Best way to offer wifi coverage in a big house.

[u/Chemical_Ad_2991]

Hi,

I have a B&B, and I currently have an old setup made out of 7 tp link extenders to offer coverage in the whole building, which consists of 3 floors that are separated by thick walls.
It runs great on most of the areas, but I had to connect to extenders to other extenders to be able to offer coverage in those places, and the speed there is lacking. (<= 30 Mbps).
I'm thinking of changing this to a better system, and I thought about either wifi mesh or Powerline and adapters.
I'm not sure if one would be better than the other for my scenario.

I am open to any ideas, even if they were not mentioned by me.
The desired speed would be (>= 100 Mbps).
Mention: I do have a Poe switch, but I wouldn't want to run cable through my whole building but I am able to use Poe-powered devices.

[u/SpagNMeatball]

The best is always running Ethernet to places where you can put an AP. If you can’t run Ethernet and you have coax, MoCA adapters works great. A WiFi Mesh system is next, I know some people with Orbi and it works well, but there are others. Powerline adapters can work but would be the last thing I would use. Designing good WiFi is a challenge, if you get a strong AP signal, you still have to consider that the phone also has to transmit back through the same walls to get to the AP and its radios are not as strong. In a B&B I would want a smaller, lower power AP in each room connected back to the switch, then a couple in the public areas. There are tools for measuring signal strength, use those to test with and identify holes in coverage.

[u/carguy143 → u/SpagNMeatball]

Powerline adapters are great for quick deployment in a pinch but they are only as good as the electrical wiring, and limitations mean they don't work very well if they're on different circuit breakers or ring mains as we call them in the UK. Furthermore, the higher frequencies they use can cause a reduction in internet data rates but as we move away from VDSL to FTTP connections, this becomes less of an issue.

Running ethernet was the best thing I did but if I was somewhere that wanted something up and running quickly while I took care of wiring in the ethernet, I would 100% try some powerlines.

[u/Chemical_Ad_2991 → u/SpagNMeatball]

Thank you for the detailed answer.
Will think about where I could run Ethernet, and for the other areas I will go with a mesh system

[u/Ed-Dos]

If you don't want to run ethernet then you don't want good coverage to the whole building. But get rid of the extenders(they half the signal) and use a mesh system and however many nodes you'll need to achieve your desired result without ethernet backual. But it would be infinitely better if you could run ethernet with your mesh system for wired backhaul.

[u/RE4Lyfe]

Extenders cut speeds in half or more

You definitely want a mesh system. POE would be great but if you can’t run Ethernet to most of the building… then you can’t really use POE.

Although a consumer grade system might work ok, since this is a business and you need something reliable I would highly recommend you go with an Omada setup. You’ll have a greater level of setup, control and the ability to diagnose any issues (plus better support). They also support POE for the areas that have ethernet

Power line adapters should be your absolute last resort

[u/Airtie2]

r/networking or r/homenetworking would be better suited for your questions. In short, you need a proper networking setup with a switch connecting all your devices by ethernet instead of connecting one extender to another one.

[u/Necessary-Age9878]

If you have to spend the money, I strongly installing ethernet cables to mutliple central points and have a simple cheap APs (eg used cisco from ebay). Use a handyman to get the job done. A lot less painful in the long run.