Planning WiFi for a new house — wired APs or mesh? 

Wi-Fi Design & Planning
1

We’re moving into a larger house soon, and I’m trying to plan the network before I start running cable everywhere.

The house is roughly 3,700 sq ft across three levels: a main floor, a smaller second floor, and a full basement. Most of the interior walls are standard drywall and wood framing, but the basement has concrete foundation walls and a utility room that may block the signal. I’d also like usable WiFi on the patio and near the front of the property.

Our internet will probably be around 500–600 Mbps through cable, so I’m more concerned about stable coverage than chasing multi-gig speeds.

The network will need to handle two people working from home, several TVs and computers, phones, smart speakers, cameras, home automation devices, a NAS, and a media server. I’m already planning Cat6 runs to the offices, TV areas, and a few ceiling locations. The main switch and server equipment will most likely go into a small rack in the basement, and I may add a PoE switch for access points and cameras.

Would it make more sense to use a separate router/firewall with wired access points throughout the house? Should I plan for one AP on every level, or could two well-placed units cover most of it? I’m also considering mesh, but since Ethernet will be available, I’m not sure it offers any real advantage over regular wired APs.

I’d rather install the necessary cable now than discover after moving in that all the useful AP locations are impossible to reach. What setup would you plan for a house like this?

2

Since you’re already planning Cat6, use proper wired APs rather than several routers or a wireless mesh. One router/firewall can sit in the basement rack, with the APs connected to a PoE switch. I wouldn’t automatically assume one AP per floor, though. Placement and construction matter more than the number of floors.

3

The poured-concrete basement will probably need its own AP, but two well-placed APs might cover the main and upper floors. Or they might not. Nobody can tell from square footage alone. Before deciding where to run the drops, import the floor plans into something like NetSpot’s Planning mode. You can draw in the drywall and concrete walls, place virtual APs, and compare the predicted signal on each floor. It’s much better than putting an Ethernet jack in the “obvious” spot and finding out later that it was a terrible location. Once you move in, do an actual survey to verify the prediction.

4

Mesh would work, but wired APs are the better option when the house is open and you can run cable. “Mesh with Ethernet backhaul” is basically moving toward the same idea anyway.