Tenda Tri-Band Mesh vs Virgin Extender

[Paul6655]

Have had a Virgin engineer tell me that a Mesh system will be better in our old Victorian thick walled house rather than the one Virgin extender that I currently have .

If I fit a mesh do I stop using the extender or if I leave it connected will they 'confuse ' each other ?

Issue flagged up when I upgraded to Gig 1 with a Hub 4 2 weeks ago - on checking I was never getting more than 400mbps on virgins own speed checker with the router hard wired to my desktop - the engineer also said that many devices will not handle 1Gig speed anyway - so I am dropping back to 500Mbps at a much cheaper price (thanks to threatening to leave altogether )..

Many thanks for any help - 

Regards

Pauk

[Tudor]

VM pods are free on 1G and you can get up to three, they are a mesh system. Best to try first as they will cost you nothing.

[Paul6655]

Many thanks - due to lack of anywhere near 1Gig speed (as demonstrated to the Virgin engineer) I have reverted down to 500Mbs so will not get free Mesh pods -I am happy to buy if they are indeed better than the current Virgin extender - for £150 Amazon have a Tenda AC2100 WiFi6 triband 3 pod set - seems like a good option ?
2nd part of question was - If I fit a mesh do I stop using the extender or if I leave it connected will they 'confuse ' each other ?

Thanks for all help and advice

[Tudor · Accepted solution]

You need to disconnect the extender and put the VM hub into modem mode.

How to put a VM hub into modem mode:

1) Access your hub on 192.168.0.1, sign on and put it into modem mode. On the Hub3 the bottom LED will change to magenta, on a Hub4 the LED band will be green. Best done from a wired connection.

2) Turn off the hub and disconnect any Ethernet cables

3) Fully initialise your own router or mesh master unit and make sure the WAN port is set to DHCP

4) Connect your router or mesh master unit to the VM hub with an Ethernet cable, Cat5e or Cat6, any higher specification is a waste of money

5) Turn on the VM hub.

6) You should now be able to access the internet and the hub will now be on 192.168.100.1

Note1: this only needs doing once for each new router or VM changes your WAN IP address.

Note2: If you have a Hub4 and your own router is NOT 192.168.0.1 then it’s possible that you can still access the VM hub on 192.168.0.1

[Paul6655]

Thank you - I will give it a go

Regards

Paul