Tag Archives: TP-Link

Home Network upgrade

Daily dose, , , , ,

Working from home has been the norm since the pandemic began so having a fast and reliable internet connection has become as important as electricity and running water. Part of improving the home office setup is upgrading the home network in three metrics: redundancy, stability, and improved performance.

For redundancy, I’ve signed up for Converge’s FiberX service as a backup for the primary connection from PLDT. For much of the latter half of 2020, PLDT’s uptime had been really problematic – the connection would go down at least once a month, and worse, it takes more than a week for it to be fixed. Mobile internet wasn’t just enough for our connectivity needs and using a prepaid data connection was too costly.

TP-Link TL-R605 Gigabit Router & load balancer

Having two separate internet connections meant it was time for a load balancer, so I bought a TP-Link TL-R605 SafeStream Gigabit Router. It would also save us from the trouble of manually switching networks whenever either one goes down. It allowed for a near-seamless switch from the 600Mbps PLDT connection to the 300Mbps connection from Converge.

Mercusys Halo H50G WiFi Mesh

Sometime around October last year, I replaced the TP-Link Archer A6 AC1200 with the Mercusys Halo H50G WiFi mesh kit to eliminate dead spots around the house and for better network stability. To complete the upgrade, the existing wired connections were replaced with CAT6 ethernet cables to take full advantage of the Gigabit ports on the load balancer and the WiFi mesh units.

What’s wrong with the existing CAT5 cables that usually come with commercial routers? These cables aren’t really designed to handle network speeds faster than 100Mbps. ISPs today provide modems or routers or a combo box that is future-proof – equipped with Gigabit ports so that they can offer subscription speeds faster than 100Mbps should a customer decides to get an upgrade or give it out sheer generosity.

Switching to CAT6 cables would fix that and allow you to maximize the bandwidth of your subscription especially if it’s above 100Mbps as in my case because the combined speeds of my two connections are above 100Mbps.

The upgrades have been worth the investment as our home network has been more stable and able to let us work, study and stream HD content on multiple devices without worries.

A more stable home network with the TP-Link Archer C50

Asides, , ,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about tips on how to boost your WiFi signal at home one of which is to get a new WiFi router especially if your existing one is of an old model. A new device would give many benefits like a more stable home network, power efficiency, security, easier network management, and even more refined parental controls if needed.

That’s exactly what I did yesterday when my new TP-Link Archer C50 AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Router finally came. It’s not the bleeding edge model but it’s more than perfect to upgrade our home WiFi network.

Main features of the Archer C50 are as follows:

  • Supports 802.11ac standard
  • Simultaneous 2.4GHz 300 Mbps and 5GHz 867 Mbps connections for 1200 Mbps of total available bandwidth
  • 4 external antennas provide stable wireless connections and optimal coverage
  • Easy network management at your fingertips with TP-Link Tether
  • Supports IGMP Proxy/Snooping, Bridge and Tag VLAN to optimize IPTV streaming
  • Supports Access Point mode to create a new Wi-Fi access point

It took less than 30 minutes from unboxing to putting up a new home WiFi network complete with a Guest Network and parental controls for the kids.

After all of our devices: smart TV, two PCs, 4 smart phones and a tablet have been moved to the new WiFi network, I took down the old one by disabling the WiFi on the three-year-old router that came from our ISP.

Now the entire house gets full WiFi coverage and my Bluetooth Awei headphones have been working flawlessly with my Lenovo notebook because it’s on the less congested 5GHz network while the rest of our devices are on the 2.4GHz network.

Best of all, I can control the Archer C50 with my smartphone via the easy-to-use and intuitive Tether App which is available for Android and iOS devices. WiFi bliss without breaking the bank and maximum convenience.