Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sandlake]

I am just about to get FTTP into my house and thinking about changing my network and I'm not too well clued up on it all.

The internet comes into my upstairs home office and from there I have 2 ethernet cables which run to 2 distant points in my house, utility room (at the back of the house) and living room (at the front  of the house, beside the TV).
Strictly speaking I could just operate with ethernet but for convenience WiFi would be good.

Could I add a "Mesh Wi-Fi Range Extender" to both ethernet endpoints?

A wired network doesn't have an SSID so what can be extended?

Do I just need any old WiFi router to create a wireless network (in my home office) that can then be extended via the ethernet cables and Mesh Wi-Fi Range Extender?

I had been thinking of getting a PfSense router in my home office but that potentially creates a minefield with DHCP/Double NAT/Subnets. I'm thinking that whilst it sounds complicated I may be OK running one wired network and a seperate wireless network as wirelessly I think all I want to do is access the internet, all my actual network clients are wired.

[Alex Atkin UK]

That's what Wireless Access Points are for.  You only need to go mesh if you absolutely know one wont reach far enough and you need seamless roaming.

A cheaper option is a router with all its router features turned off/bridge mode, but Access Points tend to get better range, particularly if you ceiling mount them as central to the house as possible.

[Sandlake]

So, a wireless access point or router in bridge mode connected to a PfSense router (PfSense being the heart of the network) and then 2 Mesh Wi-Fi Range Extender at the end of the ethernet cables?

It would be nice to have seamless roaming

Thanks for your help

[licquorice]

The wireless access point will have its own SSID. Some people think that changing it to be the same as the main router is a good idea, but I recommend leaving it as a different SSID, that way you not only know which signal you are connected to, you can force a change if your device is hanging on to a weak signal rather than switching to a stronger one.

[licquorice]

No, just the WAPs at the end of Ethernet cable.

Unless you are in the habit of wandering about the premises whilst streaming, seamless handover is not needed.

[Alex Atkin UK]

The wireless access point will have its own SSID. Some people think that changing it to be the same as the main router is a good idea, but I recommend leaving it as a different SSID, that way you not only know which signal you are connected to, you can force a change if your device is hanging on to a weak signal rather than switching to a stronger one.

That's exactly how I've always done it.

[Weaver]

The earlier posters make a good point about having a different SSID. I recommend trying both identical and distinct strategies because in my experience some operating systems in wireless client devices work better with the identical SSID strategy. I have my two ZyXEL WAPs that are each set to several SSIDs per WAP, and the two WAPs both offer some of the same SSIDs plus the odd unique one.

I have a ‘standard/normal’ SSID: that same SSID is on both WAPs; there’s also a ‘guest’ SSID which is for visiting friends, not strangers; and there’s an SSID that is just for me alone. The reason for that is because my WAPs each have two fully independent radios in each box, so it’s like having four fully independent WAPs, on four frequencies, each of the four supporting multiple SSIDs. The me-only SSID binds me to a physical frequency that has no one else on it so I always get full speed when talking to another machine on the LAN.

Very flexible software comes with the better WAPs. Mine are incredibly old, 12 years old, so one day I will have to replace them, but they are very powerful and flexible.

[aesmith]

Every business installation I've ever worked on, or even just connected to, used the same SSID across all APs.  It would really be unworkable otherwise.  Typically the same in different buildings as well, so devices will connect in any of the company's buildings.  Normally settings are configured on a controller and automatically apply to multiple, depending on their groupings.

So even for home use I would recommend the same SSID, unless there's some flakiness meaning some devices need to avoid some APs (or prefer some for that matter).

As you might guess I haven't experimented much with one-AP-per-SSID installations, but when roaming doesn't this mean the device won't look to a new SSID unless the signal to the existing one actually fails?  I mean not jump just because the adjacent SSID now has a better signal.  I might see if I can test that scenario just for fun.

[licquorice]

Unless a true mesh system is in operation to give seamless handover, having all APs with the same SSID is no different to having discrete SSIDs in terms of handing over. There will be many that dispute this, but switching between APs with the same SSID will still involve the device dropping and re-connecting. It may be quick enough to appear seamless, but it isn't. and has the disadvantage a forced change can't be made.

A true mesh system is a different kettle of fish and is what business systems employ to ensure seamless working in a large environment.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Agreed, it would (for example) cause a VoIP call to drop as all connections through WiFi will cease.   Its principally the same as unplugging out of one ethernet port on a switch and plugging into a different one.

