PC Peripherals Mesh WiFi

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Nalin

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So I am on AirTel connection and using the router provided by them, my wifi always drops from 5G to 2.4G. It doubt it may be due too much (3 to be precise) 5G wifi routers in a same building causing signal interference issues leading to drop in connection quality back to 2.4G? We have 3 separate AirTel connections in the same building and I doubt it is the reason why my devices can't stay on 5G for very long.

Can Mesh routers solve this problem, I am deliberately not upgrading my connection speed beyond 50mbps due to this.
 
Nalin said:
So I am on AirTel connection and using the router provided by them, my wifi always drops from 5G to 2.4G. It doubt it may be due too much (3 to be precise) 5G wifi routers in a same building causing signal interference issues leading to drop in connection quality back to 2.4G? We have 3 separate AirTel connections in the same building and I doubt it is the reason why my devices can't stay on 5G for very long.

Can Mesh routers solve this problem, I am deliberately not upgrading my connection speed beyond 50mbps due to this.
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This is not a problem Mesh Wifi will solve. Check the other wifi networks with Wifi Analyzer on Android/WifiInfoView on Windows to find out a channel which is less congested. Then you need to switch your router wifi to that channel.

www.howtogeek.com

How to Find the Best Wi-Fi Channel for Your Router on Any Operating System

If you live somewhere with congested Wi-Fi, you've probably experienced slow, unreliable wireless connections before. Here's how to fix it.
www.howtogeek.com www.howtogeek.com

Another reason can be that you are moving away from the router and based on the algorithm of your device its switching to 2.4 GHz as it has more range compared to 5.

I am guessing that both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands have the same SSID name. I have seen this thing with even good router from Netgear that with same SSID name the device connect to 2.4 a lot of times. So I started to create 2 separate wifi SSIDs with different names -one at 2.4 and one at 5.
 
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Marcus Fenix said:
Another reason can be that you are moving away from the router and based on the algorithm of your device its switching to 2.4 GHz as it has more range compared to 5.
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Looks like a single most important thing to maintain a constant 5G connection. My router was hidden behind a TV rack wall earlier, now that I have put it in front my connection strength has improved a great bit. In fact it is max now on 5G whereas it was 60% earlier on 2.4G. I have forced all my devices to stay at 5G, hope it stays that way for days to come. Fingers crossed.
 
Nalin said:
My router was hidden behind a TV rack wall earlier.
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Since lockdown has started, and all the Work from home, my dad's company has taken up the bill for Internet services, so we upgraded ourselves to the 1 gig plan from airtel. Along with that I also upgraded the wifi system, I upgraded ourselves to the TP-Link Deco X60 system, I picked up the 3 pack from Amazon, it has a really convenient setup, I was up and running in less than 20 mins. Even on wifi, on an iPhone 12, in an 8000 square feet house, I get really consistent speeds, from 400-600, BTW I never get the whole 1 gig it always lies around 800-900, rarely hits 1 gig. Netgear Orbi is also a great option.
 
Incase if you are unsatisfied with the range(5ghz is very picky about range, you just observed it), you can purchase another router like A6/C6 and use it in AP mode with your Airtel ONT. This will also ensure all your devices stay connected on 5ghz even if you are at a greater distance from your main router.
 
sehajjn said:
Since lockdown has started, and all the Work from home, my dad's company has taken up the bill for Internet services, so we upgraded ourselves to the 1 gig plan from airtel. Along with that I also upgraded the wifi system, I upgraded ourselves to the TP-Link Deco X60 system, I picked up the 3 pack from Amazon, it has a really convenient setup, I was up and running in less than 20 mins. Even on wifi, on an iPhone 12, in an 8000 square feet house, I get really consistent speeds, from 400-600, BTW I never get the whole 1 gig it always lies around 800-900, rarely hits 1 gig. Netgear Orbi is also a great option.
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I was actually thinking of getting their Fiber Mesh plan as it comes with 3 Linksys Velops devices. But as I don't have any 4K TV yet so there is no need of upgrading the bandwidth yet, but the coverage thing really excites me. I am planning to get it in future though as I don't think I will ever need 1 Gbps plan.

Is 8000 square feet spread between multiple floors?

Tejas01 said:
Incase if you are unsatisfied with the range(5ghz is very picky about range, you just observed it), you can purchase another router like A6/C6 and use it in AP mode with your Airtel ONT. This will also ensure all your devices stay connected on 5ghz even if you are at a greater distance from your main router.
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I don't think I need it since all my devices post the re-placement are getting full strength signals, staying on 5G ever since.
 
