We have a big house and parts of it have 1930s brick walls so to provide reasonable WiFi coverage needs several APs in addition to the Draytek 2860n router which does the VDSL as well.
At present, we have wired ethernet to the following:- Draytek 2860n in my study upstairs, provides reasonable WiFi upstairs (not heavily used anyway). VDSL (FTTC) comes in here.
TP-Link TD9980 router used as an AP in the breakfast room at the back of the house, provides WiFi in breakfast room, kitchen and outside, seems pretty reliable.
Draytek 2820n used as AP in the lounge, covers lounge and dining room, this needs replacing as it's showing its age.
Tenda W311R used as AP in my wife's Cabin which is thirty or forty metres from the house, UTP ethernet cable is buried. Works pretty much OK in the cabin except, occasionally, when the RJ45 plug gets pulled out! :-)
Each router has its own SSID, '2860n', 'breakfast', 'lounge', 'cabin'. I just disconnect and reconnect my laptop as I go back and forth between the breakfast room and the lounge (I have a two character command line script to do it for me). People with mobile phones seem to manage reasonably OK but I suspect it's not ideal for them.
However, as noted above, the Draytek 2820n is getting a bit unreliable (dropped connections, odd other quirks) and its wired switch is only 100Mb/s so wired clients in the lounge are limited to 100Mb/s when using the LAN. So I'm looking for something to replace the 2820n.
As you can see from the above I'm not one to buy new stuff when it's not necessary, all my 'APs' are actually old routers with the WAN side not used. I *do* need wired ethernet on most of them, the lounge has an Onkyo box and the TV wired, the breakfast room has a Gigaset base station, the cabin has my wife's laptop connected to it quite frequently.
So, I've been sort of wondering whether a 'mesh' system will make life easier in the house, pension off the 2820n and the TD9980, ignore the WiFi from the 2860n and have (say) three wired backhaul mesh APs providing coverage. Will this *actually* work for my laptop, or will it simply stay stuck on the first AP it finds? As far as I understand it mesh depends on the *clients* co-operating to some extent and moving from AP to AP and I'm not at all sure my Linux clients are going to do that well.
Alternatively should I just do a straight one-for-one replacement of the 2820n with a 'proper' AP?
So recommendations and ideas please. If I go for 'mesh' my requirements are:- Web configuration (I hate configuring with a 'phone) Wired backhaul easy Several gigabit wired connections per AP (I think this may be a killer)
For a replacement AP I'm after:- Web configuration Gigabit switch incorporated May have to be a router I suppose, if so easy to ignore WAN
Finally I don't want to spend hundreds of pounds on this, I *might* stretch to the sort of £150-200 area for a mesh system if I'm persuaded that it will really improve things but that's about my limit.