Mesh on the other hand is supposed to steer the packets towards to the new AP as all Mesh extenders are being managed by a main unit which organises when and where this is going to happen.

[Weaver]

Do some of the newer standards help with handover between WAPs and supporting real-time requirements for applications such as VoIP?

I was reading some document about how CISCO and Apple declare their deep love for one another now because they are putting in the work to support a full range of new wireless standards, including network layout info sharing and assistance making truly intelligent choices for handover. Kit that only bases choices on signal strength is just too crude. Corporates and high client density situations want to have handover choices based on avoiding having clients overloading particular WAPs with too much traffic or having too many clients. The CISCO-Apple love affair iirc includes a guarantee that CISCO WAPs all get tested with Apple kit and o/s’s which is very good news for everyone. I read the docs for some of the standards mentioned and they seem to me to be a must if shopping for WAPs. Unfortunately CISCO seem to make it impossible for a mere mortal such as me to just go and buy some of their kit.

I will have to upgrade my now 12-year-old ZyXEL WAPs at some point before they die on me from simple old age or before I need more than 300 Mbps WLAN throughput per client, so I will probably just buy WAPs from A&A as that way I get long-term support and config how I need it. That might mean Aruba. Is that HP now?

[aesmith]

A true mesh system is a different kettle of fish and is what business systems employ to ensure seamless working in a large environment.

There may be some differences in terminology here. To me "mesh" means something where APs are interconnected within the wireless system something like this for example ..
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/technology/mesh/8-0/design/guide/mesh80/m_mesh-network-components.html

Personally I wouldn't use the term to describe what I think of as the normal building deployment, where each AP is directly connected to the LAN by Ethernet. Do some people now refer to any sort of controller based, or cloud managed solution as a "mesh"?

[Weaver]

Please put me straight where I don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s no reason I can see why mesh architectures should be better at handover. Good handover requires better software, inter-communications protocols and sometimes more clued-up operating systems. I’m assuming there are two things that matter: one is making the correct handover decisions, and the other is making fast handovers for the sake of time-critical protocols. I’m assuming ‘mesh’ means that WAPs interconnect via RF, as aesmith said, not via wired ethernet. That of course is a huge waste of RF capacity, and means that mesh systems will always be horribly slow, all things being equal, but the convenience of being able to park WAPs in locations where you cannot easily run ethernet cables is not to be underestimated.

Novel wacky WLAN networking architectures are no good if they don’t make use of standards as they then won’t interface with all popular operating systems well. For example RevK found that Ubiquiti just didn’t work in his house with iPhones - I remember a string of blog post starting with the day when the Ubiquiti WLAN somehow confused an iPhone so that it didn’t do handover properly when he was in the bath at his house in England. Took ages to try and diagnose it and I don’t think the combined forces got to the bottom of it. Ubiquiti was kicked out in favour of other suppliers.

[aesmith]

Roaming is initiated by the client. Can't see the relevance of mesh vs LAN connections, but a controller looking at all APs can help optimise the hand over.

By the way, do I recall you have Cisco Mobility Express?

[Alex Atkin UK]

The way I understand it is Mesh is better at roaming because its part of the selling argument, that you get whole-home coverage.  If that involed glitchy performance when moving between stations, nobody would be very interested.  Not sure how it works but they are supposed to be able to force a client off an node and onto another one seamlessly.

Roaming alone typically doesn't work, you lose all active connections, not least because many clients will hang onto a signal too weak to actually use and make the switch way too late, plus it wont move BACK to a faster network when you come back in range.  A shared SSID is utterly useless IMO as every portable device would end up on 2.4Ghz when you leave the house and come back.

In theory I think roaming is supposed to work seamlessly, but it never seemed to be implemented well in client devices and many consumer routers simply don't (or didn't) support it.

There may be some differences in terminology here. To me "mesh" means something where APs are interconnected within the wireless system something like this for example ..
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/technology/mesh/8-0/design/guide/mesh80/m_mesh-network-components.html

Personally I wouldn't use the term to describe what I think of as the normal building deployment, where each AP is directly connected to the LAN by Ethernet. Do some people now refer to any sort of controller based, or cloud managed solution as a "mesh"?

IMO they do, as you have things like ASUS AI Mesh where its referring the fact it links back to a central controller and can do so over wired or wireless backhaul.

Its rather confusing given WiFi has a mesh mode which has nothing to do with any of this.