The Transition to a 3rd Party Router

Introduction

The problem with the comms setup at Home 1, is that due to the nature of the floor plan,  WiFi coverage was always less than half of the home. This problem existed since the very beginning with the Zyxel ADSL router, and continued with the VG-8050 and the HGU. They location where they were installed was always the same.

So on the late 2010s we were using a WiFi range extender by TP-LINK, the WA850RE:

This extended the WiFi coverage further, but wasn't enough to reach the room that was located at the other end of the house.

To understand the next change, I must explain that "the room that was located at the other end of the house" is actually where the handoff was made, but the PRTO was not installed there. The PRTO and the ONT+router, back in 2014, where installed in the living room, located at the other end.

By the end of 2021, I asked O2 (current ISP at the time, moved from to it from Telefonica/Movistar back in 2018) to perform a PTRO (OTP) relocation. This involved the technician using a fusion splicer, and the goal was to leave the router close to the PRTO at the handoff location for a cleaner setup. 

Since there was a corrugated conduit connecting both ends of the house (through which the copper line and later the fiber line had been previously pulled), I used a fish tape to pull a Cat6e from the handoff room to the living room, and left the installation ready for up to 10Gb speeds. This way, we were able to leave the HGU at the fiber demarcation point (or OTP), and at the living room—where the router had historically been located—this TP-Link Archer C6 router was installed (the WA850RE was removed shortly after):

With this change, I relocated the HGU and the PTRO to the handoff location, while placing the Archer C6 at the other end. Although this setup improved the WiFi coverage, it wasn't efficient or optimal. At the edge of both wireless cells (in the middle of the house), roaming performed poorly. Most of the time, we had to manually toggle the WiFi off and on on our smartphones to force a reconnect to the closer AP.

This is what motivated the transition to a neutral router in 2023 + Cisco APs, deploying pfSense on a mini PC. I configured the HGU in bridge mode.