Joined Nov 2009
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Forum Thread
Need feedback on transition from access points to mesh
March 5, 2024 at
03:11 PM
We are on rural acreage, and have the good fortune to be on a 1Gbps fiber plan from the local telco. My network covers three structures on my property (home, office, shed), as follows:
Home and office are connected by a buried, 250' ethernet cable. Anything with a hardwire connection in the home or office gets nearly the full 1Gbps, up or down.
Shed is 1000' feet away from closest building (office), and is connected by a pair of Ubuiquit Litebeam GEN2 point-to-point wireless bridge units. Speeds for devices at the shed maxes out at 300Mbps per second in ideal conditions, and 125Mbps in heavy weather/full folliage, with very low latency regardless of conditions. Perfectly adequate for our uses in that space.
Access points are as follows:
Home:
(2) TP-Link Archer AX1500 (2200 sq foot ranch, one on main level, one in basement)
Older, Linksys AC1200 for back patio coverage (wireless grilling thermometer connection)
Office:
(Telco) Calix GigaSpire BLAST modem/router with WiFi 6 wireless
TP-Link EAP110 mounted on outside of building for wireless signal in surrounding yard
Shed:
TP-Link EAP610 mounted outside of shed for both inside and outside coverage
Generally speaking, this all works well enough. Reliable equipment and connections. All TVs, phones, laptops, guest use, get reliable connections from whatever access point is nearby. The APs have slightly different names, but all use the same password, so it's easy to set them up on a device.
Anything for serious business/bandwidth use is direct ethernet connected, or positioned near an access point for a strong signal.
I have a couple of goals in mind for transitioning to a single mesh:
1) The obvious: One SSID
2) More/wider access in outdoor spaces via additional access points further away from the buildings
3) Not investing in additional equipment that won't work as a mesh in the future.
Any feedback on best transition, equipment recommendations, or whether I should just bide my time for a while, is appreciated.
P.S. I've read up on TP-Links OneMesh (now EasyMesh?). It's almost a good solution for me, but doesn't support ethernet backhaul, which I regard as important, since all of my TP-Link access points are currently wired to our ethernet network.
Home and office are connected by a buried, 250' ethernet cable. Anything with a hardwire connection in the home or office gets nearly the full 1Gbps, up or down.
Shed is 1000' feet away from closest building (office), and is connected by a pair of Ubuiquit Litebeam GEN2 point-to-point wireless bridge units. Speeds for devices at the shed maxes out at 300Mbps per second in ideal conditions, and 125Mbps in heavy weather/full folliage, with very low latency regardless of conditions. Perfectly adequate for our uses in that space.
Access points are as follows:
Home:
(2) TP-Link Archer AX1500 (2200 sq foot ranch, one on main level, one in basement)
Older, Linksys AC1200 for back patio coverage (wireless grilling thermometer connection)
Office:
(Telco) Calix GigaSpire BLAST modem/router with WiFi 6 wireless
TP-Link EAP110 mounted on outside of building for wireless signal in surrounding yard
Shed:
TP-Link EAP610 mounted outside of shed for both inside and outside coverage
Generally speaking, this all works well enough. Reliable equipment and connections. All TVs, phones, laptops, guest use, get reliable connections from whatever access point is nearby. The APs have slightly different names, but all use the same password, so it's easy to set them up on a device.
Anything for serious business/bandwidth use is direct ethernet connected, or positioned near an access point for a strong signal.
I have a couple of goals in mind for transitioning to a single mesh:
1) The obvious: One SSID
2) More/wider access in outdoor spaces via additional access points further away from the buildings
3) Not investing in additional equipment that won't work as a mesh in the future.
Any feedback on best transition, equipment recommendations, or whether I should just bide my time for a while, is appreciated.
P.S. I've read up on TP-Links OneMesh (now EasyMesh?). It's almost a good solution for me, but doesn't support ethernet backhaul, which I regard as important, since all of my TP-Link access points are currently wired to our ethernet network.