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Nalin said:
So I am on AirTel connection and using the router provided by them, my wifi always drops from 5G to 2.4G. It doubt it may be due too much (3 to be precise) 5G wifi routers in a same building causing signal interference issues leading to drop in connection quality back to 2.4G? We have 3 separate AirTel connections in the same building and I doubt it is the reason why my devices can't stay on 5G for very long.

Can Mesh routers solve this problem, I am deliberately not upgrading my connection speed beyond 50mbps due to this.
Click to expand...

Install any WiFi analyzer software and see the signal strength. Highly doubt 5 Ghz networks will cause interference.


I would recommend the Mesh devices only if you need seamless coverage, else its better to go with repeaters especially with 50M.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
I would recommend the Mesh devices only if you need seamless coverage, else its better to go with repeaters especially with 50M.
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I am more interested in Mesh since I am planning to cover 3 floors of 1100 square feet each including terrace with 1 device covering each floor.
 
Had a TP-Link mesh wifi system and it turned out to be a total bummer.

If you have a complex floor plan with multiple thick concrete walls between your devices and the base station of the mesh, then purely remote satellites (wire-free) won't help at all. You'll have to get a mesh system which allows its satellite stations to be wired to the base station using standard LAN cables, which results in remarkable improvement.

IMHO not worth it - I eventually purchased a TP-Link Archer C5400 and had excellent signal improvement around my apartment (compared to a previous substandard Netgear router), plus it handles ~15 devices easily.
 
Little update on the current situation :-

Out of all devices only MacBook is able to retain 5G until now, rest all especially all our cell phones are now back on 2.4G. Even if I force them to switch to 5G they simply refuse the connection. I don't know if it's the supplied Nokia router by AirTel or what but there is some bottleneck here as far I can see.
 
I suggest you use the airtel modem router as modem only, disable wifi on it, buy a good router and run it in bridge mode. Look for asus router with USB ports, it can double up as a NAS too.
 
Nalin said:
Little update on the current situation :-

Out of all devices only MacBook is able to retain 5G until now, rest all especially all our cell phones are now back on 2.4G. Even if I force them to switch to 5G they simply refuse the connection. I don't know if it's the supplied Nokia router by AirTel or what but there is some bottleneck here as far I can see.
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Do you really need 5 GHz on mobiles?

I usually use 2.4 SSID on my phones as the battery consumption is a tiny bit lower.

Furthermore if you are not streaming high bitrate 4K content from a NAS ( i.e. 10-15 GB uncompressed video files) to your mobile devices 2.4 is enough.

I only connect to 5 GHz on my phone in case I need to copy 4-5 GB of files over NFS from my file server to my phone.
 
chetansha said:
I suggest you use the airtel modem router as modem only, disable wifi on it, buy a good router and run it in bridge mode. Look for asus router with USB ports, it can double up as a NAS too.
Click to expand...
Any recommendation?

Marcus Fenix said:
Do you really need 5 GHz on mobiles?

I usually use 2.4 SSID on my phones as the battery consumption is a tiny bit lower.

Furthermore if you are not streaming high bitrate 4K content from a NAS ( i.e. 10-15 GB uncompressed video files) to your mobile devices 2.4 is enough.

I only connect to 5 GHz on my phone in case I need to copy 4-5 GB of files over NFS from my file server to my phone.
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Main reason is to get more than 55-62 mbps on mobile devices which is the main limitation of 2.4G band. Even if I pay for 100 mbps bandwidth I can't get the full bandwidth unless I connect my devices to 5G band. On MacBook connected to 5G band I get 120 down/up whereas on my iPhone I get 60 mbps which is half of what I should be getting if connect it over on 5G band.
 
So I logged into the router GUI and enabled MU-MIMO setting which was disabled before. I have thus far been able to get 5G band on all the supported devices and hence getting full 120 mbps bandwidth on them. I don't know if it has to do with MU-MIMO but thought I'd share here. Let's see for how long this lasts.
 
Have anyone tried AirTel's Fiber Mesh plan that comes with 3 Linksys Velop Mesh devices but only offers 300 Mbps not 1 Gbps. How good are those devices and is it any vfm considering we don't own those devices while using that plan. Is it better to invest in out own Mesh system.
 
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