@Quintusson 

 

It's a good drawing, good enough to figure what you have.

 

I have questions for you that will help to give you recommendations:

 

1. What is the speed of your Internet connection? 

This will help to figure which Deco model is right for your house.

 

2. Do you have acceptable WiFi coverage over the house with what you have now, or are there WiFi signal gaps (and where) you need to have covered?

This will assist with figuring how many Deco nodes you'll need.

 

3. If you move WiFi Extender from the Kitchen and place it to Spare Bedroom near the Ethernet cable, for testing purposes, will you have good WiFi coverage with that setup all over the house?

Same reason as question #2.

 

4. Currently, in the kitchen, does WiFi extender connect to Main Router or to Bedroom 2nd Router?

This will help with Deco mesh topology related decisions.

 

5. What are brands and model names of both routers and of WiFi extender?

This is to make sure you are getting Deco mesh with WiFi protocol at least as good as what you have now. 

  @Alexandre. Thanks for responding so quickly.

 

1. What is the speed of your Internet connection? 

This will help to figure which Deco model is right for your house.

- Currently it's 100Mbps, but looking to upgrade to 200- or 300Mbps in the short term.

 

2. Do you have acceptable WiFi coverage over the house with what you have now, or are there WiFi signal gaps (and where) you need to have covered?

This will assist with figuring how many Deco nodes you'll need.

 - Wi-fi coverage wise, the house is covered, though the extender is not strong enough to run my son's gaming PC hence a separate cable that runs there. Also,the extender drops quite badly in speed (tested now from son's room with door closed and got 6Mbps only). The kitchen has an opening in the wall between it and the lounge, so the signal from the main router reaches the extender. Honestly, my main gripe is needing to manually switch between MainWifi and MainWifi_Extender the whole time if I am busy in the kitchen or such and keeping a decent speed while doing so. 

 

3. If you move WiFi Extender from the Kitchen and place it to Spare Bedroom near the Ethernet cable, for testing purposes, will you have good WiFi coverage with that setup all over the house?

Same reason as question #2.

 - As per response in Q2, due to the opening in the wall (not sure what designers or architects call it), the extender gets a decent signal from the main router as it's almost uninterrupted by walls. If I were to move it to the spare bedroom, I would need to try and connect it to the main bedroom signal, but that's through many walls, so may not suffice

 

4. Currently, in the kitchen, does WiFi extender connects to Main Router or to Bedroom 2nd Router?

 - It connects to the main router. Between there and the main bedroom there are too many walls to interrupt signal

 

Just realised now, I forgot to draw in the dining room. It's right between the kitchen and where the main router is. That section of the house is quite open plan with no doors between each room, but double door sized spaces entering into each area.

 

I do not mind buying a 3 piece mesh kit, and maybe an additional 4th one if needed for better coverage (though I've read on here, there's an issue on that with the X20 as it's very model specific and I not sure what the model is I can get on special). I also might, if it's still on special then (slightly limited with cash) get the M9 plus as I have seen people say it's quite brilliant. But things like the X50 or such is out of price range.

 

Hope this helps?

Going to get someone to install it for me - what I know about routers, etc. is quite scary actually - so if I need to run an additional Cat6 cable to another place where one of the routers would need to be, I do not mind. Thinking of getting a 8 port gigabit switch to connect to main router in any case as my gaming- and work PC's are both in the area where the main router is and I'm old-school in preferring a cable connection to them (unless you can convince me otherwise - refer earlier comment about being a caveman re networking), and to run to my son's PC as well

  @Quintusson 

 

One more thing. 

 

In some regions TP-Link started to offer Deco X10, which is even more budget-friendly than X20 and also supports WiFi6. Check if they sell X10 in your region and if you can get four X10s (it will be two 2-unit sets) for about the price of 3-unit set of X20.

 

If you can, and if you can get Ethernet cable to the Kitchen from Main Router, having four X10s will be preferred Deco mesh setup. First three Deco X10 will go same places as with X20/M9 Plus/M5 deployment, 4th Deco X10 goes to Kitchen and is also hardwired.

  @Alexandre

 

I truly appreciate all the thorough feedback, thank you. My current main router does not support mesh however, so I assume I would need to get a new one to run the DECO setup? Or could I use one of the satelites I get to run as a main router (that was my thinking initially, hence saying I wanted to get a 8-port gigabit switch linked to it).

  @Quintusson 

 

You will not need to buy new router. The plan I have for you is same I had for myself: start with what already there, make minimal changes to existent network - and if Deco mesh is not up to expectations just power it off, send back to retailer for refund and have original network setup back without much efforts.

 

When you get familiar with Deco mesh, you can start experimenting. You will always have original Deco mesh configuration to rollback if something does not work. If you try to make many changes at once at the beginning, it'll be hard to figure what went wrong if it did.

 

Do not buy networking switch yet - not every switch is compatible with Deco mesh.

 

The plan is for you to get Deco mesh hardware, configure it using Deco app on smartphone (must have smartphone), and then run it in Access Point mode: What’s the difference between Access Point mode and Router mode on the Deco?

In Access Point mode, Deco will provide WiFi mesh, Main Router will still manage LAN: IP addresses allocation, DHCP, DNS, etc., etc. 

The additional benefit of AP mode is you can use all Ethernet ports on Main Router and everything connected to Deco mesh (wired and wireless) and to Main Router LAN ports will be on the same network.

 

Let me know when you order Deco and what model, and I'll give you recommendations on how to configure it. TP-Link documentation that comes with Deco should be enough, but few steps I may need to clarify for you to make it seamless experience.