Moving from FTTC to FTTP on BT which Mesh System?

We live in a largish 4 bedroom house (153 sq metres) with sold walls throughout.
In the next 2 months we will be moving from FTTC to FTTP, because our BT FTTC contract is coming to an end and we will need to move to FTTP. We wish to stay with BT. Our current set up is a BT Smart hub router in our main bedroom (gives us weak wifi of sorts down stairs) and one Whole Home Wi-Fi Add-on Disc in our smallest bedroom (used as a Study) to supply W-Fi to a Tesla Powerwall2 battery (in integral garage) and our Hypervolt EV Charger on the outside wall of the garage.

We have recently had an ASHP fitted with additional mobile phone apps to run the controls. We have found these apps to be a bit flaky because the Wi-Fi signal has to pass through several walls into the control unit in the Airing Cupboard.

We see that BT supply the Smart Hub 2 with all FTTP packages. I would like to make sure that at the outset when it is installed that I choose the correct Mesh system to give a strong signal in all rooms and to the upstairs Airing Cupboard.

Will the BT BT 88269 Whole Home Wi-Fi, Pack of 3 Discs, Mesh Wi-Fi be suitable for our needs?
Also additionally will we still be able to use the Whole Home Wi-Fi Add-on Disc we are currently using?

With solid walls any mesh system is going to struggle.

Can you not run Cat5e cable to various locations? Look at using PoE powered APs and install a small switch to drive them all

Thanks for responding. I have been retired for 22 years now (82 years of age) and do not understand your jargon of PoE powered APs. I am also a long way behind what is available on the market to provide a solution.

In 2003 I did install cat 5e cabling to various locations with Netgear Prosafe 8 port Gigabit switches in the following 4 locations:
1. Main Bedroom where the current router is and where the new one will go.
2. Bedroom 4 (now the office).
3. Lounge
4. Loft space not far from the Airing Cupboard
My thoughts are that the BT Mesh discs are am asking about will be be plugged into the above Netgear Gigabit switches and give me overall coverage
I hope this makes sense?

Edited by Orchardmead (Tue 20-May-25 16:51:03)

If you are using the switch then it is not a Mesh so they get their data feed from the switch. And difficult to say how well they will perform in your house

PoE - Power over Ethernet. You would have a switch that is designed to put power on the Ethernet cable alongside the data which, assuminng the Access points are PoE powered you do not need a local power supply, unfortunately the BT Discs are NOT which means you will need a power supply and socket close by. A lot easier and neater to install


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet will give a little more detail

Have a serious think about the connection of power and extra cables. draped around from floor to ceiling - not ideal. Maybe a third party hardware solution with a new PoE switch might be a better solution.

All my netgear switches are next to a 3 pin socketets. So I could just plug each Mesh disc into an adjacent 3 pin socket and feed the data cable from the mesh disc into the netgear gigabit switch?

I have just found https://www.bt.com/help/user-guides/bt-whole-home-wi...

and that confirms that The Whole Home can be connected by Ethernet back to the hub

Sorry, an aside but something scary struck me...

retired for 22 years now

Wow. That's a long time.

In 2003

OK, that's quite recent.

Why is it that 2003 seems like yesterday and actually is the same as 22 years ago? Am I getting old?

On the subject I had the BT black discs and they were ok but couldn't handle higher speeds around the house. They made having 500Mb broadband useless as a mesh network as I was getting a lot less. I upgraded to Eero 6E wireless mesh which does give generally better speeds - I have 3 of them.

The house is a little difficult - it is essentially a 3 bed house with a forth bedroom over the car port (this is the original design, not an add on). The problem with the forth bedroom is the wall between it and the rest of the house seems to be a full on external wall and so it is very effective at blocking wifi. To get around it I have a strategically placed Eero in the 3rd bedroom where the signal can propogate diaganolly through the forth bedroom door and give good enough coverage.

My issues with the Eero are that they have an annual subscription for a number of features (advanced stats, DDNS, etc). I paid it the first year but haven't paid it since. The Eeros also aren't the most feature rich of devices - as a router they are quite limited although get the basic job done.

If I was doing it again I would look around for Wifi 6E or 7 mesh options that don't have subscriptions but some of these can be very expensive.

I would go with the PoE (Power over Ethernet) suggestions. You could site a PoE switch besides your existing Netgear. In the rooms with ethernet use something like a TP-Link EAP 265 Access Point to distribute the Wifi. Yes, they are ceiling mounted, but can be used on a wall as well, as I have done in the past.
As you are concerned about getting Wifi to ancillaries, I'm guessing the latest Wifi 7 etc. is not a top priority, so those AP's are Wifi 5 and should suffice.

Thanks to everyone who has responded. I am quite confused concerning Mesh systems. To be honest I am naive. Please read on and enlighten me.

