Virgin Media Community

[chris0701]

I live in an old tenement in Edinburgh and the walls are as thick as anything so I have the most horrendous wifi. Now I've worked in broadband support before (not for VM) so I'm fully aware of how to diagnose wifi connections and no good. Wired up the internet is great and in the same room the wifi is great but go to another room and the wifi is awful.

At this point I'm looking at how to improve the wifi around my home and I'm thinking a mesh system would be ideal as we can't hard wire ethernet ports around the place. How would people compare Orbi with Google Mesh and Ubiquiti Hifi? Willing to spend around £300/350 if necessary. It would be ideal if each point could have an ethernet connection (aware the hifi extenders don't have these) but if the wifi is good enough with the Hifi may consider.

[Tudor]

I have always had success with Ubiquiti equipment. They have a new Amplifi router out that does WiFi6 and by all accounts it’s excellent. It has mesh available. 

[chris0701]

Thanks for your reply. I'm very interested in the new Amplifi router. I've tried powerline extenders (TP Link AV2000) and they were rubbish (100mb with VM box one room, 60 next, 5 next; terrible) so mesh may be the way to go. I'll have a think...

[chris0701]

So if anyone is reading and is interested, I decided to go for a Amplify HD setup and WOW, what a difference. On a 100mb package, in the rooms we were struggling to get a connection, we now have 60/70mb download and 10mb upload, which in an old building like I live in with mega wifi resistant walls is great.

Also very impressed with how quick the system was to setup. Just switch the VM box over to modem mode, plugged in, followed the instructions on the Amplifi app and done. Took 10 minutes to setup.

[Tudor]

Glad to hear of your success. 

[KuiN60833]

Hi @chris0701, so glad to have stumbled across this thread. I'm also in an Edinburgh tenement and have been researching Ubiquiti gear to try to work around the awful WiFi-killing walls. Relieved to know there is a solution!

Are you able to share any more info about which Amplifi devices you got and how you've positioned them in the flat?

[gary_dexter]

This is worth knowing as well: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/11/ubiquiti-says-customer-data-may-have-been-accessed-in-data-breach/

[KuiN60833]

In case it helps anyone else despairing at the Victorians failing to take WiFi into account when designing Edinburgh tenements and come across this thread:

I decided to go for a Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD access point and no longer have any wifi issues. At all.

A lot of the problems - that I had assumed were caused by the thick walls & the noisy RF environment from other flats' wifi - seem to have been caused solely by the poor WiFi performance of the Super Hub 3 ...