WiFi challenge 3 floor Victorian property, approx. 170m2

[Bayard1music]

Hello,

I wonder if I might get some advice on this fantastic forum. I've live at home with my wife and one son. We've got some 30+ devices in the property not all in use at the same time. (although we've some security cameras/Synology nas on the same shared Devolo structure live all the time using some bandwidth see below).

Problem - I've been having issues mainly sharing the screen content via my S23Ultra mobile phone with a well known streaming service to my TV in our living room. (Using the 'Smart View option to local device feature in Android) . Some nights the performance is good others not and believe it's down to the home WiFi connectivity in the living room not connection speed to the home as all other services work fine including apps on the phone and set top box. Of course the resultant WiFi performance in my case is a combination off local performance of the Devolo unit and it's overall service provided by our router via it's mains connected link I see a very strong signal on my phone in the living room but that's signal , internet speed tests run at 60Mb/s . (but 250Mb/s in my 2nd floor office via the router.). I'm supposing 60Mb/s isn't enough to serve the phone and then back to the TV?

The living room has one of the Devolo 1200 family WiFi devices 2.4 and 5GHz as well another with triple 1200 adaptor with sockets to feed the TV , cable TV box, and WiiM streamer / preamp.. We've a D-Link 882 router bought about 6 years ago following a great review on this very site and a six Devolo 1200 family ethernet over mains devices on the ground floor to route data to the TV's , Internet radios, HiFi... The router is situated n the 1st floor (fed by a 1GHz Virgin cable connection (1G down/100MHz up service)), the Devolo ethernet devices provide cable connections via a single wired link back to the router. i.e. the Devolo devices all feed from a single port on the D-LInk router.
I'm taking an educated guess that my router is now behind the curve in terms of performance. However when in the living room my Cockpit app (Devolo) shows of course my phone connecting to the Wifi unit on the mains at 5Ghz. So in this regards a better router in the same position won't help unless there's bandwidth limitation via the Mesh devices and router combined. I'm finding it tricky to get any specific facts to tell me how to move forward at this stage.
Do we think this is a (a) a technically poor solution and if so what to move to (b) might I improve connectivity by upgrading the router alone or (c) going to a complete new Mesh solution. I've read there's good and poor Mesh linked units. Some without dedicated 'back' radio channels not being so good. Don't want to spend more than I have today as budgets are tighter following retirement ...

Hope this isn't too complex. Thanks in advance for reading.

 

[degrub]

Is your phone connecting to the TV via a wifi frequency (2.4 GHz or 5 GHZ) or over Bluetooth ?

Is your phone pulling internet stream over wifi or over LTE (cell) when you see the issue ?

If it is all over wifi ( internet to phone, phone to TV) then the available bandwidth will reduce by at least half as the phone is acting as a repeater. LTE can be all over the place for bandwidth.

You could have interference in the wifi frequencies or on the power mains ( electric motor running for example ) also.

The stream from the internet provider could also be having issues, particularly at common watching times, via the cable provider ( cable to an area is a shared resource) or the streaming company.

 

[Bayard1music]

Is your phone connecting to the TV via a wifi frequency (2.4 GHz or 5 GHZ) or over Bluetooth ?

Is your phone pulling internet stream over wifi or over LTE (cell) when you see the issue ?

If it is all over wifi ( internet to phone, phone to TV) then the available bandwidth will reduce by at least half as the phone is acting as a repeater. LTE can be all over the place for bandwidth.

You could have interference in the wifi frequencies or on the power mains ( electric motor running for example ) also.

The stream from the internet provider could also be having issues, particularly at common watching times, via the cable provider ( cable to an area is a shared resource) or the streaming company.

Hello, I can answer some of your questions:

I believe the phone is connecting to the Devolo at 5GHz, not sure how I can tell what Bluetooth is doing. Surely the latter isn't used for transmission of a 4K Video stream to the TV?
I believe the phone is pulling over wifi not cellular as it auto connects in the home to Wifi ( I did try toggling that I think)
I don't think it's the servers/cable , normal service either from an app on the phone or via the set top box is rock solid .
it's really the use of the mobile phone serving to the TV , hence my questioning how good the wifi arrangement is.

 

[degrub]

The Devolo 1200 units will likely provide around 100 Mbit/s data rate on a good day. If multiple devices are communicating ( more than 2) , then the throughput to any particular device will be reduced. If your phone is serving as a relay/extender to the TV, then at most it will provide 50% of the maximum possible bandwidth further limiting the overall data transfer rate.

It sounds like there is contention over the powerline network during the evening. Not surprising. So i would look there to see if others in the household are active during that time and then see what happens if they stop their activity for a while during the movie casting.

Given that you are in a 3 story UK ? Victorian, with likely brick interior walls and/or lathe and plaster walls, communicating by wifi mesh may be extremely difficult as those wall/floor types block wifi signals very well. If you plan to be there for a good while, i would consider investing in installing CAT 6 ethernet cabling, even if that means surface mount in "pan duit" covered cableways or physical boring through walls. There are flat CAT 6 ethernet cables as well. Just avoid any hard folds or crimps.

 

[Bayard1music]

OK thanks for that analysis. Sounds like moving to a Mesh solution overall might be a fools errand. Better perhaps to consider adding additional cabling (but tricky / messy having for example decorated...). Would you advocate a better router with a suitable switch to extend. The router I assume is now out performed but newer devices? Thanks again.

 

[degrub]

If you have any android tablets, you could try the same operation with them to verify it is not just an issue with the phone capabilities.

There is no way to tell with older buildings whether a new wifi setup will work better or not. If you don't have line of sight or minimal obstruction between nodes, then wired is the way to go,

And, yes, replace that D-link AC router with an AX wifi 6 class router that is security patched more often. There were a number of security issues with the older d-links. You don't need wifi 7 BE- type gear. No advantages over 6 and since still in beta implementation , can be some issues and software that doesn't work as intended. If you need more than the typical 4 port Gbit/s LAN ports, just get an 8 port unmanaged Gbit/s switch and use that to handle all the local traffic. The router should only be in the path if going to the internet.

If you end up hardwiring, consider moving to a router + AP type setup rather than using an all in one router + nodes mesh. Consumer gear is intended to try to make it with one device at maximum power since they are going for the lowest cost approach. ASUS mesh can work reasonably, but the software can be temperamental. With something like TP-Link Omada or Ubiquity gear you have more control over RF power levels which can help reduce RF reflections and noise generation. You should also get better roaming of wifi devices with a reasonable layout. If you know the materials used in your walls and floor/ceilings , along with rough dimensions, Ubiquiti has a pretty good heat map tool to help with placement of their AP gear. Posts by @Tech9 should give you more guidance as he has multiple of these types of implementations active, including, i think in the UK and Europe.