WiFi... "Mesh" or a single "powerful" router?

[Scottmichaelj]

I Finally, the Almond 3 gave full coverage.

I have a nut allergy, so that wont work jk lol

[oberkc]

I have a smallish home, but am in a unique situation. We're near the top of a group of hills with an AM radio station about a mile away. We are above the transmitter. Any RF signal has a tough time here. Even the Netgear Orbi didn't help. I tried several repeaters with marginal results. Finally, the Almond 3 gave full coverage.

 

We have two Ecobee thermostats and four Harmony Hubs plus two Amazon Fire TVs, all with no dropouts at all.

 

Stu, how much of the automation and integration with other automation devices provided by the Almond do you use.  This seems potentially very useful.  Can this router communicate with the ISY?

[larryllix]

<snipped>

 

Something to try with the Asus... use the lowest channel number you can, especially 5ghz band. Its a whopping 600mhz from the highest channel to the lowest, 36. I found I got 1 - 2 additional bars on the most remote wifi devices when I went from channel 157 to 36. I'd still use wired access points and do a survey.

 

Paul

This may be a reason for this and why not to use certain channels of 5GHz WiFi.

 

In short, the middle channels of 5GHz WiFi are shared with radar systems and living near an aeroport (US = airport),  or at a high elevation, where your AP can detect radar from passing planes, can get your router shut down on an annoyingly regular basis.

 

This feature is written into the WiFi spec to enable it to share  frequencies with radar systems. Routers have to get off the frequency if radar is detected.

 

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/access/3200/software/wireless/3200WirelessConfigGuide/RadioChannelDFS.pdf

[lilyoyo1]

My two cents. I like having one Access Point in the middle of the home via PoE.

 

I don’t like Ubiquity/UBNT or the others as you need too many to cover a home in WiFi. This is also whats your seeing with other brands. Weak signal “just add another one”. Sorry no thanks. Another downside to UBNT is you need to load their controller software on a computer. So if you need to make a change you need to do it on that computer (maybe this has changed). Regardless I like browser based configuration pages.

 

One more thing al these “MESH” systems have a similar problem to watch for, which is “handoff” to the next access point. Sometimes a device will “hold on to” the weaker signal rather than switching to the closer one. Multiple SSIDs are bad too.

 

As PaulB stated not everyones home is the same. Doing some homework and using a signal heat map app/tools will help you figure out whats best for your home. What may work great for Larry won’t for Michael. These apps also are helpful to find the perfect channel for the wifi to be on so not to interfere with your neighbors. Sometimes people want to toss equipment because the signal is bad but turning off “auto channel” and specifically selecting one all of a sudden everything is great. Or like Larry says turning down the power. Kinda works like having an OTA antenna with an amplifier, you get static its just going to make it worse.

 

Some of us also run VPNs, firewalls, ad blockers and other utilities on a specific hardware for our routers, pfsense for example. This allows us greater flexibility to have things like backup LTE modems for when the primary ISP goes down. Or being able to use your home internet and VPN in for safe internet use on trips. VPN access also means you can use the local ip of a device when your connected outside the house and don’t need to port forward, keeping you network in general more secure. By doing this you keep the Access Point as one piece of the network. The whole house can be on a VPN. This maybe something in the future that interests you and can be done.

 

I personally am a bit over board and have a Ruckus R600 Unleashed AP in my home of 4500+ sq ft. However it can support a large quantity of users online at the same time, performance is amazing and signal is strong all the way to outside into my backyard and driveway. I have personally stressed this AP and it works. No need to reboot svery so often and all that BS. There is also an option for it to “MESH” but it has advanced settings to force it to drop a connection. I haven’t seen the others have this option. They may as I haven’t worked with them much. The option is there for say another network for the backyard exclusively or guest house etc.

 

FWIW look at the Small Net Builder forum. Theres a ton of reviews and smart guys (and Pauly) over there. Might want to look there.

 

http://www.snbforums.com/forums/

 

TDLR - I use big boy toys in my home. PaulyB is right, test your network first with tools. Referred to SNB. Larry is just too powerful and needs to take it down a notch. Marked like one a few others post who gave good advise too.

Ubiquity has their cloud key which makes this easier now. Its 80 bucks

[Scottmichaelj]

Ubiquity has their cloud key which makes this easier now. Its 80 bucks

Cloud - $80 = another con. No Thanks.

[stusviews]

Stu, how much of the automation and integration with other automation devices provided by the Almond do you use.  This seems potentially very useful.  Can this router communicate with the ISY?

 

I don't use WiFi with the ISY. OTOH, nothing has provided consistent WiFi throughout our home like the Almond3, not even other Almond products which I've tried as well as many other WiFi extenders. Check out Securifi.

 

I do use Amazon Echo skills to control WiFi devices. The first Almond3 becomes a router. All the Almond3 devices are set up so that they appear as the same device for for both WiFi bands, so they're easy for any WiFi device to connect to.

[oberkc]

I don't use WiFi with the ISY.​

 

I was more curious about whether you use the almond ZigBee, z-wave, or other methods to communicate back and forth between the router and ISY.  For example, could you send a message to the ISY when a specific device was connected to your network?

[stusviews]

I was more curious about whether you use the almond ZigBee, z-wave, or other methods to communicate back and forth between the router and ISY.  For example, could you send a message to the ISY when a specific device was connected to your network?

 

The Almond3 is a WiFi device, but there is a Z-Wave dongle available that I haven't tried. I don't see a need for it as I have the ISY Z-Wave module. It's my understanding that there are also IFTTT recipies for the Almond

 

The only reason at all I opted for the Almond3 is that it's the only device that gave dependable WiFi throughout out home--and I tried many, many WiFi extenders even the highly rated Netgear Orbi. I'm somewhat adept and managed to wire most of the house for Ethernet, but some devices such as the Harmony Hub and our smartphones, for example, don't have an Ethernet connection. And, yes. Even a cell phone signal is a problem up here.

 

I currently have no way to get a message from the ISY that an Ethernet device connected to my LAN. But my wife quickly notifies me when a device is not working