OT: whole home wifi mesh recommendations

[Dee Dee Sommers]

Hi David,

WOW!!!!! Thank you so very much for this wealth of advice!  

I don’t think running ethernet is practical in my home but the location of our fixed devices: husband’s Mac Mini he uses in his home office, printer, scanner and my laptop and printer are really the only fixed devices in addition to our Apple TV. I specifically declined providing our Dish with the wifi password. So I will definitely look at the possibility of relocating the cable modem and Airport Extreme to get a stronger wifi signal and reduce the load.

TP-Link has some interesting units which claim to carry the data signal over power lines — The first unit is connected to the router via ethernet then carries the signal over the powerlines (which is what piqued my interest: powerlines!)  These look like older units: the wifi they carry is 2.4gHz.  But they do claim to be compatible with TP-Link’s OneMesh technology that I am still trying to study. So I’m wondering if I can use some of these units from TP-Link to establish a wifi 6 mesh with a backhaul plus be able to put an ethernet connector where I need via their powerline units.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=powerline+network+adapter+with+wifi&rh=p_78%3AB09L85MFNY%2Cssx%3Arelevance&tag=hdtl-wpa7617kit-20 <https://www.amazon.com/s?k=powerline+network+adapter+with+wifi&rh=p_78:B09L85MFNY,ssx:relevance&tag=hdtl-wpa7617kit-20>

I definitely need to do something to improve the wifi throughout our home!  We only have a pretty slow DSL so anything I can do to maximize what we have is important.

One last question: my new stove is “smart”. Does anyone know how to disable the wifi on appliances?

Thanks,
Dee Dee


> On Sep 14, 2022, at 11:32 PM, David Fylstra <David.Fylstra at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi Dee Dee,
> 
> Now, specifically about mesh Wi-Fi systems. I would caution against using the older Wi-Fi extender devices. Most of them listen for Wi-Fi frames and then repeat them onward to clients, or back to the router. The problem with this is that each Wi-Fi frame occupies a finite amount of “airtime” which blocks every other device during transmission. The reception time plus the forwarding time of the frame thus doubles the amount of airtime blocking the network — which reduces overall network bandwidth available to the clients by 50%.

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