Jump to content

Small (home) Office router replacement recommendations


Geddy

Recommended Posts

Posted (edited)
20 minutes ago, RPerrault said:

10 access points?  about how many square feet?

 

Not area but rather penetration issues. 5 stone chimneys. All plaster and lathe walls. Lots of tile with metal backing. Across 4 floors. Could get away with less for 2.4GHz but 5GHz has no penetration at all so I have to cover the shaded areas.

Edited by upstatemike
Posted

wifi can be tricky - depending on the ap - channel hopping if too many are too close - power reduction if another signal intrudes - i wonder if there is a heatmap application available that is vendor agnostic - be a ton of work to maintain such a tool 

i had access to prime at my last gig

 

Posted
4 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

If you're installing a wifi wallswitch in a home, what DEVICE are you connecting it to?

um - a switch

or a switch ecosystem if i can afford it

 

Posted
I have the TP Link Deco at home (tri-band for dedicated backhaul), but it could be better.  Have they done better with some settings with the Omada? I haven’t looked at that before. 
 

If you’re asking about settings for wireless backhaul/mesh, I don’t know. All my APs are hard wired.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Posted (edited)
On 5/1/2022 at 5:04 PM, upstatemike said:

Not area but rather penetration issues. 5 stone chimneys. All plaster and lathe walls. Lots of tile with metal backing. Across 4 floors. Could get away with less for 2.4GHz but 5GHz has no penetration at all so I have to cover the shaded areas.

I am discovering that 5GHz is being faded out. My ASUS routers won't even talk to some devices using WiFi5 now, since I added a second for mesh BS....and then, like you posted 5GHz has poor penetration.
However WiFi 6 (5.7 - 6.0 GHz) has much better penetration. The overhead used is much less with the 802.11ax protocol so short packets can burst much more data to share the bandwidth with many other devices.
On top of all that, not many people are using the 6GHz band yet.

With 802.11ax protocol, even my 2.4 GHz WiFi peaks out at 1.3Gbps now. Old routers should be junked like analogue TV stations have been and Radio stations will be later. Just bandwidth wasteful technologies.

My son has a similar problem with his all WiFi backhaul router mesh system. He has "light concrete" floors for an abandoned in-floor heating system (using bad PEX-AL-PEX). Once you realise the problem the satellites repeaters can be placed so they can see each other via the stair RF chimneys and it works OK again.

Edited by larryllix
Posted

worked in a hospital setting - cinderblock construction 

long straight halls with rooms on each side - wifi computers on the exterior walls - inside a metal enclosure with no external wifi antenna 

all new access points and the heatmap looked good - but the it guy said the room computers were dropping - so he doubled the access points on the floor

this was the result - the access points began to change channels because another ap was using it - which caused another to change - and another - and another - the entire hospital wifi was thrashing with all the aps constantly swapping channels - and the reach of the wifi was decreased - cisco aps power themselves back when coverage overlaps - the heatmap showed the signal not reaching the room computers 

he never could grasp that more is not always better - paid to have every room wired

i was putting a cisco business edition phone system and had the new (at the time) model of wifi phones - 200 of them - with the associated birthing pains of being the first 

anyway - people always think adding access points will improve things - depending on the ap capabilities, it can make things worse

(mesh - backhaul - ecosystem) snicker

 

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, gzahar said:


If you’re asking about settings for wireless backhaul/mesh, I don’t know. All my APs are hard wired.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yes. My second mesh AP is currently on WiFi 6 backhaul while my home is staged for sale. It always ran on a wired backhaul until lately.  When a router repeats a signal, it bogs the WiFi channels down with double the traffic of just one router. Repeat that a few times with a large unwired mesh system and you may notice big speed drops in throughput.

Also, notice how many/most of these WiFi 6 routers have dropped support for 5GHz band. It has too many problems with coverage, channel hopping to avoid shared radar frequencies, and bad penetration.

Posted
52 minutes ago, RPerrault said:

.

anyway - people always think adding access points will improve things - depending on the ap capabilities, it can make things worse

I needed a lot of APs to cover the shaded areas but definitely had to cut back the power on 2.4GHz radios to avoid making things worse with interferance. I should probably shut off the 2.4GHz radios on half of the APs to further improve the RF environment. I still need 5GHz radios on all of them to get full 5GHz coverage.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...