our old Netgear is getting a bit flakey - keeps dropping the 2.5GHz signal which doesnt really help with my IOT gadgets.
I haven’t bought one of these things in years, whats the state of the art in routers these days? As many ethernet sockets as possible…nice built in firewall?
Netgear? Asus? Billion? CiSCO?
I replaced my shite BT Home Hub with a Netgear D6400. It has been excellent. 4 ethernet ports, and you can connect a USB HDD directly as a shared drive. Dual band wifi works great, easy to set up and configure. About £100 on Amazon.
I have been using a range of TP Link gear, for ages, with excellent results.
After years of fucking about I finally separated the functions of modem, router and wifi. I have the Virgin hub as modem, an Asus RT66 and a Ubiquity Unifi long range.
Moving to pro wifi kit has been a revelation. It’s rock solid, more so than the Homeplugs that are generally very good. The Asus wifi was far worse, in terms of stability and range.
So I’d recommend getting that and plugging it into your existing router.
I have been watching your experiences with interest. In fact your WiFi signal is so strong I can pick it up in Hatfield.
Up until the last few days our WiFi has been rock solid, but in the last few days the router stops transmitting the 2.5Ghz band and quick a few of my IOT devices fall off the network. Rebooting the router solves the problem.
We use a VM hub in modem mode
You could try the new firmware they’re touting and switch the built-in Wifi back on. I suppose there isn’t much to lose.
It’s probably a triumph of marketing over substance, mind.
Assuming he has the right Virgin router
ours is reasonably new - it was upgraded when we got the V6 Tivo last year.
Which model AP did you get?
We have, much to my disgust, a Sky modem. To be fair it is much better than the old Virgin device it replaced. The WiFi signal from either Sky or Virgin was not strong enough to serve all points in the house so we use 3 of the BT WholeHome Mesh discs for WiFi. The BT Mesh has been superb. I’ve rarely had to reset it since we installed it, usually following a disconnection of the Sky service due to maintainence.
https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/23764-ubiquiti-uap-ac-lr/
It comes with the PoE injector, so you just have a single ethernet cabel from router to AP, so it was easy to position in a more central location in the house.
I like the look of some of their other gear - switches and security appliance. We rely heavily on our wired network for most things - so we have 8 port switches in most rooms (2 in the living room), the thought of some consolidation is quite nice.
I’m using Meraki at home, the wifi AP is absolutely bombproof and get a good solid download, none of the usual wifi 200…10…200…10…200…10 shite.
It is expensive but Cisco were giving them away for free by attending a webinar.
You must be paying an annual license though? They’re just bricks otherwise.
The free webinar ones come with a 3 year licence but otherwise yes expensive, doubt if I will buy a licence at the end of the 3 years as I have an MX64, MR33 and 2x MS220
The AP licence on its own may be quite cheap though.
3 years not to be sniffed at though, as you say.
Another thought, you might NOT necessarily change your router….
Just stick to whatever you have with whichever hardware from whichever provider.
At your entry point is at least a UTP cable that will allow access the internet.
What about using this cable to set up a mesh network? In my experience at our home, but also what I heard from others, no WiFi problems occurred any longer.
FYI, in our specific case @home in Germany, I did change the router to a model by AVM/Fritz Box, since this brand is the consumer golden standard in Germany. Not top of the bill, but OKish for households like ours. Perfect reception with 3 access points, didn’t bother yet to put the 4th one in the network. 4 person household with Netflix, Tidal and Spotify all running at the same time without any dropouts.
PS: I suggested the mesh network as add-on, so you have the possibility to change provider and access technology (cable, xDSL, 4G and future 5G) without the need to re-invest in your own infrastructure.
no point in a mesh in my small house. This isn’t a reception problem.
My only problem is 2.5GHz band being dropped regularly by the old router, and all my 2.5GHz IOT devices dropping off the network.
Sounds like you may have new competing networks in the area.
That is what I thought, so I changed the channel to an empty one.
checked that with a wifi analyser that I borrowed from work and I’m the only one operating in the channel since I changed channel.
Had the analyser logging data for three days, and it recorded my router stopping transmitting on 2.5GHz. There was no sign of it being drowned out by another wifi device.
5GHz happily continued.
Strangely, it has been stable since I started this thread.
Damn fickle things, radio networks.