Virgin Media Hub 3 (M350) + Tenda MW6 to Hub 4 (1Gig)

mdmcholet

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Hi,

I had Virgin Media M350Mb and using the hub 3 in modem mode with the Tenda MW6 mesh system as the wifi was flaky in parts of my house and was working well.

Today I got the hub 4 and 1Gig package. Changed over no problem, did some speed tests from my iPhone and iMac over wifi approx 520mb d/l, which is a bit above the minimum speed.

I then decided to switch to modem mode on the hub 4 and connect my Tenda mesh and the speed has dropped down to around 190mb d/l. I swapped back and speeds back up to 500+

So my question is it not worth it to have the Tenda mesh now? one reason I had it is my son was connecting via ethernet to one of the Tenda nodes from his gaming PC.

Many thanks
 
Maybe the Tenda cannot "route" as fast as your Hub4.

A common mistake newbies make is in thinking that you need to use "modem mode" to disable a SOHO routers Wi-Fi. You don't. Most SOHO Routers will let you disable the Wi-Fi radios in a couple of clicks if you do not want to use their Wi-Fi - no need to rush to "modem mode." There's other reason you might prefer "modem mode," but disabling Wi-Fi is not one of them.

Instead of running the Hub4 in modem mode, I'd run it in routing mode (as it will almost certainly have the WAN-to-LAN routing capacity for your Internet service & you can still use all it's ethernet ports) and run the Tenda system "just" as a fleet of Wi-Fi AP's - "bridge mode" I believe they call it.

If you want to get into the "numbers game" I'd proceed as follows:

Internet "speed test" site are not the best way to assess local Wi-Fi capacity, but if it's all you've got:

First put your Hub4 in router mode, then test using something cabled to it to establish your baseline Internet capacity.

Enable only the 5GHz radio on your Hub4.

Then, with all the Tendas turned off, test Hub4 Wi-Fi which will establish what the Wi-Fi client device you are using to test is capable of.

Then turn off Hub4 Wi-Fi, connect up the first MW6 node (only one of them) put it into bridge mode and test again - ideally in the same locale as your Hub4 if possible and if possible using onl the 5GHz radios on the Tendas.

Then progressively add in the remaining MW6 nodes and see how they perform. Ideally, you'd give them all different SSID's whilst testing so you can be sure which node you are testing against at any time. If you leave all the SSID's the same, you cannot "just assume" that your client device is connected (called "Associated" in Wi-Fi speak) to the node you are closest to. Wi-Fi clients are not constantly "hunting for the best signal."

The MW6 says if good for Wi-Fi link rates up to 867mbps, which whilst not the best, is pretty good for 802.11AC. Of course, that requires clients with the same capabilities.

Why "Link Rate" and "throughput" (the latter is what speed test measures) are not the same thing and why the latter is expected to be (for Wi-Fi significantly) less than the former is a frequent topic of discussion here. Doubtless, we can go through again.

I see no reason to get rid of your Tenda - I don't use one but the spec. looks decent enough. There may be some tweaks required to the radio channel plan (if Tenda will allow it) but the jumping off point is to slog through the baseline testing I've outlined above and see what's up.
 
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Thank you for your reply, i will look to try all of that (when the kids not around - holidays!).

For now I have the hub 4 as the router, and have the tenda connected via ethernet to the hub and has its only SSID/network purely so my son can connect his PC to the tenda node buy cable.
 

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