I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

If you have a really old install it could look like this

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Ended up getting someone to run a cat6 round the outside of the house to the third floor...

Result:

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cant for the life of me find anything like it on any exterior (or garage) front or back.

unscrewed the faceplate and it looks old, old beige wiring casing with just three internal strands (blue, orange, and green connected to nothing). cant find any other beige cables in any of the garage or downstairs cupboards where other wires seem to go

What does the junction box look like? Something like the below? You might have a really old direct buried cable which could come up anywhere. You would have to follow the cable with a tone probe or something

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havent see anything like that either, our floorplan is super wierd, and the houses were built by an architect quite purposely fully so its likely its maybe hidden somewhere

floor plan below with red box being where the current termination is (5c box so relatively modern), green is where everything else comes into the house, gas, elec etc.. but nothing in there that looks like BT stuff

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Interested in anyone's experience of the TP-Link Deco mesh units. Do I need to splash the cash on the M9 (as the TP Link website seems to suggest) or can I get away with the M4?
I'm using the internets for wfh and normal stuff (Teams calls are probably the most intensive thing I use it for).
Any experience/advice gratefully received.

I have the M4 with 4 people using pretty much constantly and it's fine (off a 100MB connection). I would imagine there's a bit of future-proofing in the M9s, but unless your walls are 10ft thick lead, I wouldn't imagine the powerline adds a lot.

I went for the Deco M5 three pack.

Over a three storey house it's been totally brilliant. Solid WiFi signal up to 100mbs throughout. Haven't had a problem since we bought it and it took about 20 mins to set up the whole thing.

I also have the Deco M5 (though only 2 of them) - the connection is solid through a 3 bed house.
The one furthest away from the router is about 30% slower than the main one but substantially better than the repeater/extender we were using before.

Thanks for the info. Have taken a punt on an m5 twin pack.
Hopefully it'll get me better than the current 2meg download in the kitchen!

I want to chop into an existing network cable so I can put some stuff in the cupboard under the stairs. For ease of wiring I'd prefer to add a socket to each end of the cut cable rather than a plug but all the sockets seem designed to go into a back plate or similar.

Is there some kind of socket that is self contained but still has the same ease of wiring? Any suggestions for a search term?

Inline RJ45 socket?

https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg08000/socket-surface-rj45-cat6-single/dp/CS16167

Cheers. Looks like "surface mount" was the phrase I needed. Inline was just bringing up couplers for some reason.

3x M5 here. I could have done with M9 as I run a powerline out to the shed. I bought M5 for Ethernet backhaul. The only issue is you can’t select channel at all, even for the guest network, and Wahoo bolt can only use 1 - 9.

I’m running as access point atm but will be getting a new modem to allow me to use it for routing, I’m curious about network usage monitoring.

Oddly they don’t wall mount.

When using Deco M5's is it normal for the one not plugged into the router to be slower than the main router connect one?

The main one get's 70 down but the other one is down at 40-50 most of the time (but sometimes lower) which is fine for most things but annoying for gaming - would getting another M5 (so three total) to go in-between make it any better?

If my understanding is correct, the only way you would improve performance by adding another node is if the reduced speed is being caused by weak signal between your existing nodes.

Thanks - do you know if they're supposed to be the same speed if everything is working properly? ie would one being slower than the other indicate a weak signal between the two?

Did not realise you could check the connection in the app! It's weak, despite actually being quite close to the other one.
I'll order another one & see if that improves things.

Having a bit of a 'mare with my WiFi/network at the moment. I've had a Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE running Plusnet with their router (Plusnet One) reliably for years.

Recently tried out a pihole on a Pi Zero W with pihole running the DHCP server (because you can't change it in the Plusnet router, only turn it off). This wasn't reliable, the WiFi would dropout, which I presumed was because it wasn't connected via ethernet.

So, because it didn't have ethernet, I installed Adguard Home on my Pi 4 running Home Assistant, which does. Got the DHCP server running and this seemed to work well for a bit, then the other half started complaining about dropouts on his phone. It seemed to be fine on everything else, but then the Father Not In Law came to stay and had problems with his phone and laptop.

So, I decided to have a look at the UAP's settings. Except I could not remember how to get into the bloody controller, or where it even was. So, I decided to hard reset it, so I could re-adopt it to the new controller I'd set up.

Stupidly without realising I have no machines connected via ethernet yet except the Pi running Home Assistant. Fortunately, FNIL's laptop had ethernet, so I plugged it in, set up a controller on there and got the WiFi working again. Of course it was now linked to his laptop, so I had to work out how to re-adopt it to my Mac which was connected via WiFi (not that easy, but got there in the end).

Since the hard reset the WiFi has been snappier and FNIL reports no problems with his phone or laptop. The access point hadn't been reset or had any software updates since 2017, so I guess that explains that.

However, I now want to get my Adguard Home running again, but every time I disable the DHCP server in the router and start the Adguard Home DHCP server (exactly the same settings as before) it breaks the WiFi - my phone can connect to the WiFi, but has no internet. It doesn't seem to work again until I disable the Adguard Home DHCP server and reactive the DHCP server in the Plusnet router.

So... My UniFi UAP is breaking my Adguard Home setup? But why, how? And why would firmware updates and a reset mean it doesn't work now but it did before?

I don't know a lot about networking, but as I understand it when I turn off the Plusnet router DHCP server and switch on the Adguard Home server, devices should get a DHCP lease from the new server (Adguard) once it's up and running, either when I turn them off and on again or when their leases expire.

Does 'no internet' mean the device in question is connecting to the WiFi but not being given an IP by the DHCP server? If it's up and running and worked before I reset the access point, that suggests to me that the UniFi is the issue, but why would it interfere with this?

Pls halp

Does 'no internet' mean the device in question is connecting to the WiFi but not being given an IP by the DHCP server?

That is possible but it could also be the Internet kind is down or the DHCP flairs are wrong in some way (eg missing or incorrect default gateway). What is the Adguard DHCP server configured to send out? Could it be sending itself as the default gateway rather than your router?

Personally I'd do away with the Pis and use https://nextdns.io/

Personally I'd do away with the Pis and use https://nextdns.io/

This.

Missus says she keeps getting wifi/internet slowdown at about 4.30 everyday.
Haven’t done any investigating yet, re: speed test or checking my router/ap to see if they’ve logged any issues, but does anyone have any thoughts on it?
We’re with zen fibre broadband and consistently get 35mb down and 7mb up, and I don’t have any issues using the wifi in another room..