Wireless router for large house recomendations

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Ottumwa, Iowa
I have bought a new house that is much larger than our current one. Currently I use a Netgear Nighthawk R6350 that covers the current 1200sqft ranch nicely from a central point in my basement. The new house is 3700sqft with a full basement and partial second floor in a bad cell reception area. I will be adding a cell booster but in my experience they are temperamental at best so a good wifi setup will be needed. The house was built in 2004 and from the few glances at the innards of it it doesn't appear to have much if any network or phone lines. We do Roku and Fire TV on all of our TV's and I have been getting into the smart home lighting thing.

I like the idea of doing a Ubiquiti setup but the price gouging for the basics or unavailability directly from Ubiquiti is off putting for what I think I need. I may do it eventually when they are not suffering from the chip shortage but in the mean time I am looking at using Netgear equipment. Short term I am thinking about using the Nighthawk mesh system. Has anyone used this or have an opinion on it?
 
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I've been pretty happy with my Asus ZenWifi AX mesh system. I only have two currently. You'll be covering more area that I am. I would like to expand with one more device just to super cover. They have a dedicated wireless backhaul or can be plugged in if you can fish a network cable.
 
We have a mesh system provided by our ISP. The main router is connected to the secondary antenna via MoCA. I've been quite happy with the system.
 
We have a mesh system provided by our ISP. The main router is connected to the secondary antenna via MoCA. I've been quite happy with the system.
Plume has become a common ISP provide mesh system. Little dongles that just plug into an outlet.
 
The new ISP asked if I had my own router but I didn't ask what theirs cost. My current cable ISP was either $3 or $5 a month for their modem so it pays to have your own. I would guess it is the same at the new place for their router.
 
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The new ISP asked if I had my own router but I didn't ask what theirs cost. My current cable ISP was either $3 or $5 a month for their modem so it pays to have your own. I would guess it is the same at the new place for their router.
Modem or router?
 
Our cable company supplies Eero mesh system as part of their setup. It is a 2500 sq ft main level house. They use the main Eero box and one extra Eero box for coverage. Our 4 - TVs and wireless run off the Eeros mesh system. I have 1 Gig service and can consistently get 600 Mbps using Eero.
It works with no fuss, no muss. That's all I want in a system.
 
You basically have 2 options: range extension via repeaters / mesh networking, or some sort of hardwiring to connect access point / range extension to the main router.

I've tried both and mesh is fine, cheaper until they are too far out. To me if I am going super far I would just use HomePlug based (AV2, MIMO) range extenders to reach from one end of the house to the other and connect an access point / mesh repeater to it via ethernet. I.e. main router on one end of the house, connect one LAN port to a Powerline ethernet adapter, connect another Powerline ethernet adapter to the other end of the house, connect a mesh repeater to the Powerline adapter via ethernet.
 
Tri band mesh router.

You can let them talk to each other through the 2.4 channel, or run a Cat 5E/6 hardwire from the base node to the other nodes…

I like Linksys,…

Look at Goodwill Techworks or Shop Goodwill dot com…
 
I have a Netgear Orbi RBR850 x 3 covering three floors and 3600 sqft with a 575Mbps internet connection. Looking at the app there are currently 28 devices (with no kids home) on the network with four 4k AppleTVs. We often have all four 4k TVs streaming 4k content with no issues. Expensive, but overall very fast and it has been flawless.
 
I have a Netgear Orbi RBR850 x 3 covering three floors and 3600 sqft with a 575Mbps internet connection. Looking at the app there are currently 28 devices (with no kids home) on the network with four 4k AppleTVs. We often have all four 4k TVs streaming 4k content with no issues. Expensive, but overall very fast and it has been flawless.
Sounds like PWMDMD has the answer for the OP. I dont use a mesh system. Previous home was 3000 SF and centrally located Motorola router worked perfect. Still use it in the new home which is now just my wife and I and smaller home so no issues.

Which leads me to if the OP isnt comfortable spending the money on the Orbi he can try a TP link Deco 7200 (claims up to 5000 sq ft), worst that can happen he buys it at Walmart or Walmart.com and returns it if he doest like it.

(claims up to 7000 sq ft TP Link AXE 5400 3 pads on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Deco...&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584138878586011&th=1

 
3 Ubiquiti Unifi AP Lites runs the same as other 3 AP mesh systems but you will have to buy a POE power injector so it may not look as clean as you want. 1 for each floor mounted on the ceiling will work or start with 2, one on the first and one on the second floor if the basement isn't used often and expand if needed.

Unfortunately this is the only mesh system I have experience with so I cannot comment on others. I've seen the ASUS one a coworker uses at his house though and it seems to be running good now after having some initial setup issues (I've never had good experience with non-PC Hardware ASUS stuff.)
 
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I just use two access points connected via cat5e cable to my router. The two access points aren't even the same brand. I just set the SSID and the encryption the same on both units. It works fine. Seems most devices are smart enough to roam to the access point with the best signal.
 
Plop the existing router and it might work fine!

The SF is less irrelevant and more important are the walls construction and things like chimneys etc that make or break a router.

My home is only 2500 SF but requires 4 mesh routers to cover all areas with fast Wi-Fi due to massive chimney, horsehair plaster walls, solid wood doors, and also exterior wall between addition and 1910 main house.

My brother has a 3000SF ranch with paper thin modern walls / cheap hollow doors and the single router works fine .
 
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Lots of options. I tried the Comcast router with their pods and performance was very poor. I purchased a TP-Link tri-band X90 mesh router (~$350). Home is 3750 sq ft and using two TP-Link devices, it covers the home nicely. I have blink cameras, two smart TVs, laptops, phones and tablets and streaming works well.
 
Tri band mesh router.

You can let them talk to each other through the 2.4 channel, or run a Cat 5E/6 hardwire from the base node to the other nodes…

I like Linksys,…

Look at Goodwill Techworks or Shop Goodwill dot com…
why would you want them connected with the low bandwidth option??
 
2.4 GHz band is used for DNS, DHCP, and other maintenance traffic.
The lower 5 GHz band is used for slower web traffic,
The upper 5 GHz band is used for faster web traffic.
That is not how it works at all. The Linksys page doesn't say that either. When an endpoint (user device like a laptop or phone) connects to a wifi network, all Internet traffic goes through the one radio channel that it has.

2.4 is for clients that aren't capable of anything else. If you don't have any such clients it makes sense to turn 2.4 off entirely. 5 GHz is for modern clients. The second 5 GHz radio in a tri-band router is typically set aside for mesh connections to additional routers.
 
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