@BubbaHubba 

 

This is an interesting situation. Your secondary Decos perform as they should, your tertiary Deco is probably doing as much as it can, but your Main Deco is not delivering good speeds.

Let me start with explaining what you should have seen if everything is working as expected and Deco placement is ideal:

Main Deco - up to 450-500 Mbps

Satellite Deco - 200-250 Mbps (half of Main Deco speed)

Tertiary Deco - 100-125Mbps (half of Satellite Deco speed)

 

Each "hop" cuts WiFi speed by half. This is not Deco fault, it is the limitation of technology.

 

Let me start with tertiary Deco. It is possible it can't deliver more than 50Mbps. Check its Signal quality in Deco app, here is an example:

 

If Signal is Fair or Weak, you won't be getting top speeds, which is 100-125Mbps. I suspect you are limited in where you can place Deco in the garden office. See if you can move it closer to secondary Deco. There are options to wall mount or ceiling mount Deco M5, which could expand possibilities of where to place it.

Try connecting garden office Deco to different secondary Deco or even to Main Deco as a test, you can do that with Deco M5, in Deco app. See that maybe Signal quality or speed will be better. 

 

By the way, check Signal quality for secondary Decos, too. Their must be Good or Fair to deliver good speeds. If it is Weak, secondary Deco is too far from Main Deco.

 

For Main Deco, I suspect there is some issue with testing, because if Main Deco couldn't really deliver 450-500Mbps, you wouldn't see 220Mbps on secondary Deco. 

Start with this TP-Link FAQ document, to make sure you run speed tests correctly: Troubleshooting: Slow Internet Speed with Deco Devices

 

Also, check if you are getting proper link speed on device connected to Main Deco. This is how you can check it: How to check the associated/link speed on a wireless client

For the proper speed test, with Deco M5 link speed should be 866Mbps. Signal Strength should be Excellent. Frequency connected should be 5 GHz.

This is an example from Android smartphone connected to my Deco M5:

 

 

Anything worse than that means your device is not properly placed to run speed tests - probably too far (or even too close) from Main Deco. Try 2-3 meters from Main Deco, direct sight. 

Before running tests, turn off/on WiFi on device, and check its link speed after it reconnected.

  @BubbaHubba 

 

The first thing that jumps to me is what device you are connecting / testing this with and is it connected to the 2.4 or 5ghz frequency?   The speeds you are gettting sorta relate to 2.4ghz, one would expect faster with 5ghz

 

What test device is this?  

 

Also.. honestly dont expect to ever seen the full 550 down off this over WiFi.  The M5 is a wifi5 (AC) device which tops out around 450mbps in good setups, average 350ish..   The Deco X range are WiFi6 so will be much faster, just bear that in mind as quite often its a complaint.  However if we can get you to 350+ then likely you will be happy :)

 

Send us as much details as you can about the test device and even some screenshots of the app connection.   Are you on v3 app?  It will tell you how good the connection between the nodes are. 

 

Take it all nodes are white on top LED when you check?  red is a low signal

 

  @Alexandre. 

 

Lots of info here, thanks. Firstly, sorry for the screenshot size! For some reason can't resize.

 

Assumed there would be a halving of speeds; makes sense and was ok with that but 50mbps is a bit too little. Only think else Ethernetted to the main deco is a raspberry pi running a pinhole, but the speed is the same with and without it introduced to the network. A speed test on my iPhone with WiFi and 5GHz forced is 390, which is better than this morning. I will run another test with an Ethernet cable and laptop directly connected to the main deco tomorrow again to see if it's line jitter as we only got it installed recently. 

 

Would the newer Deco systems help with the speeds? Am reading conflicting reports.

 

Here's the test via the Deco app:

 

Topology:

 

 

Collective signal strength:

 

 

Garden Room Deco showing Strong Signal.

 

 

Will try seeing if I can get the Garden Office to reach the main deco directly, but I'm not holding my breath!

  @BubbaHubba 

 

>Would the newer Deco systems help with the speeds? Am reading conflicting reports.

 

They would, if the right system is selected. In your case, where you have multiple WiFi hops, you should be looking at tri-band Deco systems. With tri-band system each hop still loses the speed, but less that half.

 

If you want improvement on budget, I would recommend Deco M9 Plus set instead of M5s. M9 Plus is same WiFi5 standard, looks very much like M5 just slightly bigger, but it is tri-band. In my tests at my house Main Deco M9 Plus delivers up to 630Mbps, which is faster than your Internet link. Satellite Deco M9 Plus delivers up to 490 Mbps. I would confidently guess, you garden Deco would be getting about 250-300Mbps speed if you replace your 4-set M5 with 4-set M9 Plus.

 

A note of caveat: TP-Link does not sell M9 Plus as single units. So, if you decided to go with M9 Plus, you should buy two 2-unit sets. Don't buy one 3-unit set thinking you could add single M9 Plus later.

 

You could go with WiFi6 Deco sets, they would be more expensive but they could make sense if you plan to upgrade your Internet link to gigabit in the next 3-5 years, and if you really, really need faster WiFi speeds than M9 Plus set could deliver. Otherwise, more expensive WiFi 6 Deco model may just be a waste of money. I have M9 Plus at my house as Main Deco and one of satellites, and while my Internet link is gigabit I have found I don't need gigabit WiFi speeds for my household needs. 

 

TP-Link has quite a number of Deco models. As far as I can tell, tri-band WiFi6 Deco models are X68, very expensive X90, also XE75 that is WiFi6 and WiFi6E. I might have missed one or two, but choosing Deco model just make sure it says tri-band in the description.

I think as Alexandre has helped narrow down - too many hops and the M5 may not "cut the mustard", so to speak... looking at what plausible upgrades there are. No red lights, app is up to date (as is firmware) and connecting wirelessly to the main deco now gives me around the 400mbps mark which is the norm for this deco, apparently (even with 5ghz!).

  @Alexandre. 

 

I understand - will weigh up what to get as I only got the M5s a year ago... however with a young family who will only soak up more bandwidth and two home workers, I think we'll need to future proof and I really am impressed with the Deco ecosystem. 

Thank you for you help; I do think it's a model issue and not a Virgin Media one! 

  @BubbaHubba 

 

Until you decide what to replace Deco M5 with, there are things you may be able to do to improve your Deco mesh performance. I'll list them all for you to figure which are applicable to your house:

 

1. Connect Main Deco (Kitchen) to Living Room Deco with Ethernet cable. That will make Living Room Deco WiFi as fast as Main Deco. It will eliminate one hop and improve WiFi speed of your Garden Deco, a least in theory, to what your current secondary Deco speed is.

 

2. Connect Living Room Deco to Garden Room Deco with Ethernet cable. Same idea as above and same speed improvement on Garden Deco.

 

3. Obviously, connecting all mentioned above three Deco with Ethernet cables will boost WiFi speeds everywhere, but I am sure you've thought about it already. Still, if this is feasible, even with some efforts and even on temporary basis, that's an option to consider.

 

4. Connect Garden Room Deco to the rest of Deco mesh with powerline adapters. This does not always work, because not every powerline adapter is compatible with Deco Ethernet backhaul protocols, but when it does you should expect Garden Room Deco speed to improve. At my house in my tests I've got 100Mbps from M5 connected through powerline adapters, and these adapters I have are quite old. 

For that to work you will need a pair of powerline adapters, must have both of them on same circuit breaker.

If you are interested in this option and it is feasible for your house, I can provide more details.