Thursday, January 3, 2019

Mesh Network or Multiple PowerLINEs?

I have a client who owns and runs a Bed & Breakfast inside a house built in 1888. The structure consists of a restaurant of large open rooms downstairs, along with a centrally located modem and single access point. Downstairs WiFi is not really a concern, as it's an upscale restaurant so there aren't any users for it other than staff. Upstairs towards the front of the building has several bedrooms. At the top of the stairs (and central entry for virtually every bedroom) is a single Netgear EX6100 extender. A couple of the bedrooms have very thick walls between them (literally 6"-14" thick). Therefore, walking through the doorway of some bedrooms will near immediately lose ALL signal from the extender. Some rooms if even the slightest of signal, it's completely unusable.

Because of the age of the structure, running additional wiring is not an option. I don't have personal experience with mesh networking, but I also fear issues with trying a mesh system considering the thick walls in the building already causing issues. But, I also thought of using a few of Netgear's PowerLINE products that have WiFi output and setting up several of those in each of the bedrooms. Which of these options would be a more feasible solution, or is there another one I'm not aware of?



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