I searched the forum, but couldn't find the answer to my question, so here goes.

I live in a 1800sq ft house. I have 300mbps internet. My current router is on the east side of my house. I have a extender in the middle of the house that acts as a mesh network(TP-Link One Mesh). The devices (most of what we use) on the west end of the house have significantly lower speeds. The speeds on east side to the middle of the house holds around 250-300 mbps. I think they are this speed because they are connected to the actual router and don't have to go through as many walls/doors.

The devices on the western most end of the house gets a 30-40mbps (if we are lucky) with a poor connection. I think what happens is most of the devices connect to the extender instead of the actual router because they are all closer to the extender.

I don't have the ability to hard wire a router anywhere else, so I'm stuck with the location of my current modem/router.

Over the weekend I bought a WIFI 6E tri-band mesh system that claims to cover 5500 sq ft. I'm pretty sure that it will increase the speeds to the western end of my house, but I'm not sure. It was a great deal, so I grabbed it.

My questions are:

1. Would a powerful stand alone router accomplish increasing speeds to my whole house or should I stick with the mesh system I purchased?

2. What specs would I be looking for in a router if I go that direction?

I hope I provided enough information. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Got a question for you.

Am using a TP Link OneMesh setup myself and my Repeaters are of a lower AC capability due to availability in my country .Your RE should be as close as the AC of the main router as possible, otherwise each hop will half the signal strenght.

Got an AX55 and RE200. Wish i could get newer and faster RE.

Get the best OneMesh RE and play with locations and coverage, then buy as many as required.

0-0

I use the eero Mesh system, 1 "router" and 1 "extender". There is NO, NONE, drop off in speed between the two. the eero system is WiFi 6 .

I just added the T-Mobile 5g Gateway (Modem and router combined) it also uses the Wifi6 system.

I connected the T-Mobile Gateway to my eero router by cable. I am covered to the far reaches of my little 1 acre plot.

First off are you experiencing any actual performance issues other than going from spot to spot and running an Internet Speed Test?

Secondly, mesh and extender endpoints will always have a substantial performance loss by design.
Of course, they are much easier to implement and may be the only way but they are less performing that a properly designed AP system.

Third for informational purposes I assume you are calling a "router" a device that does routing and provided Wi-Fi the same thing but they are two distinct functions.

A more "powerful" Wi-Fi is not possible as they all have the same "power".

The only real and effective option is to properly locate the Wi-Fi to an area nearer and as less obstructed as possible.

You could try another router but you will have similar results.
Also note 2.4 ghz will travel through these obstructions better but 5.0ghz has better throughput.
And know the quality of the client matters too.
Simply more broadcast power by the AP is like a conversation where one side yells and one side whispers.

Ideally in a large or obstructed facility it would be to turn off the Wi-Fi in the "router" and run an ethernet cable near the locations, adjust the power of each band so there is little bleed over, use same SSID on each AP, do not make the SSID the same for 2.4 and 5.0.
THEN a 802.11AX (WIFI6) will be maximized.

FWIW, when we install Wi-Fi in large or obstructed facilities we always use more AP's and turn the power down not increase the power unless there is only one.

However a good sub is to move the "router" to a closer position.

I have a 1900 sq ft farmer's house. The modem in in the office (upstairs corner). The kitchen is in the downstairs opposite corner and as such, get weak to no signal. Tried a repeater before but got poor results.

I upgraded to a nighthawk mesh system with router and 2 satellites. I have 1 satellite in the living room (downstairs, same side as office, but other corner) and another in the room above the kitchen.

I now have solid signal to every room (even out to the garage now) with speeds in excess of 100mbit/sec (usually getting 300 in the office, 175 to 250 on the far ends).

The only issue I run into with this setup is the ping is a little on the higher side going through the extra routers/backchannel. No noticeable issue for me, just comes up in the speed test report.

I think the dedicated backchannel connection from the satellites to the base are a huge benefit over the standard repeater setup.

You've got a couple of options for moving the router.

First is MOCA or Cable adapters. Basically they piggyback the network connection over the cable lines.

Second is power line adapters. Same thing, but they use the power lines instead of cable.

Third is to move the router and modem together.

