Moved into a new 4/5-bed property a year ago. The house has a 516Mbps down/52Mbps up fibre line installed.

Originally set up a TP-Link WDR3600 with Gargoyle firmware (mainly for the bandwidth limiting and device access control… because children) that I’d used in my last place. It’s positioned towards the rear of the property (as the fibre enters here)

Quickly received complaints about connectivity/reception/speeds in the front of the property (esp upper floor) so bought 2 TP-Link TL-WPA7617 for additional WiFi Coverage (one for main house upper floor, one for outbuilding). One unit broke within a few months and the other suffers from occasional crashes and upsets the entire network when unplugged. This remaining unit also gets a lot of the household load due to how people are positioned in the house. Although connectivity is now reasonable the current setup ‘feels’ like its not optimal.

Additional info - We have approx 50 devices with static IPs on DHCP (could possibly be trimmed down slightly) with approx 15-25 active at any one time. Almost all are wireless devices but any that can be wired reasonably, already are.

I’m looking for advice on how to improve the current setup. I’ve considered the following alternatives but open to suggestions:

  • Buying a TP-Link Archer C2300 and using the existing WDR3600 as a repeater

  • A mesh system like TP-Link Deco M4 or X55 systems. Don’t know too much about these but am concerned I’d experience similar issues as the existing extender

Thanks

  • archaea-incOPBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Not sure where you are geographically and terminology used but here in the UK the fastest connection available to consumer properties is 1Gbps - I use the term fibre as in fibre optic to distinguish it from copper cable which it what a lot of UK infrastructure uses (though that is changing).

    I don’t think my setup in gargoyle is that complex and there may be a better approach - basic mac whitelist for network access, some site blacklisting, each person has an ip range for their devices and an associated QoS classification with a max bandwidth rule for each.

    The remaining powerline device is currently positioned on the upper floor and is connected to the router via a powerline/ethernet bridge

    The house is currently devoid of any ethernet wiring. In time I’d like to get it fitted but would probably wait until we’re doing other renovation work or replacing electrics.