If I have 3 discs or whatever transmission medium I choose as a mesh system, if I move from room to room, does my mobile phone or tablet whatever I am using, just pickup the strongest signal in the room I am in,seamlessly with no logging out and back in again?

At present I have a fttc BT Smart Hub (Not Smart Hub 2 that will come with fttp) and when I enter the house my mobiile picks up BTHub6-FK7F24 that is located in the upstairs Master Bedroom on my chest of drawers that is in the exact centre of the house. My wife and I use this all the time.

Likewise the Heat Pump comms (airing cuboard) uses the same hub to communicate with the outside world and this can be a bit flaky with the 2 apps we are using.

I also have BTHub6-Disc in Bedroom 4. This Disc is used for my Tesla Powerwall2 battery and my Hypervolt EV charger. These work well because they are directly below the Disc albeit through the thick walls.

Now If I want to use BTHub6-Disc with my mobile, I have to log out of BTHub6-FK24 and log into BTHub6-Disc. Naturally they are on the same Network and even use the same password. Why doesn't it happen seamlessly even when I installed the disc using BT Whole Home software?

If I get the 3 of the following: TP-Link RE700X WiFi 6 AX3000Mbps WiFi Extender Booster, Internet Booster, Gigabit Ethernet Port, WiFi Booster Range Extender, EasyMesh, Access Point, WiFi Repeater, App Control Easy Setup, UK Plug. From a well known source, would I be able to walk round and get a seamless connection and would it be ok for my Heat Pump controls and Tesla battery and EV charger described above?

Perhaps I have got all this wrong!

In theory, yes, when we use the word "Mesh", we don't need to re-enter the password on the device. It automatically selects an access point based on signal strength, and there is no disconnection experience when roaming between access points (in milliseconds). Technically, it uses the 802.11 k/v/r standards if you're curious. Even if they are devices of different brands, as long as they support the KVR standard, they can switch seamlessly, but the optimisation may not be as good as that of devices of the same brand.

Anyway, I believe the BT disc could be set up as a "mesh" system, provided those discs use the same name and password. But I don't have those devices, so I'm not sure. "WiFi Booster Range Extender, WiFi Repeater" usually means earlier-day devices, most likely they do not support k,v,r standards, so they cannot "roam".

If you want TPLink equipment, the Deco series is an option, but similarly, Linksys and Netgear also have similar products.

Hopefully this is clear, but yes, there are a lot of marketing words and technical terms that make things more complicated.

p.s.: Hopefully my language didn't cause more confusion, as I'm not a native English speaker.

I have the same complaint about eero's devices, and unfortunately this seems to be the trend. I actually have concerns about their privacy policies.

Other brands of equipment seem to be OK at the moment, at least they provide relatively "advanced" settings...

And for most people, just plug and forget. I would recommend the “wireless” mesh system to most people instead of the AC-AP network system over PoE (called wired mesh?).

Edited by Otuuu (Wed 21-May-25 20:51:02)

I used to use the black BT discs (they have two different types of disks and if I remember correctly the black ones are the ones that can directly extend a home hub 2).

When they are all setup on the same wifi then they all share the same SSID (network name for anyone uninitiated). Moving between is seamless. The only thing I find with BT home discs or Eero is that sometimes a device will hang on to the last point it was connected to even when you have moved to another one being nearer - I think if you then stress it and start trying to use more data then it seems to switch to the strongest point.

In general the BT ones were ok but I moved to Eero as I wanted Wifi 6 to give me a bit more speed (and it does). I do regret moving to Eero due to the aforementioned annual fee (don't remember Amazon making it obvious before I bought them that some features are paywalled). At the moment though it is too expensive to switch as if I was going to switch I would go to wifi 7 and the proper wifi 7 devices are crazy expensive still.

If the network name i.e. SSID and passwords are the same for all the Access Points (AP's) then you can roam about. The other proviso is the client device also plays a part in this as well, so it's not just the AP's. I use 3 Omada EAP AP's and can wander around the property with roaming. All my non roaming smart devices, e.g. car charger, can be "locked" to a specific AP. The Omada app on the mobile is good in this respect for controlling client devices. In my opinion it is this management part of the solution that is the most important as it makes life a lot easier.

Sorry this is a side question, with 3 Omada AP's how are you managing to fit in the channels/channel width. I have just two currently, one on channel 1 (20Mhz width) and 100 (80Mhz width) and the other on channel 11 (40Mhz width) and 48 (80Mhz width) and have no more frequency room for another AP unless I am misunderstanding something. Channels 120, 124, 128 are for weather radar so I have excluded them.

They are using 11 & 36 , 6 & 40 and 1 & 44. Everything is set to Auto and managed by the OC200 controller.

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

They are using 11 & 36 , 6 & 40 and 1 & 44. Everything is set to Auto and managed by the OC200 controller.

Thanks for coming back, that makes sense now, all your channel widths must be running at 20Mhz for that to work.

Sorry to the OP for jumping in like this.