Like many people dealing with standard UK broadband setups, my journey started with a familiar frustration: the Virgin Media WiFi Hub 4 just wasn’t cutting it. Dropped connections, dead zones, and the inability to handle a growing list of smart home and homelab devices forced me to look elsewhere.
I took my first step into mesh networking with a few TP-Link Deco M5 units. The difference was night and day. The Deco ecosystem’s stellar app—which lets you visualize your infrastructure, monitor traffic, and manage everything remotely—completely sold me. Eventually, as my bandwidth demands grew, I upgraded to the Wi-Fi 6 capable Deco X55 units that anchor my network today.
But this isn’t your standard plug-and-play three-pack apartment setup. To get seamless coverage across the main house, a detached garage server rack, an outdoor bar, and the garden, I had to design a custom, hardware-heavy topology utilizing Ethernet backhaul (wiring the nodes together for maximum speed).
Here is exactly how I built it.
The Network Topology
To keep the network clean and avoid double-NAT issues (where two routers fight over IP assignments), the Virgin Hub is stripped of its routing duties and set strictly to Modem Mode.
From there, the network branches out across three core zones, utilizing every single one of the main X55’s three gigabit ports:
1. The Main House Core
- Port 1 of the Main Deco X55 takes the raw internet feed directly from Port 1 of the Virgin Hub. The Main Deco now acts as the primary router and DHCP server for the entire property.
- Port 2 connects directly to a second Deco X55 located elsewhere in the house.
- To handle the dense cluster of smart TVs, consoles, and media gear nearby, that second X55 feeds into a TP-Link TL-SG108E 8-port easy managed switch, instantly multiplying the available hardwired ports.
2. The Garage Engine & Core Patching
Port 3 of the Main Deco drops an umbilical down to the garage, connecting into a beefy, repurposed HP ProCurve 2810-24G 24-port enterprise switch. This garage rack acts as the heavy-lifting engine and central patch hub for the entire property:
- Homelab: Host to my Synology NAS and a dedicated Proxmox VE server running various home automation and self-hosted services.
- Structured Wiring: Multiple cables run out from this ProCurve switch to dedicated, RJ45 wall-mounted sockets around the property.
- Sky Return: A dedicated line runs from this garage switch directly back into the house to hardwire the main Sky Q box.
- Wireless Range: A 4th Deco X55 is hardwired directly into this garage network to ensure seamless wireless coverage out here as well.
3. The Outhouse Bar (The Endpoint)
- From the HP ProCurve switch in the garage, a long run of rugged, exterior-grade Cat6 cable snakes out across the garden to the detached outhouse (repurposed into a home bar).
- The bar acts as a clean endpoint for this line, where a 3rd Deco X55 is hardwired in. This floods the bar area and the deep end of the garden with flawless Wi-Fi 6.
4. The Wireless Outlier
- Upstairs in the bedroom sits a 5th Deco unit. Because pulling a cable there wasn’t practical, it utilizes a traditional wireless backhaul to talk to the rest of the mesh.
- My Sky Q Mini box bridges directly into this bedroom unit, keeping its finicky wireless connectivity perfectly stable.
The Hidden Trap: TP-Link Smart Switches & Phantom Loopback Errors
While the hardware layout was physically solid, the network initially hit a bizarre snag. Occasionally, the ports on the TP-Link switches would start rapidly flashing amber and green together, knocking devices offline.
The switches were triggering a Loopback Detection (LBD) protocol shutdown.
What is a Loopback?
Loopback Prevention is a safety feature designed to protect your network from a digital meltdown. If you accidentally plug both ends of a single network cable into the same switch (creating a physical loop), data packets will broadcast endlessly in a circle, flooding the network and crashing it.
Because I knew my physical wiring was perfectly point-to-point, I had to dig into the root cause. It turns out the issue lies in how the Deco units communicate with each other.
To determine the best path for data, hardwired Deco units regularly send out brief network probing packets. To a sensitive smart switch like the TP-Link TL-SG108E, these rapid mesh coordination packets look exactly like a network loop. The switch panics, flags a false positive, and shuts down the port to protect the network.
The Fix
Because the Deco ecosystem natively manages its own routing loop prevention (via STP/Shortest Path protocols), having it enabled on the edge switches was entirely redundant.
Log into the TP-Link Web Management Utility (or the switch’s IP via a browser):
- Navigate to Switching > Loop Prevention.
- Change the setting from Enabled to Disabled.
- Apply the changes.
Once disabled, the phantom port freezes vanished completely, and the entire infrastructure has been rock-solid ever since. If you are mixing Deco Ethernet backhaul with TP-Link Easy Smart switches, disabling this feature is practically mandatory.
Why This Architecture Works
[Virgin Hub (Modem Mode)]
│
[Main Deco X55 (Router)]
├── Port 2 ──> [Deco X55 #2] ──> [TP-Link TL-SG108E Switch (Loop Prevention DISABLED)] ──> House Devices
└── Port 3 ──> [HP ProCurve 2810-24G Switch (Garage Hub)]
├──> Synology NAS
├──> Proxmox Server
├──> [Deco X55 #4 (Garage Wireless)]
├──> Structured RJ45 Wall Sockets
├──> Return Line ──> [Main Sky Box (House)]
└──> Long Exterior Cat6 ──> [Deco X55 #3 (Bar/Garden Endpoint)]
By leaning heavily on managed and enterprise switches downstream of the primary Deco, the main router doesn’t get bogged down switching heavy local data between the Proxmox server and the Synology NAS.
Centralizing the structured wall panels and the Sky return line right at the HP ProCurve in the garage keeps the wiring highly efficient. Every major high-bandwidth or latency-sensitive node benefits from a dedicated 1Gbps copper pipeline, leaving the Wi-Fi completely free for mobile devices, roaming laptops, and IoT gear. It’s a bulletproof setup that an ISP hub could only dream of.