I’m looking for some recommendations on home wifi mesh networks. I’m looking for seamless wifi access through out my house, garage and backyard. I also may look at this for our daycare center.
I’m familiar with professional gear (we use Cisco access points and controllers at work) but I’m clueless on consumer grade gear.
What is the range between the base station and the access points? Any recommended brands?
I don’t have much info for you. I did notice after updating my Asus router that the feature has been added to it. So you may want to look an see if your router already supports it and just get the additional hardware you need.
What Asus router are you using?
I’ll have to check my firmware. Of course I use a third party firmware but I know it’s based off the official.
If you’re using Asus Merlin, it doesn’t support Mesh.
I tried Mesh on the Asus, but it degraded my wifi speeds by at least 40-50%.
RT-AC1900P
I am using Merlin. I’ll check with official. @anon42851937 what are you using for the extra access points?
I had 2 Asus RT-AC3100’s that I tried their mesh on. I dropped that configuration when the mesh killed wifi performance, and switched to a Ubiquiti Edgerouter-X with an RT-AC3100 connected in Access Point mode.
I’ll have to check model numbers when I get home but it appears my current router does not support it. the 2.4 GHZ and 5 GHZ radios are manufactured by 2 different companies with 2 different firmware. So I’m not holding out hope.
I was looking at some boxed solutions and was wondering if anyone has tried those.
I’ve heard many of those degrade wifi speeds as well. Asus Mesh supposedly didn’t (according to them) so that’s why I tried it. Maybe they’re ironing it out now, but I wasn’t impressed with my first attempt.
I think I want one of the APs from Ubiquiti to complement my Edgerouter. It takes some work to set up an Edgerouter properly, but once you do, it’s a great value at 50 bucks.
Okay, I have mesh at home and it’s good and bad.
Before mesh I had two different services to cover the whole place, one at 15 up and down and the other at 300 up and down.
Mesh finally came to my work and I figured what better time to get rid of the second service. I upped my speed to 940 up and down and tried my Wifi. It wouldn’t work everywhere, so I set up the mesh with the modem and 3 pods and I get Wifi everywhere now. That’s the good.
The bad is that if you’re connected to one of the pods - at least with mine - the Wifi speed is SIGNIFICANTLY slower. I have 940 and will get between 5 and 100 on the mesh pods. This could be the equipment itself, or it may just be because my place has thick concrete walls that the regular wifi wouldn’t get through, so it may be affecting the mesh. Either way it’s great and it’s saving me 125 a month.
interested in hearing people thoughts on this as well. Been looking to upgrade and be able to move through the house moving from one AP to another easier and including my backyard and garage as well.
was looking at this article recently
It looks like the last two ASUS firmware releases for AiMesh capable devices have worked on performance, so it may be worth another look if you have routers that can use it.
On mine you can’t even tell that you’ve switching AP’s. And it works outside, however for me outside is still on my modem and not the pods
That is one thing: AiMesh is pretty seamless. My complaint was just that it killed performance on wireless vs standard wireless routing or an AP.
Get Eero. It’s not cheap. But it kicks ass. I have a big, old house with lots of interference in the walls. It’s the first solution that gave me seamless, reliable coverage all over the house and a decent amount outside. Set up is so easy a retired marine or a caveman could do it. The app works well to share the network, track who’s connected and kick off the people you don’t like. They even have good customer service.
Can you connect the access points with a ethernet cable? I need to get this system at the daycare as well and the one room is really far away that I’d have to run a hard cable to.
Yes, you can. Two ethernet ports in the back of each one. I have one set up next to my sexbox that is hardwired back to the main gateway. Then my sexbox is hardwired into that. Same with my desktop PC upstairs with another eero.
Cool, I’ll look into this at the daycare. Pretty much exactly what I need.
Yeah real expensive. Ouch.
eero Pro WiFi System (Set of 3 eeros) - 2nd Generation - Advanced Tri-Band Mesh WiFi Technology and WPA2 Encryption to Replace WLAN Routers and WiFi Range Extenders - Coverage: 5+ Bedroom Home