Router vs Cheap mesh?

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I have 350mbps with Virgin, speed it spot on from the hub. I have a set of wireless powerline adapters which are ok but I have to have them with a different wifi name otherwise I get dropouts and "connected with no internet access" issues.
I can get wifi all over the house from the SH3 but it's not great sub 10mbps in places. Do I either buy a half decent router with better coverage and put the SH3 in modem mode or buy something like the Nova 3 mesh boxes instead?
Looking at options under £100?
 
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For my tastes I'd go the mesh route, but it depends on the distances involved and house construction material. Probably a new router has better Wifi than the Virgin Hub but at the end of the day it can't break the laws of physics if the distances involved are quite large or the construction material is a hindrance. Dotting mesh units about circumvents those problems hence my preference.
 
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I'd say that the positioning of the wireless is the most important thing. If the existing router isn't in a good central location then placing a 'better' router in the same place isn't likely to provide large gains.
 
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I have an ethernet cable with the electrics from the front bottom corner of the house (where the hub sits) to a bedroom which is slap bang in the middle of the house. Can I disable the hubs wifi (not put into modem mode) to keep the ethernet ports working and have an access point run the wifi? Will everything still communicate together ok?
If I put an access point in the middle of the house the wifi will be fine I'm sure of that.
 
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Been weighing up a similar dilemma and finally took the plunge on... an Asus RT-86U. I figured it’ll offer a significant improvement over our current BT SH2 and should give decent coverage. If additional coverage is needed will use gigabit backbone already in place and purchase another router.
 
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Been weighing up a similar dilemma and finally took the plunge on... an Asus RT-86U. I figured it’ll offer a significant improvement over our current BT SH2 and should give decent coverage. If additional coverage is needed will use gigabit backbone already in place and purchase another router.

BT actually supply some really good 802.11ac modem/router/access points. I doubt you’ll see much benefit in WLAN coverage by shifting to that ASUS. As for anything else, yes, you can probably find a few features on the ASUS that aren’t on the SH2 but for £150-ish I’d want so see a significant upgrade in features or speed.

A major part of the challenge with WLAN is getting folks to understand that 100% of all the marketing stuff you see and read is total BS. Almost all of these devices use the same internal chipsets (because there are only a couple of manufacturers) and when push comes to shove, this is a 2-way radio.

It’s VITAL to remember it’s a 2-way radio because even if you have a 4x4 monster access point with humongously sensitive antennae, if the thing you’re attaching to it with is a 1x1 Ring doorbell with a tiny antenna, the perceived range is going to be awful. And slow.

Most people don’t have any 4x4 wireless LAN clients. There’s a couple of Samsung flagship phones but by far the majority of phones and tablets are 2x2 WLAN on both the 2.4GHz and 4GHz bands. And they have tiny antennae and tiny amplifiers so they don’t go as far as your wireless access point can. So the end result is the perceived range of the access point is poor, when in fact it’s the wireless range on the client that’s poor. But everyone blames the access point. You don’t want massive range, you want great coverage. And that means shortening the distance from the client to the access point as much as possible by placing your access point as high up and centrally as possible. the landing ceiling is the perfect place in most homes.

UK builders tend to put the master phone socket by the front door. And maybe an extension to the corner of the lounge. Behind the TV usually. The worst places EVER. And pretty much everyone blames the router. Because BT’s routers are crap. Everyone knows that. Right? Wrong!
 
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Soldato
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If your going to go to the expense of replacing the access point you should do the extra step and spend the £20-£30 to run a cable back through the wall there the internet comes in, up the side of the house, through the soffit into the loft and over to the landing ceiling and mount an access point there.

It takes a couple of hours to sort out but ones it done you’ll have way better WiFi.
 
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Tp-Link Archer A7 now running as an access point in the middle of the house with the SH3 wifi disabled. 250-350mbps pretty much everywhere now. Very pleased.
 
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So the 250-350Mbps is what Virgin is feeding your router, not your speed between devices.

I did a quote (quite some time ago) for someone whose TV kept buffering when he watched Amazon and iPlayer. He was adamant that his internet wasn’t fast enough (it was) but he had shocking Wireless LAN and although he had 20Mbps coming into his home he had less than 1Mbps going between his router/access point and his TV. He thought I was trying to rip him off because I was quoting him for a cable from the router/access point to the TV. So I made up a 50m cable, ran it across his living room floor, down the stairs and through the house to where the router was (by the front door). I plugged it in and ‘hey presto’ no stuttering TV anymore. If you’re on 802.11n 2.4GHz you’re probably transferring data at 75-100Mbps and if you’re on 802.11ac you’re probably transferring data at about 200-250Mbps. You need to run iPerf internally to find out.
 
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How do you mean?
If I run a speed test in all areas I have wireless devices and get great speeds (+200mbps) why would I have any other potential speed issues?
 
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