Need a new WIFI router solution

Nerfherder said:
Deco does not have this ability. I can't understand why but was also a frustration for me.

Its fine though, you just disable the wifi on the router and plug one of the Deco's in
Click to expand...

It has not PPPoE or what exactly is the problem? Is this not maybe specific to the provider that is locking MAC addresses to the original router?

I've never seen a TP-Link device not support PPPoE so this seems very odd.

Also what's this OTP people are referring to? You don't need an OTP for PPPoE.
 
You cannot go wrong with the Ubiquity Amplify Alien 2-pack kit. Its 2 black cylindrical devices and I was running around 32 devices and 1Gbps internet on it in a house with approx 1250m2 including the garden. i could get my home wi-fi while driving past the neighbours.. the range was insane.

Unfortunately its hell expensive in South Africa to buy them.

Other good ones from what I've heard and experienced:

ASUS aiMesh (combine various of their products depending on speed, range etc)
TP-Link Decos (also various)
 
Katelknaap said:
I recently migrated to Afrihost and took their free Huawei AX3 router. As it's Wifi 6, the wifi speed is much better than the 3 year old TP-Link router that RSAWeb gave me originally.

The range on the router is however worse and I couldn't pick up the wifi upstairs. Luckily I have an existing ethernet cable running up there. I just bought a Huawei WS5200 from Takealot @ R 499 and it works like a charm. Just plugged it in and works as a repeater upstairs. Luckily did not have to make any changes to settings as that might have challenged my limited IT related skills.

For me this worked out much cheaper than a proper mesh kit.
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You are already running a Mesh with those two devices, unless you very actively went and configured the second one as an AP with it's own SSID settings.
 
Hamster said:
I never notice the switch over, but to be fair when the handover happens I'm probably on the very steep stairs concentrating not to die in a fall.

These are routers running in AP mode so not dedicated APs if that makes a difference and they are fairly modern (AX5400).
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Are you sure they aren't Meshing without you knowing about it?

www.tp-link.com

AX5400 Dual-Band Gigabit Wi-Fi 6 Router

Enjoy Wi-Fi 6 connectivity for every device with the Archer AX73 tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router.
www.tp-link.com www.tp-link.com

Yeah erm these support OneMesh...so you've likely been running a Mesh network without even knowing it all along. It would default to that configuration unless you very specifically went out of your way to do it otherwise.
 
SauRoNZA said:
It has not PPPoE or what exactly is the problem? Is this not maybe specific to the provider that is locking MAC addresses to the original router?

I've never seen a TP-Link device not support PPPoE so this seems very odd.

Also what's this OTP people are referring to? You don't need an OTP for PPPoE.
Click to expand...
Ya, I can't find a PPPoE interface anywhere and when I googled it it said no.

I just checked again now and looks like they have added it to the firmware... will have to hunt it out.
 
Nerfherder said:
Deco does not have this ability. I can't understand why but was also a frustration for me.

Its fine though, you just disable the wifi on the router and plug one of the Deco's in
Click to expand...
No, it has the ability... just wouldn't auth... was massively frustrating as I couldn't use the free 200Mbs speed upgrade over the holidays. ;(
 
Greg_M said:
No, it has the ability... just wouldn't auth... was massively frustrating as I couldn't use the free 200Mbs speed upgrade over the holidays. ;(
Click to expand...
Which ISP? I am about to buy the Deco and am with afrihost on Vuma and I don;t want to keep the old router going. Even logging in to it is becoming hard. Keeps dropping the admin page. Took 10 tries to make a minor change to my 5GHz network the other day.
 
So I'm in a very similar boat of starting to need a new wifi solution for home. The OpenMesh units I have are now donkey's years old so are hugely speed limited.

I just end up having one basic requirement which seems to put me in the stupid price territory. The units need to support PoE.
 
ToxicBunny said:
So I'm in a very similar boat of starting to need a new wifi solution for home. The OpenMesh units I have are now donkey's years old so are hugely speed limited.

I just end up having one basic requirement which seems to put me in the stupid price territory. The units need to support PoE.
Click to expand...
You can get PoE splitters.
 
Nerfherder said:
Ya, I can't find a PPPoE interface anywhere and when I googled it it said no.

I just checked again now and looks like they have added it to the firmware... will have to hunt it out.
Click to expand...
That is truly bizarre.

