On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 09:03:29AM +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:
As to my own situation: having a cable (or homeplug) to upstairs with a wifi access point there would likely work quite well, although it would (I believe?) then really need to be on a different SSID to work properly. (In a completely unrelated coincidence I spent most of yesterday on site trying to get some devices to reliably connect to a wifi network which comprised multiple access points on one network that really didn't work very well, and that was set up by professionals. It bears out my own experience at home with wifi repeaters and multiple access points and doesn't give me much confidence in success via that route.)
I simply have two WiFi routers with separate SSIDs, passwords, etc. One covers the front of the house and the other the back of the house, both are on a window cill upstairs and coverage through the floor to downstairs seems fine.
I've never really tried the 'repeaters' or 'access points' thing. The two 'good' routers manage to cover our large (as I said, 6 bedrooms) house pretty well. One is a Draytek Vigor 2820n and the other is a Microtik. It's very noticeable that other routers in the same places (I have a BT Home Hub3 and a Fonera modem running too) don't produce anywhere near as good a signal.
The mesh solutions seem to also allow for the access points to be on cable for improved speed, but work better as a single wifi network. Well that's as much as I've learned from reviews anyway...
My two routers are wired.