Mesh networking, need some advice

RedlandRanger

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So generally WiFi is shared spectrum. If you live close to lots of other people you'll have terrible throughput no matter what you do. Adding a mesh system to this WiFi soup will serve almost no purpose, and could decrease your overall speed (because it's half duplex you lose 50% each hop) even if the signal strength shows "Excellent".

My somewhat professional opinion (I deployed large scale wifi for hospitals in several parts of the country) would be to get a high quality wireless router and:

If you need to cover house and yard, put it as high as possible in your house OR If you only want to cover in the house and a little yard, put it in your basement.

The basement will shield it from a lot of the noise of the neighborhood and allow it to "hear" better from the signals above it. This will improve the overall signal quality and support better throughput.

If you do that, and find that you have other areas that are poorly covered, run a cable from the router to the area that is undercovered, and put another access point (basically a router without DHCP running as a bridge) in that location with EXACTLY the same SSID on a different channel.

As a former wireless engineer and an Extra class ham radio operator, the invention of these 3 and 4 band WiFi shotguns terrifies me. When everyone is trying to blast out several GB of packets all the time on several bands at once, nobody is going to have a good time.

Also, be a good neighbor. If the device you are using supports it, lower the output power to the least usable power level so that you aren't shouting over your neighbors and in effect starting an arms race (your neighbor is on the honda civic forum right now asking the exact same question).

Something like this with similar SSID and Channel setups for the 5Ghz stuff.

EDIT:I just realized I had3 wireless AP's in the diagram, eliminate the one in the top right and just have the ethernet cable go from basement to bonus room. I've fixed the diagram.

1583156489107.png


1583155095595.png
Thanks for the info from a pro - I'm in IT but my focus is enterprise web software development. I'd say I know enough about networking to be dangerous - certainly not an expert. I've done what you suggest a couple of time - the obvious problem is having that wired circuit to hook up the second AP, but that does seem to be the best solution. Wired is always the preferred option, IMO. If we ever build a new house, I'm going to make sure it is well covered with CAT6 - multiple jacks in every room, including the shop.

I don't have the problem of having too much interference from neighbors as we live out in the country and have some space between houses. I typically can see a couple of my neighbors APs, but they aren't really strong enough to try and connect to.
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t4thfavor

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Thanks for the info from a pro - I'm in IT but my focus is enterprise web software development. I'd say I know enough about networking to be dangerous - certainly not an expert. I've done what you suggest a couple of time - the obvious problem is having that wired circuit to hook up the second AP, but that does seem to be the best solution. Wired is always the preferred option, IMO. If we ever build a new house, I'm going to make sure it is well covered with CAT6 - multiple jacks in every room, including the shop.

I don't have the problem of having too much interference from neighbors as we live out in the country and have some space between houses. I typically can see a couple of my neighbors APs, but they aren't really strong enough to try and connect to.

In the case of country living, I just put a big fat AP up as high as I can in the house (I live on 10 acres and can see exactly 0 other WIFI networks).

And in your situation mesh would work "OK", but you'll get better speed with a single or pair of wireless routers.

I thought I read you have wired smart TV's all over. Nothing stopping you from piggy backing off of one of those connections with another multiport access point.

Note: coverage directly above and below the AP won't be great, but it will be livable under almost every circumstance.
 
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Mokume

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So generally WiFi is shared spectrum. If you live close to lots of other people you'll have terrible throughput no matter what you do. Adding a mesh system to this WiFi soup will serve almost no purpose, and could decrease your overall speed (because it's half duplex you lose 50% each hop) even if the signal strength shows "Excellent".

My somewhat professional opinion (I deployed large scale wifi for hospitals in several parts of the country) would be to get a high quality wireless router and:

If you need to cover house and yard, put it as high as possible in your house OR If you only want to cover in the house and a little yard, put it in your basement.

The basement will shield it from a lot of the noise of the neighborhood and allow it to "hear" better from the signals above it. This will improve the overall signal quality and support better throughput.

If you do that, and find that you have other areas that are poorly covered, run a cable from the router to the area that is undercovered, and put another access point (basically a router without DHCP running as a bridge) in that location with EXACTLY the same SSID on a different channel.

As a former wireless engineer and an Extra class ham radio operator, the invention of these 3 and 4 band WiFi shotguns terrifies me. When everyone is trying to blast out several GB of packets all the time on several bands at once, nobody is going to have a good time.

Also, be a good neighbor. If the device you are using supports it, lower the output power to the least usable power level so that you aren't shouting over your neighbors and in effect starting an arms race (your neighbor is on the honda civic forum right now asking the exact same question).

Something like this with similar SSID and Channel setups for the 5Ghz stuff.

EDIT:I just realized I had3 wireless AP's in the diagram, eliminate the one in the top right and just have the ethernet cable go from basement to bonus room. I've fixed the diagram.

1583156489107.png


1583155095595.png
Funny you mention this, but my neighbor is probably on some Taco forum about how to squeeze more power output from his '20 4x4 (which he just purchased last week) to compare to my '20 Lariat. It's equipped with the worlds only V6 which performs like a 4, but consumes fuel like a 6.
It's a beautiful vehicle, no doubt...
"Quicksand" is it's exterior color, I've already teased him about his color choice stating "all Tacos accelerate as if they are mired in quicksand"...lol
 

RedlandRanger

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In the case of country living, I just put a big fat AP up as high as I can in the house (I live on 10 acres and can see exactly 0 other WIFI networks).

And in your situation mesh would work "OK", but you'll get better speed with a single or pair of wireless routers.

I thought I read you have wired smart TV's all over. Nothing stopping you from piggy backing off of one of those connections with another multiport access point.

