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Originally Posted by Catfishjeff
We found that the combination of concrete exterior walls, metal studs and extra insulation makes for a lot of dead spots around the house, lanai and birdcage. And since we have over 50 devices on our WiFi we had to have a near perfect system. So here’s what we did. First we put our Spectrum modem in the closet with the ac return unit where it’s cool. In our layout this closet is only a few feet from where the coaxial cable from Spectrum comes into the same cabinet with the sprinkler system controls. We added a shelf in the closet where the spectrum modem is located and where our 12 port switch is. From there we ran Ethernet cables to four access points inside the house, one in the birdcage and one in the front of the house. This gives us a full 500mps speed inside and outside the house. We had previously tried a mesh system and found that the speed was cut by 50% and with our type of construction the connection between the modules was sometimes less than great which resulted in some very strange connections - like the mesh unit in the garage was talking to the camera in the birdcage or the unit in the lanai talking to the computer in the front office. Now with the access point system the smart devices are talking to the nearest point and thus their performance is usually terrific. And all TVs, computers and IOS devices stream incredibly fast. It was pricey but the results are worth it.
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What you did is fine but now is outdated. With the newer mesh wifi systems from Netgear (Orbi), Eero (Amazon) and TP-Link for example, they employ a dedicated backhaul network for the nodes to communicate. Similar to what you are doing by connecting Access Points to the main router. The result is you get near-wired throughput without all the work you went through. With the newer Wifi 6E and 7 they mostly use the 2.4, 5 and 6Ghz bands for the backhaul. The 6Ghz band in our size homes here in the Villages makes a significant improvement to connectivity. The trend is to provide more sophisticated wireless systems at prices that most can afford negating the need for wired internet throughout your home. For example, the new Orbi WiFi 7 has a node throughput, under ideal conditions, of 10GBS. True it's incredibly expensive but over time this capability will come down to "reasonable" pricing. In addition, If you buy a new home in the newer areas in the south Villages such as Dabney, Centric fiber preinstalls the fiber, the router and the Wifi and if you choose to sign up all you need to do is configure your devices and you have Wifi throughout your home with little to no work on your part. True it might not be full speed everywhere but most people in the Villages don't care or even know about that and are happy as long as they get a connection everywhere in the home.