@R.M.H 

 

I have reasonably good IT background, and have been running Deco mesh for over a year. I have three floor three bedroom house. Most of my household equipment is wired, because I believe that wired will always beat wireless when it comes to reliability and speed, but with tablets, smartphones, IoT devices I finally jumped into WiFi mesh. 

 

I'll answer questions from your post, if you have more or need clarifications feel free to ask.

 

You will have to manage Deco mesh through an app. There is no other way. The web interface is present, but it only gives an overview of current state of the mesh (you can get it from the app, too) and offers an alternative way to install firmware updates, if standard process through the app fails for some reason.

I am old school, too, but I adapted. Deco app is not that bad.

 

If you need content filtering from your WiFi mesh, look for a different brand. If you plan to run it as "dumb WiFi mesh access points," - Deco could be a good choice. This is how I run my Deco mesh.

 

Deco works very well when its satellite units are Ethernet wired. The only caveat: not all switches are compatible with Deco. Netgear brand is not officially incompatible according to TP-Link documentation, but some people on forum said they had issues mixing Deco and Netgear equipment.

 

With Deco, you always know if Satellite node uses Ethernet or WiFi for mesh communication. In Deco app, when you open a page for each node, you'll see that info. Example:

 

 

My Satellite Deco named Office uses Ethernet backhaul. If it were WiFi link, you'll see the following under Signal Source instead:

 

 

 

 

You may need to decide if you want WiFi6 support, that will narrow down quite a large list of different Deco models. Also, what is the speed of your Internet connection and what do you expect from WiFi. For example, in my house everything I can wire I did, including TVs, so WiFi is for smartphones and tablets mostly, plus IoT devices. For wireless devices I am quite OK with Deco WiFi5 speeds, which are between 300Mbps and 500Mbps on Deco hardware I have, even with my gigabit Internet connection. That might not be the case for you, and it matters.

 

As a minimum, you will need three Deco units: one per floor. If they are not placed in optimal locations, you may need to add more. My recommendation would be to start with minimum, on each floor wire each Deco unit in the room where you want best WiFi, and check coverage on the rest of the floor. If you find places where WiFi is weak or slower than you want it to be, buy more Deco units and wire them there.

 

You can easily add more Deco units to your Deco mesh, and as long as they are wired and run in Access Point mode, their number could be unlimited. Translated from marketing speak, it means "up to ten units with no problem, perhaps more."

 

If you can't wire some of Deco units, the preference would be to go with tri-band hardware. Careful planning will be required, so better wire them all.

 

Some models of TP-Link Deco are not sold in single units, only in 2-unit and 3-unit sets. Which is a bit puzzling, because they are not in any way preconfigured and you can add them one by one to Deco mesh. If you think you may need to expand existent Deco mesh by just one unit, check if that model is sold in single unit sets.

 

You can also mix different Deco models, but while TP-Link official position is "they all will work together," mixing them could open another can of worms. For simplicity and consistency of your home network, decide on single Deco model and stick with it. 

  @R.M.H 

 

One more thing.

 

Deco positions itself as consumer grade WiFi mesh. Ability to fine tune Deco WiFi mesh is quite limited. You'll have much less configuration options than, for example, with almost any Belkin router (my favorite router brand). 

I am OK with that, but some people do indeed want more control when it comes to their home WiFi mesh.

 

 

Many thanks for the helpful reply. I neglected to say I was looking at wifi 6 and my current connection is 500mb all be is likely to go to 1gb sooner or later. I would prefer ethernet to all devices that support it but it will be a pain to run to some rooms and a mesh system, will probably save be that hassle. Useful to know on the higher limit of units as other product I looked at said a max of 3. Slightly concerend though on the mention of potential incompatability with netgear switches. I have 5 and was not planning a swap of those yet as they do the job OK. Current front runners are x50 or x68 (not available yet). I was considering waiting for wifi 6e but from what I have seen so far it may be overkill for what I need as I probably only have 1 phone that would work at 6e.

  @R.M.H 

 

With your Internet speeds, I think it would be OK to go with WiFi6 instead of waiting for WiFi6e.

 

Netgear hardware is a big question mark, but I suspect most if not all WiFi mesh brands use same standard protocols for nodes communications over Ethernet. If your first WiFi mesh you tried haven't had problems with Ethernet backhaul - most likely, Deco won't too. If, on the other hand, you didn't have stable Ethernet link between WiFi mesh nodes before - Deco might fail, too, and so will most other WiFi mesh brands.

 

"Current front runners are x50 or x68" - I think you meant "X60 or X68." The principal difference between these two: X68 is tri-band, X60 is not. If you plan to wire all Deco units, you can go with X60, if you expect to have mix of wired and not wired Deco units - X68 is preferable.