Note: coverage directly above and below the AP won't be great, but it will be livable under almost every circumstance.
I think all the wired smart TVs was @Mokume . I have one wired smart TV - I actually have a network drop to the entertainment unit and then have an 8 port switch on the back of the entertainment unit for all the toys. (TV, Weather station, Roku, HDHomeRun unit).

If you were to recommend an AP that I could put in the ceiling upstairs to cover the whole house (I'd have to run a new cable up there, but I could do that relatively easily), what would it be? (brand, model)

Thanks
 

t4thfavor

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In the case of country living, I just put a big fat AP up as high as I can in the house (I live on 10 acres and can see exactly 0 other WIFI networks).

And in your situation mesh would work "OK", but you'll get better speed with a single or pair of wireless routers.
I think all the wired smart TVs was @Mokume . I have one wired smart TV - I actually have a network drop to the entertainment unit and then have an 8 port switch on the back of the entertainment unit for all the toys. (TV, Weather station, Roku, HDHomeRun unit).

If you were to recommend an AP that I could put in the ceiling upstairs to cover the whole house (I'd have to run a new cable up there, but I could do that relatively easily), what would it be? (brand, model)

Thanks
what I would use, and what you should use are definitely worlds apart. I’ll do some research and reply back. You’ll probably want something with a power injector though to keep from having to run power where the ap makes sense.


Something like this should get you what you need, the single pack comes with a POE injector which removes the need for power on the far end of the drop.
https://store.ui.com/collections/wireless/products/unifi-nanohd-us?variant=8116903018585 (find it elsewhere for cheaper)

It has an optional mounting bracket for ceilings and will cover pretty well from my experience with similar models.

The Pro models have two gigabit ports in case you want to provide Ethernet to a TV in that room as well. I'm not sure about this UniFi nonsense so someone can let me know if those are end user manageable or if they require some sort of dashboard that costs $.

https://store.ui.com/collections/wireless/products/unifi-ac-pro?variant=14370156445785
 
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t4thfavor

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Bump because I'm not sure Edits show up as new posts in notifications.
 

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Every home wireless network depends on how much sq foot and how much interference. Higher speed wireless protocols work closer to the router. Elevation on the router helps the signal reach further. If your neighbors are close by then you compete for signals if you share the same channels. I am running a netgear nighthawk with an extender to reach a garage. Only wire is between router and modem. Bandwidth is limited by how much activity you use on your network. Only reason to really wire is to support high utilization. How much do you stream at the same time might impact wireless but more likely you are bound by your ISP for your rates. You are ultimately limited to how good is the cable between your modem and router. If you have an old 10/100 port on your modem that is your choke point. If you have old wireless devices then the network will reduce its achievable rates to the older devices. If you do chose to go wireless set the security on the connection. When laying out coverage for a home security system work out from the centrally located base and if you need to extend range work within the system you are using for best practice. Good luck.
 

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I recently bought a house with a mesh network covering 5+ wooded acres. This basically consists of a Power Over Ethernet (POE) switch, a few Ubiquiti access points wired to that switch near the house, and a few wireless Ubiquiti access points (powered by POE injectors) connected via wifi. If you add a Ubiquity secure gateway it allows for some pretty cool control of everything. The cameras I have are by Reolink and they're great, good software on PC, NVR, or phone.
 

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If you're just shooting for mesh coverage in and around a house a couple of Ubiquiti access points spread around and tied to a POE switch should do the trick. The secure gateway can automatically handle selecting wifi channels, balancing network traffic, etc so everything runs as smoothly as possible. We have two access points in our house and a strong wifi signal everywhere indoors.
 

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If you're just shooting for mesh coverage in and around a house a couple of Ubiquiti access points spread around and tied to a POE switch should do the trick. The secure gateway can automatically handle selecting wifi channels, balancing network traffic, etc so everything runs as smoothly as possible. We have two access points in our house and a strong wifi signal everywhere indoors.
If they're connected via wires it's not a mesh network. That said, I'm not sure why "mesh network" ever came up because it sounds like just moving APs around and maybe adding another wired AP would solve the problem.

Mesh networking is what you do when a wire isn't feasible.
 

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I think mesh came up because of the thread title. At my place I have a couple of wired APs about 100 yards from the house and they connect the outlying mesh network to my switch.
 

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I think mesh came up because of the thread title
right, I just don't know why it was in the thread title :) seems like overkill inside a house unless you're prepping a mansion for a kardashian or something.
 

t4thfavor

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If they're connected via wires it's not a mesh network. That said, I'm not sure why "mesh network" ever came up because it sounds like just moving APs around and maybe adding another wired AP would solve the problem.

Mesh networking is what you do when a wire isn't feasible.

Precisely why I did not recommend mesh anything. Someone said they had 3 wired Ubiquiti and 2 Mesh ones, I'd suspect they perform fairly well, but there is truly no replacement for a hard wired connection be it copper of glass.


The Ford test track in Deerborn MI has some mesh nodes. They work fine because the cars being tested are only sending a little bit of data (relative to the available throughput) and are the only devices on the network at any given time.
 

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I live out in the sticks with 2 10 meg dsl connections, when I need to do something faster I disconnect from wifi and use my cell connection :crackup:
Unfortunately we are close to a big lake with a lot of expensive homes and they get all the love. But I didn’t move out here for the internet.
 

t4thfavor

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I live out in the sticks with 2 10 meg dsl connections, when I need to do something faster I disconnect from wifi and use my cell connection :crackup:
Unfortunately we are close to a big lake with a lot of expensive homes and they get all the love. But I didn’t move out here for the internet.
I put up an 86’ fold over tower this fall so I could get 20x3 for me, and 20x3 for my neighbors. 7 yards of concrete, 20’ of c-channel, and 3 boxes of welding rods is all it cost me :)

oh, and a month of working after work until well past dark.
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