But also I guess not too surprising as the rest of the world is no hung up on giving users full access to their systems to configure things themselves and instead just put a dumb device down that gives a WAN IP to the next device plugged into it.
 
ToxicBunny said:
So I'm in a very similar boat of starting to need a new wifi solution for home. The OpenMesh units I have are now donkey's years old so are hugely speed limited.

I just end up having one basic requirement which seems to put me in the stupid price territory. The units need to support PoE.
Click to expand...
UniFi

A couple UniFi Lite units aren't too expensive and will blow any home router setup out of the water.

You'll still need a router though.

Or spend big money and put in a UDM and that is pretty damn pricey.
 
Cius said:
Which ISP? I am about to buy the Deco and am with afrihost on Vuma and I don;t want to keep the old router going. Even logging in to it is becoming hard. Keeps dropping the admin page. Took 10 tries to make a minor change to my 5GHz network the other day.
Click to expand...

Which router is this you have at the moment? I'm going to bet it's a D-Link piece of ****.
 
SauRoNZA said:
UniFi

A couple UniFi Lite units aren't too expensive and will blow any home router setup out of the water.

You'll still need a router though.

Or spend big money and put in a UDM and that is pretty damn pricey.
Click to expand...

Given that I have 3 units currently, its not cheap no matter what I do, trying to cover 2000sqm is never going to be cheap, especially since I'd like to go Wifi 6 to "future" proof the spend. My OpenMesh units are around 8 years old and technically are still going strong but I'm just starting to get annoyed by the speed limitations.
I would love to be able to plonk down the crown for a UDM tbh, just to replace my current Mikrotik unit, but that is very seriously outside of the realms of affordability.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Which router is this you have at the moment? I'm going to bet it's a D-Link piece of ****.
Click to expand...
DLink DIR 825.

Never been great, but now that its 6+ years old (and was released back in 2012) its really getting offish. Regularly just gives slow throughput, or better yet connects you to the wifi but without any internet. Can't seem to handle more than 8 concurrent devices which in a 4 person household is a joke. Way past due for an upgrade. The least month though it went from being occasionally annoying and needing a restart to constantly being a pain. Hence the thread. Thanks by the way for the excellent advice. Will call Afrihost shortly to find out if they support the DECOM4 as a primary router. If not I will check out some other options. Not keen on the Hauwei one as I read it has range issues compared to the TP Link.

Fortunately I do have an ethernet cable going from downstairs to upstairs already with two very nice centrally located positions good to go on each floor so once I get the right pair of routers and confirm Afrihost can authenticate on them I should hopefully be able to move ahead without issue.

If they can't connect to my inverter I may just run an ethernet cable out to my garage and leave the old Telkom router out there dedicated to the inverter. It mostly works and I would not care out there that it has a separate SSID.
 
So I am not very clued up on how all these things work but provided I still use the Fibre router (first box) that Afrihost provided and my new router has a WAN port I should be able to pick any mesh router correct?
 
SauRoNZA said:
That is truly bizarre.

But also I guess not too surprising as the rest of the world is no hung up on giving users full access to their systems to configure things themselves and instead just put a dumb device down that gives a WAN IP to the next device plugged into it.
Click to expand...
So it says that you can do it now but I can't see where to actually set the login.
I'll play around with it but it means breaking the network so will have to di it "after hours".

It just means one less device on the battery backup.
 
Cius said:
So I am not very clued up on how all these things work but provided I still use the Fibre router (first box) that Afrihost provided and my new router has a WAN port I should be able to pick any mesh router correct?
Click to expand...
Well the mesh device picks up your internet connection, so the other way around. You probably want Afrihost to still maintain their router so can leave it as is, just disable the wifi on it.
Leave the Afrihost router to do the internet connection and then you will plug the mesh device into any other port (not WAN)
 
Nerfherder said:
Well the mesh device picks up your internet connection, so the other way around. You probably want Afrihost to still maintain their router so can leave it as is, just disable the wifi on it.
Leave the Afrihost router to do the internet connection and then you will plug the mesh device into any other port (not WAN)
Click to expand...
Afrihost provided two boxes. The Fibre line connects into a white Raycor box, and then they provided a WiFi router (the DLink) that connects to the Raycor box via an ethernet cable. Does the Raycore box provide internet, or does it just convert the fibre signal into something the router can understand? Was never clear on that.
 
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