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Provides me with 1 SSID and I move about without dropping the connection just like my cell phone bounces from cell tower to cell tower while driving down the Highway.
+1 for considering going with a MESH.
Due to the potentially large area you wish to cover, you have a potential major issue to contend with.
Simply put...the rules for Ethernet is that Each device on your network gets its turn to talk on the network.
This cycle happens 100x of times a hour. No big deal, right?
Be WARNED
When you have a phone or such connected to your wifi that is just *barely* on your system, that device will DRAG the overall speed of your network WAY down.
That device gets it's turn, every round to talk or not on the network.
Ethernet doesn't care that devices are wired or wireless, they all get to talk.
So your desktop plugged directly in, will be affected by that phone in someone's pocket just barely latched onto your Wifi.
Just keep that in mind when you decide to open up and cover a bigger area of your property with Wifi.
You will need to make sure all areas have a good saturation of signal strength, which means you'll need X more Mesh AP's deployed and they need a power source, connection back to your head end equipment via wired or wireless backhaul.
Wireless backhaul will cut into the performance of your system vs. wired backhaul.
I don't know what your property looks like, I don't know exactly what you wish to cover with Wifi, so I can't advise you to go for it or not.
The above is to get you to consider factors that may not be readily apparent to you.
I think this an awesome project and can't wait to hear on your success with it.
-dc
Dedicated backhaul (ethernet to a building) or long range wifi link to a building, will work better than any 'mesh system'. If you do go with a mish system of some kind expect to plug as much of it as you can into ethernet / use existing backhaul.
Have any experience with Omada? Some of my TP-Link gear is Omada compatible, wondering if I should standardize and build around that.
I would suggest looking at powerline ethernet to see if you can use that for backhaul. Wifi likes open spaces so you can probably count on that working out pretty well some Mesh systems.
Buy 2 of these and see how it works
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PRB1...73-20&th=1
Turns out my existing TP-Link gear (the AX1500 routers) are EasyMesh compatible and DO support ethernet backhaul. Just needed a firmware update and some time figuring out the settings to make sure my primary EasyMesh router could talk to my telco router on a separate LAN. Got it all working. I'm able to roam around the house without switching SSIDs, which should be useful for Wifi calling and overall simplification of the network.
The weak spot for EasyMesh, from my use case, is the lack of compatible outdoor routers. Those seem to be in the domain of Omada-only products.
This will hold me for the time being. I'll just deal with outdoor APs not being on the EasyMesh setup for now.
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I wanted to verify the backhaul was working, so I tested the satellite setup with both ethernet connected and disconnected.
Using a Wifi 5 laptop, I was getting about 80Mbps down and 60Mbps near the AX1500 acting as an EasyMesh satellite when using Wifi as the backhaul.
With the Ethernet backhaul connected to the satellite, I got 240Mbps down and 200Mbps up. The limiting factor in the second test is the laptop. A Wifi 6 device would probably do better.
For anybody with a TP-Link router that supports EasyMesh (usually after a firmware update), this is a no-brainer vs. buying a complete mesh setup. Just add another TP Link router or one of their EasyMesh compatible range extenders and go through the rather simple EasyMesh setup. As long as you are covering one structure and don't have to worry about campus-type implementation issues, it will work fine.
Turns out my existing TP-Link gear (the AX1500 routers) are EasyMesh compatible and DO support ethernet backhaul. Just needed a firmware update and some time figuring out the settings to make sure my primary EasyMesh router could talk to my telco router on a separate LAN. Got it all working. I'm able to roam around the house without switching SSIDs, which should be useful for Wifi calling and overall simplification of the network.
The weak spot for EasyMesh, from my use case, is the lack of compatible outdoor routers. Those seem to be in the domain of Omada-only products.
This will hold me for the time being. I'll just deal with outdoor APs not being on the EasyMesh setup for now.