Home Network Advice

shaunetheridge

Distinguished
Sep 5, 2012
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18,510
Hello-

I recently purchased a large(ish) house, around 4000 sq. ft. The previous homeowner, the original owner/builder of the home, appears to have really thought out and planned out the home network. Here is the setup:

Network/AV Closet on the second floor. All cable connections, ethernet, etc. run to this room/closet and everything is rack mounted. There is a patch panel that feeds multiple ethernet drops around the house. There are 2 at every TV, several in the office, and several other locations around the house. Downstairs, there are 4 access points (ceiling mounted) scattered throughout the lower floors (in, what I suppose are the "WiFi dead zones"). It is overkill IMO but hey, I didn't build it and there's not a square inch of this property that doesn't have a strong 5G WiFi signal, even to the property lines outside. Those Access Points are all connected in the upstairs network closet to a large (I believe it is 48-port) PoE switch. Along with several other items that I have put in the closet as well. Xbox, Playstation, my ASUS Router, and some Sonos gear (house is also fully wired for whole home audio). Anyway, on to my question. I have gig speed internet from Comcast. On every wired connection, as mentioned, no issue. Speeds approach 1000mbps easily. Downstairs WiFi is the issue. It appears all the access points are TP Link N300 and speeds only at or around 200mbps when connected via WiFi downstairs. That is via Speedtest app. Fast.com gives an even lower number 180-190mbps. When I go upstairs and connect to the ASUS AX58U WiFi, of course, speed is great, again, approaching the gig speed I'm paying for. So my question, should I just upgrade all those Access points? Or is there a better setup with the way this house is wired? Also, in case it matters, I have the Access Points set to the same SSID as my router. Just curious as I'm not a network Engineer by any means. Hoping some folks with strong networking background could weigh in? Thanks!