I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

Older, slower chip. 2015 Macbook is 802.11ac, a new iPhone for comparison is 802.11ax

bit of googling suggests you might realistically expect about 200Mbps from the old Macbook, and anything upto 2Gbps from the iPhone (if you had a net connection that was that quick, and router)

Similar question - have a TP Link AC1200 in my desktop which is in the living room, with about 5m distance and one door and one (plasterboard) wall in between it and the Hyperoptic router (the standard ZTE one they give out)/access point. I recently moved the desktop further from the router by about 1.5m and put a sofa in between, and the connectivity from the 5GHz dropped off a cliff, notwithstanding an average 90% signal strength (whatever that means) according to the wifi sniffer I have, and no other networks close to the channel I've chosen. Have had to default to the slower 2.4GHz network, which is also not that great.

Does one sofa and 1.5m physically between the router and the wifi card make that much of a difference, or is there no causal link and I should be looking elsewhere for the problem? The PC tower was knocked over in the process of moving, but everything is still functioning so I figured no harm done..

Did you get what you needed? I have some tp link powerline adapters no longer in use.

Hi Geoff, all sorted thanks!

TP link Deco AX mesh routers; good, less good? Seem to be pretty price competitive, but don’t want a whole load of app based bloatware as it’s for older parents who just want it to work than fiddling round setting it up.

Older stone walled house with thick walls, existing isp router and boosters isn’t really cutting it.

Our work just fine. App was simple.

Got a couple of tapo plugs after a recommendation on here, but just thinking should I have them set up on a separate WiFi locked down network rather than the main one?

Depends how good your router is, and how much you can bear to faff about with VLANs.

Router is a Community Fibre Lynksys jobby, will look into VLANs and see how bored I am today

What's the goto basic mesh system with ethernet backhaul.

Argos has the tplink deco E4 for £85

Is this any good?

I had Deco M4 and now have M5. I upgraded to M5 because they were a bit smaller and I planned to put one somewhere that needed to be smaller (I still haven't actually got round to putting it). They go a bit further down the garden and are obviously a bit smaller, but no noticeable difference otherwise.

My experience of the Decos with a Virgin "super" hub has been great. I think the app UI is also pretty good - things like prioritising devices like our work laptops, and hopefully some restrictions when are kids are Internet age.

Generally I didn't have an issue with the form factor of the M4 - which is the same as the E4. And think they look nice enough.

Thanks. Seems they're worth a punt then.

Yeah at that price I would.

I don't think it'll make any difference to your decision, but as an FYI if you add more, while you can generally mix and match, the first/master(?) router needs to be the highest model out of them.

But tbh we found 2 x M4 was enough for a 3 bed semi so I'm sure 3 will be plenty.

Probably a bit late but if you have the community fibre linksys router you're probably easiest just getting some matching Linksys nodes.

Edit: Think I entirely misread that and thought you were talking about wi-fi extenders. From what I remember of the Linksys router (I replaced mine almost straightaway) the options were pretty limited.

Interesting, I am with CF and been thinking about getting an extra node. Vaguely recall seeing something in this thread so will have a look at how I can achieve that (cheaply)

I got one of these which was fine for extending with just WiFi, otherwise I believe any of the other bits should work if you want ethernet as well

https://www.linksys.com/gb/support-product/?sku=WHW0101P

We bought a Linksys extender for CF, works really well.

https://amzn.eu/d/enqQ9jM

We've got three in our four bed, three-storey house with two adults working from home and a teenager and pre-teen who use the internet a lot. They've been rock solid; really impressed with their performance, the easy to do a firmware update and the coverage. When we had the loft converted I thought I might need to add more, but so far so good.

£90 for three is a great price.

Anyone got a cheap source for a mc801a 5g router? I wanted to try out 4g/5g but these are looking like £200+ a pop which seems fucking ridiculous.

Any other more reasonably priced models that support an external aerial?

£130 used and "unlocked" from ebay, but I've bought unlocked phones off ebay which were still network locked because people are fucking idiots so I really don't trust "unlocked" ads.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/326065555300

I had to ship mine back to three at the end of the contract so sadly not, I did keep the 5g router from the year before though, I'll see if it made it in the house move.

Maybe I should just get whatever thing they dish out on their monthly plans and try that for a month and send it back rather than drop a wad on the aerial one. I already have an Asus router so I only really need the SIM card bit that does the mobile internet shizzle.

Anyone like to hazard a guess why I can no longer see my Unifi Dream Machine on the network or access the controller? It has a white flashing light on it which the manual says is Device is booting up/Device is initializing/deinitializing

Internet is still working fine so it is still routing stuff. The APs are now showing as standalone APs as the controller is in the dream machine.

I've tried plugging it and unplugging it and still get the same. I could try resetting it as I do have some backups but I'm not 100% whether the "console backup" restores everything. It's also a bit of a faff as I need to clone MAC addresses and something else I can't quite remember to get the UDM internet access to get the backups.

Any suggestions on what else to try? My google isn't finding anything useful.

Check out this bad boy!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226067785529

from: https://router-mods.co.uk/modification-info/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u6iHg1nPtI

Did you order anything in the end?

We’re back on our 4g router but the 4g speeds on Vodafone (cheapest unlimited data sim I could find) aren’t great.

Thinking it would be better to spend the money on a new router and get Vodafone 5g rather than pay more monthly for speedier O2 4g.

Not yet. I'm currently bidding on some on ebay. I don't know why crappy boxes tied to Three or whatever are still going for £100. Seems mad to me.