Which WiFi setup will work the best for my home?

[wajidc]

Hi,

I live in a 3 story medium sized house in London with BT Infinity Fibre Internet.

My current setup is an Asus RT-N66u wireless router on the middle floor and I have a Devolo powerline 1200 AP connected on the ground floor as a wireless access point.

I would like to increase my WiFi speed, coverage, stability & handover (ability for my wireless devices to automatically select the strongest WiFi access point) and am currently looking to upgrade to the following setup:

1. Two Netgear nighthawk x4s r7800's - One acting as a router the other as an Access Point connected via a Powerline wall plug.

or

2. Netgear nighthawk X4S r7800 acting as a router with a Netgear Nighthawk 11AC 2200 Mbps X4 access point via a powerline wall plug?

or

3. Should I opt for a WiFi mesh system instead like a Netgear Orbi RBK50 instead, perhaps that would also be better for handoff too?

Please can you advise which setup will give the best & most stable WiFi performance?

Kind regards,

Wajid

 

[psychopomp1]

Forget about powerline wall plugs, they are a bit of a lottery and very susceptible to interference. Probably Netgear Orbi would be the best option but options 1) and 2) would also work well provided you connect the AP to the main router via an ethernet cable.

 

[wajidc]

Thanks for your suggestion.

The reason I mentioned Powerline wall plugs is because I don’t have Ethernet cabling wired through my house, so to connect the router (upstairs) to the AP (downstairs) via Ethernet I thought I’d use the Powerline wall plugs as a simple solution.

Would there really be a big difference between using a direct Ethernet connection and an Ethernet connection via Powerline wall plugs?

 

[psychopomp1]

Would there really be a big difference between using a direct Ethernet connection and an Ethernet connection via Powerline wall plugs?

Potentially, yes. You could always test using powerline plugs first to see what results you get otherwise a wifi mesh system is your best bet.

 

[Fyodor]

Powerline is a bit of a crapshoot. You may get better results from something like the Orbi which has a dedicated wireless channel for backhaul than your powerline.

 

[degrub]

Do you have coax cable RG6 or RG59 ?
You could use MOCA2 or 1.1 if you do.

 

[wajidc]

I’m afraid we don’t have coax connections in the UK, at least I don’t so can’t try the MoCA 2 method.

I think I’ll test the Netgear Orbi RBK50 WiFi system and the 2 Netgear Nighthawk R700’s connected via Powerline wall plugs and see which gives the best performance and settle for that.

Thanks for the advice and recommendations, appreciate it!