Looking for advice for which products to buy - TP Link router, extenders and/or Mesh ???

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Looking for advice for which products to buy - TP Link router, extenders and/or Mesh ???

This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
Looking for advice for which products to buy - TP Link router, extenders and/or Mesh ???
Looking for advice for which products to buy - TP Link router, extenders and/or Mesh ???
2020-08-16 20:38:04

 

Hi 👋 

 

We've been recommended that TP Link products would offer a good replacement for our Sky router.  We have Sky Fibre Broadband with a Sky SR203 router and Sky Q for TV.  We also had 2 BT1200 Wifi Extenders, one which was also connected to an ethernet hub.  We have approximately 8 wired and 40+ wifi devices many of which are smart devices as I'm disabled (a combination of Wifi IP cameras, Alexa's, Ring Doorbell, iPads, iPhones, smart switches, printer, etc).  Everything works well for a while then we get very poor wifi, devices drop in and out and we have to get the engineers out.  They replace all the kit, then two weeks later devices continually drop and reattach to the wifi. Long story short, it appears to be that the Sky router, and this model in particular, are known for randomly 'blocking' internet access to devices and could be causing the problem.

 

It has been suggested that replacing the Sky router with a TP link model and associated extenders or mesh may improve our set up.

 

We've been trying to contact TP Link in the UK to see if we can determine the best solution.  We need to understand which products will work best with handling Sky Fibre and what would provide us with the best wifi coverage throughout our home and garden.  

 

There are many different TP products on the TP Link web site and we're finding it difficult to understand how they work together.  We would appreciate advice as to which proucts would be best for us, so are posting this on both the Mesh and Router forums in the hope that we can find one solution that is going to give us what we need.

 

Thanks for your help in advance smile

 

 

 

 

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Re:Looking for advice for which products to buy - TP Link router, extenders and/or Mesh ???
2020-08-17 11:55:23

@Kayfersmum 

 

Hi, 

 

With Sky Fibre, you'll be using BT Openreach's Fibre 'VDSL' standards (Not Virgin's DOCSIS) so any router/modem you select will require compatibility with this system.

 

I haven't been a customer of Sky's for some time, so I'm not sure if they still have restrictions on modem/routers you can use on their network (they only allowed their own branded ones when I used them) so you'll need to also confirm this with their tech support team (although they struggled identifying the difference between ADSL and Fibre, which was a big red flag for competence on their part, so be warned). 

 

If everything above checks out, then you'll need to have an idea of what your home's layout is, a decent idea of distances between the far corners and the main phoneline plug to get a gauge on whether you really need a mesh or not, as sometimes it's overkill, others a requirement. 

 

If you aren't needing a mesh system, the VR2800 (https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/dsl-modem-router/archer-vr2800/) might be sufficient, although with personal experience, they may not last the 3 year warranty due to the 5Ghz chip failing. 

 

The above works well with the AC1300 powerline adaptors I had in my network including the Wifi model (https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/powerline/tl-wpa8630p-kit/) as an extender. 

 

If you are looking at mesh, and specifically TP-Link, then I'd advise getting one with a dedicated backhaul channel, like the M9 (https://www.tp-link.com/uk/home-networking/deco/deco-m9-plus/) as this will be more likely to handle the throughput of the number of devices you have (although I do have an M5 3-pack and they seem OK with a similar number of devices as yours, I'm just not sure how well they'll cope if there are a lot more high-bandwidth devices than I have already (3 laptops, 2 servers, 2 tablets, 2 smart TVs, several phones).

 

As always, make sure you Google reviews of any products as there can be details of any 'gotchas' or potential common faults which you may, or may not, be affected by.  

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