernet backhaul are the words you're looking for

I've got Cat5 through the house and a few Eero routers that each have a Cat5 cable going in
They've worked well for me. Shame you weren't looking a week or so ago when they'd have been cheap on Prime Day.

Tp-Link Deco will have similar stuff, as will plenty others

If there's CAT5 between the buildings, I would go with something like this.

I have this (and another XD8 in the garage) all wired together. I get a full 1.2Gbps wired and around 7-800Mbps wireless across the entire house. Faultless.

Eero seems neat but googled the setup and it’s a lot of talk about isp’s. Wonder if this will be an issue as I’m in Sweden and it’s not an officially supported country?

Thanks but Asus makes me think of poorly working devices my relatives asks me to fix. Am I wrong?

shouldn't be an issue, since you wouldn't use the Eero to talk to the ISP.
Keep the router your ISP has provided, but switch off the wifi and set it into modem mode.
Then the Eero just handles the wifi side, and the ISP router handles the internet connection.

(same deal for Tp-link, Asus etc.)

I'd expect Asus would be pretty good too btw

When it comes to WiFi, yes.

They're consistently top of the review charts. They also don't have a subscription model for basic privacy services or belong to Amazon / china etc.

What about this?

https://amplifi.com/instant

Edit: the HD version seems better

https://store.amplifi.com/products/amplifi-hd-mesh-router

I’m not good at taking advice am I?

You get what you pay for. Something like the XT8 will smash your needs now and deliver blazing fast speeds for the next 10 years.

Cheaper mesh systems will already be struggling with lots of connections / range.

Tbh the Eero will be fine, the Deco’s will be fine, the Asus will be fine, the Amplifi will be fine.

Unless you have a particular requirement for one over the other then they’re all much of a muchness once you’re into mid range and above

Tbh max case is prob 4 devices streaming video in the evenings, the office use is pretty vanilla with the odd video call and syncing Dropbox

Looks like the setup of these is pretty straight forward so tempted to have a go. One more noob question though please

I'll hook unit 1 up to my router / broadband to the blue port, and the CAT5 cable in one of the yellow ones that will go to unit 2's blue port?

PS. Apple, if you're reading this, please do wifi things again. DS

What’s your setup currently?

As long as the blue port on the 2nd one is plugged into the same network, it’ll work.

Essentially, mine is:

Virgin router > ASUS xt8 (blue) > (yellow) 16 port Switch > 70m external cat6 > ASUS xt8 (blue) > 8 port switch

Currently is

router > (apple airport 1 wired) + (apple airport 2 wired)

Sounds like I just hook the first one into the router and then the next one from the first one. I'll order a pair. How hard can it be.

Standby on helpdesk duty!

Sounds like it. Should be super easy.

Picked up the XT8’s

🤞

Nice. Let me know how you get on. Love mine.

Routers are up. I’m online. Full setup will happen tomorrow.

Now watching crispy Netflix in a room where I previously had zero wifi. Great success.

Nice.

Coverage on these things, especially with wired backhaul, is so good.

Ah I love that meme

I'm trying to set up an additional AP (a Unifi UAP-AC-Lite that I had spare).

As ever, I'm having difficulty getting it to play nicely, as apparently, my ability to terminate cat6 in keystones correctly is utterly pathetic - the connection is ok to power the AP, but not good enough to have the AP connect over ethernet. Instead, it connects to another AP, and I end up with much slower speeds.

That's not my real problem though - Every time I physically connect / disconnect the AP, the switch that it is attached to (Ubiquiti ToughSwitch 5-POE) utterly shits the bed, and all but stops working.

(Meaning that everything connected stops working too - PiHoles, Unifi Controller, and the AP I'm working on)

I can see flashy lights on the box, but it's invisible on the network - connecting on the management port, everything looks fine.

What have i broken?

Most likely it with be the ethernet issue you have already identified. It's probably frantically trying to issue the ethernet an IP address and dropping back out, then coming back on and trying for IP again. Overwhelming the setup.

I think it's only 4 cables of the 8 to handle the 1gb connection 2 for power and 2 for redundancy. That would explain the power working.

It just depends which pair is wrong

How are you getting on?

Popped across the road to my neighbours house this morning (about 100m) and get 360Mbps in his living room 😅