griff6784
Casual Member
Hey everyone, Starlink is my ISP in the Peak District and I love it. The only problem I have, is getting that internet around the home. Said home consists of a workshop (large building at the bottom of the pic), next is a 1 up 1 down annex with kitchen upstairs (where the router is situated). That is in the lower part of the main house (the long roof running vertically in the picture). The main house consists of three upstairs bedrooms, downstairs utility room, office type spare room, bathroom, kitchen and living room (the kitchen directly above the conservatory on the picture and the living room being at the furthest point of the image on the right).
Prior to purchasing a Tenda MW12 Mesh kit, I had an eth adapter on the router, feeding into a 8 way TP Link switch (TP-Link TL-SG1008D). This switch connected a PC, Smart TV, Firestick and a Netgear Extender (EX6100) (on a 30m cat6 cable) acting as an access point in the workshop. One more 30m cat6 cable goes down through the house to the other kitchen with another 5 way TP Link Switch (TP-Link TL-SG1005D) which connects to another PC and Netgear Extender (EX6100) as access point which in turn provides Wi-Fi to the kitchen, adjacent living room (with another Smart TV). Finally I had one wireless extender upstairs in the main house.
This all worked...OK except in the workshop Wi-Fi kept dropping out and it wasn't always reliable in the other kitchen either. Cue a comment on the FB Starlink page and some chap convinced me to buy a Tenda MW12 kit (well he said MX12 but I could only get W).
So, I bought it and it's been patchy at best. Tried it as separate SSID and bypassing the Starlink router (no internet as a result). Turned off bypass and just ran it as a separate SSID and I kept getting the message "failed to connected to Nova". It did work OK but speeds in the other kitchen and living room were not good and nodes kept dropping in and out. I kept the switch arrangement, plugging my primary node into the 7 way switch via eth and then from that primary node I had the two eths formerly on Netgear Extenders connect to two secondary nodes in the workshop and other kitchen.
I reset everything (I've got 6 nodes in total as he sold me 3 of the cheap having upgraded to MX12) and reconnected everything in Bridge Mode. That worked OK but again speeds were not good enough. It hasn't got the grunt to efficiently get internet to that other kitchen and living room.
I reset everything again and put into DHCP mode. Same SSID as the router. Meanwhile switch and extender serve the other kitchen and living room. The mesh in DHCP works better than Bridge Mode but still, I get it dropping in and out on the app with "failed to connect" error messages. The WiFi never goes down but that shouldn't be happening surely? The chap who sold me the extra nodes said I should be able to control the network via a desktop portal but I can't seem to find the link for that or to get anything to work when it input ISP into the browser, so I'm restricted to the app.
Broad questions: what am I doing wrong and how can I do it better? Is TP Link Deco a better bet? What would everyone else advise to get the best out of my Starlink, another router and mesh, another mesh, or a better way of using the MW12s?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the waffle, I hope you can fathom it.
Prior to purchasing a Tenda MW12 Mesh kit, I had an eth adapter on the router, feeding into a 8 way TP Link switch (TP-Link TL-SG1008D). This switch connected a PC, Smart TV, Firestick and a Netgear Extender (EX6100) (on a 30m cat6 cable) acting as an access point in the workshop. One more 30m cat6 cable goes down through the house to the other kitchen with another 5 way TP Link Switch (TP-Link TL-SG1005D) which connects to another PC and Netgear Extender (EX6100) as access point which in turn provides Wi-Fi to the kitchen, adjacent living room (with another Smart TV). Finally I had one wireless extender upstairs in the main house.
This all worked...OK except in the workshop Wi-Fi kept dropping out and it wasn't always reliable in the other kitchen either. Cue a comment on the FB Starlink page and some chap convinced me to buy a Tenda MW12 kit (well he said MX12 but I could only get W).
So, I bought it and it's been patchy at best. Tried it as separate SSID and bypassing the Starlink router (no internet as a result). Turned off bypass and just ran it as a separate SSID and I kept getting the message "failed to connected to Nova". It did work OK but speeds in the other kitchen and living room were not good and nodes kept dropping in and out. I kept the switch arrangement, plugging my primary node into the 7 way switch via eth and then from that primary node I had the two eths formerly on Netgear Extenders connect to two secondary nodes in the workshop and other kitchen.
I reset everything (I've got 6 nodes in total as he sold me 3 of the cheap having upgraded to MX12) and reconnected everything in Bridge Mode. That worked OK but again speeds were not good enough. It hasn't got the grunt to efficiently get internet to that other kitchen and living room.
I reset everything again and put into DHCP mode. Same SSID as the router. Meanwhile switch and extender serve the other kitchen and living room. The mesh in DHCP works better than Bridge Mode but still, I get it dropping in and out on the app with "failed to connect" error messages. The WiFi never goes down but that shouldn't be happening surely? The chap who sold me the extra nodes said I should be able to control the network via a desktop portal but I can't seem to find the link for that or to get anything to work when it input ISP into the browser, so I'm restricted to the app.
Broad questions: what am I doing wrong and how can I do it better? Is TP Link Deco a better bet? What would everyone else advise to get the best out of my Starlink, another router and mesh, another mesh, or a better way of using the MW12s?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the waffle, I hope you can fathom it.