I've been using power line adapters to run a nested LAN inside of the main network for several years. That LAN is what supplies my side of the house with internet. There's probably some latency, but I have several wireless and wired devices that all have a good enough connection to game on.

I've actually been wanting to move both routers and the modem to the attic and eliminate the adapters.

Edit: I'm in security. I got beat by someone who works in infrastructure.

What Schultzy said.

As he noted, the range of WiFi-connected clients is often the limiting factor on performance. The signal has to travel in both directions, so if the radio on the client device is lower powered than the one in the access point, you will suffer sooner. If you are doing A-B comparisons, it might be informative to use several different clients in the comparison.

I completely agree that using separate routers and access points allows for a better network design than those so-called integrated "router" devices. I wish someone would come up with an accepted term for those abominations. Connecting access points with cables is far more likely to achieve throughput goals than with "mesh" technology (which uses a significant portion of the radio spectrum for backhaul, compromising its use to serve clients). Dedicated access points are, in my experience, capable of achieving greater area coverage than the integrated units, probably through the use of more sophisticated antennas.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I wish someone would come up with an accepted term for those abominations.

Yeah, they're nearly universally poor.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
Connecting access points with cables is far more likely to achieve throughput goals than with "mesh" technology (which uses a significant portion of the radio spectrum for backhaul, compromising its use to serve clients).

True, either way, but one or two products actually have separate back-haul radios. Eero Pro being one of them, perhaps?

Still: The absolute best way, IMO, is:

router <-> network switch <-> one-or-more WiFi APs

We have one EnGenius EWS377APv3 mounted on the ceiling nearly dead-center of our 1300+ sqft. one-story ranch home's main floor. It covers the entire home, corner-to-corner, on both the main floor and in the basement, as well as the attached garage and back patio.

I have an EnGenius ENH1350EXT in the µBarn, about 100 ft. off a back corner of the house. It covers the entire back yard and extends well into our next-door-neighbors' back yards. It's currently back-hauled to the house AP with an Engenius ENS500-AC. (That's a temporary kludge. The house end of that back-haul will eventually be moved to an ENS500-AC on the back of the house.)

What I've done is the more expensive, more labor-intensive, way to go, but our WiFi network is rock solid throughout.

The only way I could possibly improve it would be Ethernet or fiber to the µBarn for that AP. That would be more trouble and expense than the application requires.

I abandoned wifi wherever I could since it sucks so bad.

I took to time to go wired ethernet and I never looked back. Of course, that doesn't help for your iPhone/iPads or cheap little IOT devices/toys.

But all streaming devices (Rokus & TV's), computers, security cameras, etc are all wired Cat5e.

Extenders and mesh are totally different.

You get less bandwidth and speed with extenders rather than with mesh nodes.

I have a TP-Link mesh with a couple of nodes per floor.

I upgraded to one of then newer meshes and used the old nodes as filler.

How many floors is your house?

How many nodes did you get?

I would spread out the nodes equally to start and see how that works for you.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
Extenders and mesh are totally different.

Depends on the mesh backhaul.

If it's a mesh network with Ethernet backhauls or separate radios for backhauling: Yes. But many mesh WiFi products backhaul on the same channels that serve clients. In such cases: smschulz (who, btw, is a professional in this field) was correct: They are as inefficient as extenders.

Thanks for the replies, you guys.

My current internet setup was less than $100 for both the router/wifi and extender/mesh node.

The new equipment I purchased is the TP-LINK Deco XE75. It has 2 nodes/routers and is tri-band with the Wifi 6E 6ghz channel operating as the backhaul channel.

At this time, it's not going to be possible for me to run cabling to create a more sophisticated setup, although if you were in the DFW area, I'd let you install something for me, smschulz.

I just needed a little more bandwidth than my current setup, and I wasn't sure if a standalone router could accomplish the same thing as what I've purchased. It doesn't sound like that would work other than moving the router somewhere else.

Thanks again for the help you guys!

I did the eero also. 6+ because it was on sale. Log cabin, 28x46 ranch. 1200 square foot.
We are at the end of a DSL line, so our speed is 8-9 mbps. After installing the eero, my speed is the same throughout the house including the basement. Also outside around my deck, and in my garage 50 yards away.