Hi...I need some advise. I want to install a mesh network in my house. It's about 500 Sq Mts. There's quite a few good Wifi 6 mesh systems now but my question is do I really need a wifi 6 or will wifi 5 be sufficient enough? Considering that I'm on PLDT Fibr with plan 100Mbps isn't a wifi 5 configuration enough since wifi 6 systems are built mainly for those with 1Gbps speeds? Thanks.
first thing is... are your client devices (your laptop, smartphone, etc... anything that you used to access internet) is Wifi 6 ready? If no then, upgrading your wireless network appliance is a waste of money.
for me, I only consider upgrading to newer wifi generation if all devices or at least more than 60% of the devices I used is WiFi 6 supported already.
and for wifi, just make sure to connect to 5ghz. the range is not that good at 5ghz but you can at least able to saturate that 100mbps line speed to PLDT. 2.4ghz wouldnt suffice, best case scenario for 2.4ghz wifi is around 50mbps worst is like 10mbps or slower, this is due to air broadcast congestion in your place.
for me, forget all those wifi 6 since I can assumes 0-10% the device your using right now is wifi6 ready, what I suggest you to do is buy a WiFi Mesh kits (PLDT already offering some with their Whole Home Wifi plans), that will most likely solve both the speed and range youre having now. of course while connected to 5ghz if you want to achive that 100mbps line speed on your wireless devices. since your house if big, you will have to buy a lot of it and place it all over your place. this is what I usually recommend for noobie users and can be setup by just download the app in google play store or apple app store.
for advance users, buying a Ubiquiti AP AC LR and setup and mesh network with it, this is much more guranteed setup for solid connection, you will also need to buy the Cloud Key as well if you want the Roaming to work smoothly.
Ubiquiti is probably a much cleaner look to setup but you will need someone to professionally install it for you, otherwise Wifi mesh kit will do the job, but you will have to buy a bunch of those to have a whole coverage in your entire house, 3 pieces of pucks wont cut it, probably 10 or more.
Recently, I was also considering to upgrade my Asus Wifi 5 router to a Ubiquiti Amplfi Alien Wifi 6 router but decided against it because of the reasons pointed out by polka above and the fact that my current router is serving me well. In fact, recent firmware upgrades from Asus have not only patched security vulnerabilities over the past years, but also enabled wifi mesh and 160Hz channel bandwidth, the latter of which, allowed the built-in WLAN of my Z390-E motherboard to auto-negotiate the wifi connection as seen below:
All that said, if I were to be starting from scratch, I would probably go wifi 6 for future proofing or at least for having WPA3 security which is very important to me. Current and newer mobile devices like smartphones and tablet seem to adopting the standard at a fairly good rate and when there are a lot of simultaneous clients, support for ODFMA would also seem to be useful.
Thanks for all the info and help. Yes a lot of my stuff's are actually wifi 6 ready. But the question is even if they are PLDTs speed is limited to only about 100Mbps-150Mbps which wifi5 mesh systems can handle correct? So even if I do get the wifi 6 capable mesh system it's benefits actually won't matter right? BDW I'm planning on getting either the Asus CT8 or XT8 if I go the wifi 6 route. My current wifi router apart from the modem/wifi router supplied by PLDT is the Asus AC88U. It's a 2 level house with the routers on the top floor. Some areas on the lower part of the house are only getting wifi via a TP Link Powerline extender which I got many years back that is only IEEE 802.11n thus the lower speeds downstairs. That's why I plan to get a mesh system to boost the speeds on the lower part of the house.
Yes I've seen that video actually. So in terms of speed boost via wifi getting a wifi 6 capable router won't be any improvement compared to a wifi 5 router since my speed is capped at 100Mbps anyway right? Say I'm standing 60 feet away from my router either of the wifi 5/6 router will give me the same speeds maxed at 100Mbps correct?
^ you can still benefit with WiFi 6 actually, just make sure both client and AP support OFDMA to take advantage the goodness of WiFi 6. Take note, WiFi 6's OFDMA support is just a optional feature, not a mandatory so not all manufacturers are obligated to implement that feature, specially for cost saving reasons.
one thing I liked kasi sa WiFi 6 OFDMA is you only use the bandwidth that you need. as explained in the video i tagged below
still, for now, stick with AC wifi (wifi 5) for cost reasons, parehas lang naman gagastusin mo dyan pag nag upgrade ka na sa WIFi 6 in the future rather than upgrading now to WiFi 6 which is much expensive now a days.
Anyone here bought a HUAWEI WiFi AX3 Pro (Quad-core) Wi-Fi 6 Plus Dual Band Smart Router 3000 Mbps High Speed Router? Around 3k lang kasi sa l*z*da.... ok kaya to?
^I dont really like the crap that they put on that wifi router including the xiaomi offers. but the xiaomi ones is very promising since it uses the top of the line chipset from qualcomm, so you might ought to be interested on that instead.
Present internet speed using 3rd party Router which is an Asus AX86U Wifi 6 Gaming Router and Asus TUF 3000 Wifi 6 Gaming Router thru AI mesh. ISP is Converge Plan2000 at 300 mbps while disabling default wifi modem router.
