Hi Tony,

Thanks for that, interesting points to bear in mind, I have both movie and 
static devices, I can see me forking out for Mesh with Ethernet sockets:-(

Steve.


On 28 Jun 2018, at 09:40, A C Crooks <[email protected]> wrote:

In my mind there are a lot of 'ifs' to consider. 

If you have many mobile devices - we have 2 iPhones, 3 iPads, etc., - then a 
mesh solution is good as you have a single WiFi network name and devices 
automatically switch between mesh nodes. 
If you have mostly static devices - Macs, Apple TV, smart TV, etc., - then 
Ethernet, powerline, powerline with local WiFi probably will serve well.
If you have a need for good networking in the garden, as we do, then a mesh 
solution will work well. 
And so on.

We have a lot of reinforced concrete in the structure of our town house and I 
thought that a combination of Ethernet and powerline adapters would be the best 
bet. But even the best powerline units didn’t seem to sustain enough throughput 
for video streaming. 

Some mesh systems allow mesh units to be connected by Ethernet which would have 
worked well for us, but I didn’t fancy punting £300+ to discover if it would 
work or not. 

We took a punt on a two disc BT Whole Home mesh system about 6 months ago as it 
was on offer at £90 from the BT Shop online store, formerly Dabs, and it was 
very easy to set up, currently supports 11 devices. Speeds vary from 65Mbps for 
an early Airport Express to 800Mbps for our 12.9 inch iPad Pro. Getting about 
300Mbps in our garden. It’s connected to a BT Smart Hub which has WiFi switched 
off, so only Ethernet connections - one to the main mesh disc, and three for 
connections to Smart TVs. 

I read that many people had setup issues with the BT system and concluded that 
you just need to fully follow the setup instructions to make it easy for 
yourself. So far so good. Oh, and it has a guest network option which has been 
of particular value as we frequently have visitors. 

One downside. If you have an Apple Watch series 1 or 2 then you may find that 
it will not connect to the network as it assumes the connection from the iPhone 
that it’s paired with and almost certainly the iPhone will connect at 5Ghz 
whereas the Watch only connects at 2.4Ghz. With mesh systems it seems quite 
tricky to get a device to connect at 2.4Ghz. Not really a big deal except when 
doing a Watch OS update when the installation from the iPhone is over Bluetooth!

I’m sure others will have different views!

Regards,

Tony
Sent from my iPad

> On 27 Jun 2018, at 18:26, 'Steve Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> So, am I correct in thinking that Mesh is a step up from Power line? and if 
> so I would be interested in hearing what Mesh system others may have settled 
> on and what people think of them

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