Another WiFi boosting question

[JonathanRyan]

I have Virgin fibre. It's very fast. Instead of using their Wi-Fi, I plug their router into a BT mesh system - it's very stable (and pretty fast). It works throughout a large 5 bedroom house except for in the conservatory.

Long term I'll get another mesh disk but in the meantime I remembered I had some sockets that boost Wi-Fi. So I installed this which had been sitting in the garage for a while.

13 Amp Wi-Fi Extender Socket

www.bgelectrical.uk

Once I got it configured, I found the strength in the conservatory has gone up from 30% to 99%. However, the speed measured on my phone with Speedtest app) has gone down from 40ish MB to 14ish. Elsewhere in the house it's 140ish and I think that's my phone topping out rather than the network.

What's going on?

(BTW I realise this is possibly the most 1st World problem ever - I don't really care about the speed and assume a solid connection is better than a fast flaky one but I'm puzzled what's happening.)

 

[realspeed]

Maybe you phone has got entangled in the mesh. Sorry could not resist

 

[sep9001]

Hi

How do you know if the phone was connected to the socket, could it be that it was still connected to one of the other mesh AP?

 

[JonathanRyan]

Hi

How do you know if the phone was connected to the socket, could it be that it was still connected to one of the other mesh AP?

I guess I don't. But using a WiFi meter, the connection jumps from 30% to 99%. If I move into the kitchen (which is the next room) the connection goes to about 80% (where it has always been) and speeds increase dramatically.

It it's not using the new booster it's a big coincidence.

 

[Pound Coin]

I thought the whole point of Mesh was to not need range extenders. As I understand it, a range extender uses the existing frequency band to communicate with the devices further away, and in the process, uses up half the bandwidth. Mesh gets round this problem by using several frequency bands. So if you 'extend' your WiFi network, you halve the capacity. This doesn't happen with a Mesh.

I could be talking [PLEASE DON'T TRY TO BYPASS THE SWEAR FILTER], though...

 

[sep9001]

I guess I don't. But using a WiFi meter, the connection jumps from 30% to 99%. If I move into the kitchen (which is the next room) the connection goes to about 80% (where it has always been) and speeds increase dramatically.

It it's not using the new booster it's a big coincidence.

It could be that it is connected to one of the other mesh nodes. Only way to find out would be to switch the other nodes off.

 

[JonathanRyan]

Sounds like you need to bite the bullet and get another mesh disk.

I have never had unqualified success with range extenders - they always seem to screw things up in random ways. It’s best if you can use a different ssid on broadcast from the extender but this only really helps if you have some devices that are almost permanently in the extended range you want to cover

Yes I'll probably just do that. The relevant factors were

1. I don't really need wifi in the conservatory
2. mesh disks are expensive and IMO not designed well to blend into the home - why can't they design them so they at least hang on a wall?
3. I had an extender in the garage I'd forgotten about

I'll see how it goes in the nest week - if it's affecting data in the rest of the house I'll bin it, if not, well 14 meg is fine for the conservatory. Although I did look into boosting signal in the garage so I can check the temperature of the beer inside the fridge