Wifi mesh network

[John K Jordan]

After a recent power surge which wiped out some equipment, someone here suggested trying a mesh system. When visiting my oldest son he showed me his TP-Link system and said with just two nodes it gives him far better coverage than his previous wifi router. He gave me the unused 3rd node to try.

I have a comcast cable modem in the house and about 300' of underground ethernet to the shop. In the past I used a Netgear wifi router in the shop connected with ethernet.

I know less than nothing about the mesh things. Is there a nice guide for these somewhere? Ideally I'd like to connect the ethernet cable in the shop to a ethernet switch which currently feeds ethernet to the shop desktop computer and also plug the TP-Link mesh node into the switch. Can that be configured to give me wifi in the shop? I don't use wifi much in the shop but occasionally it's handy for iPad or phone.

Perhaps later I could connect another node in the house to ethernet from the cable modem in and put an additional one out in the sun room to get better wifi out on the deck. Can these things do that?

Another question: is the TP-Link a reasonable brand or is something else considerably better? I haven't invested any money yet!

JKJ

[Doug Dawson]

After a recent power surge which wiped out some equipment, someone here suggested trying a mesh system. When visiting my oldest son he showed me his TP-Link system and said with just two nodes it gives him far better coverage than his previous wifi router. He gave me the unused 3rd node to try.

I have a comcast cable modem in the house and about 300' of underground ethernet to the shop. In the past I used a Netgear wifi router in the shop connected with ethernet.

I know less than nothing about the mesh things. Is there a nice guide for these somewhere? Ideally I'd like to connect the ethernet cable in the shop to a ethernet switch which currently feeds ethernet to the shop desktop computer and also plug the TP-Link mesh node into the switch. Can that be configured to give me wifi in the shop? I don't use wifi much in the shop but occasionally it's handy for iPad or phone.

Perhaps later I could connect another node in the house to ethernet from the cable modem in and put an additional one out in the sun room to get better wifi out on the deck. Can these things do that?

Another question: is the TP-Link a reasonable brand or is something else considerably better? I haven't invested any money yet!

JKJI’ve had the Linksys Velop for 3 years now, and it works so well that I’ve forgotten any details about how to use it. It just works. Maybe a few times a year I’ve had to press the reset button on one of the nodes, but that’s about it.

[Larry Frank]

I wish I could help. I have an Asus mesh system that my son installed and it works great with 200 mbps download speeds to my tablet. House is connected to Xfinity cable. This is far better than any router I have had.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John, talk with your fellow Moderator Jim Becher. He seems to be fairly experienced and knowledgeable about this subject.

[Jim Becker]

There are lots of choices, but I do suggest that whatever you adopt should support WiFi-6 because these systems don't get replaced often and many, if not most new devices that come into your life will support WiFI-6 and it's faster throughput. I recently moved from Velops at the old place to the Eero Pro for our new place. I only need one node for the house and will have one in the shop when it's built out back. I'll actually end up with a spare node, but it was less expensive to buy the three pack than two a la carté. What's really nice about a mesh is that it's a single network across all the nodes and it's all managed from one interface. The handoff as you roam through your mesh is completely seamless and less complicated than having multiple discrete access points, even if you use the same SSIDs across the latter. The better Mesh systems use a separate, third private wireless radio for backhaul when you need to place a node that can't be hard-wired, too. That maximizes performance.

To your specific question, TP-Link is a decent brand, in general. I do not know how their mesh system stacks up, however.

[John K Jordan]

Do you recommend the eero Pro? I see the three-pack version with wifi 6 is about $600 on Amazon. As typical, reviews are mixed. One apparently lucid early adopter had some compelling reservations but his frequent reviews ended in early Dec '20. I have no use for Zigbee in the foreseeable future - is the cost higher because of that?

I think three units would be good for me:
** one connected by ethernet to the cable modem, the second wireless elsewhere in the house, and the third by ethernet cable to the shop, ethernet continuing to computer **.

Correct me if I misunderstand, but seems this should give me the same function I had before the lightning adventure:
** cable modem -> house wifi router -> ethernet to shop access point for wifi -> ethernet to shop computer **.

JKJ


There are lots of choices, but I do suggest that whatever you adopt should support WiFi-6 because these systems don't get replaced often and many, if not most new devices that come into your life will support WiFI-6 and it's faster throughput. I recently moved from Velops at the old place to the Eero Pro for our new place. I only need one node for the house and will have one in the shop when it's built out back. I'll actually end up with a spare node, but it was less expensive to buy the three pack than two a la carté. What's really nice about a mesh is that it's a single network across all the nodes and it's all managed from one interface. The handoff as you roam through your mesh is completely seamless and less complicated than having multiple discrete access points, even if you use the same SSIDs across the latter. The better Mesh systems use a separate, third private wireless radio for backhaul when you need to place a node that can't be hard-wired, too. That maximizes performance.

To your specific question, TP-Link is a decent brand, in general. I do not know how their mesh system stacks up, however.

[Prashun Patel]

I installed this in my home in Oct 2020. I'm reasonably happy. We get coverage in all corners of our home where we did not before.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086NYD2V1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I did my research I concluded, as Jim suggests, to go with Wifi6.

They are extremely simple to install. You download an app, plug one into a wired port on your router, configure it, then plug the others into ac power and they detect each other.

If you have young'ns in your home and are interested in content filtering, this system has a nice way of blocking internet access at bed time, and for permanently blocking specific sites. It does not allow time limits as iphone does. In retrospect, I might have prefered a system that had more robust filtering features. But that's important to me bkz I have kids of that age right now...

It has been fairly robust; we have not had connection issues or dropped nodes. I am pleased with that part of it.

If I were to buy a new unit I would also consider getting one with one more node than I need (I have 3 - wanted 4) or a system that allows a la carte purchasing of additional units. I think it's a small price to pay for being able to "blanket" your home with coverage. At the time, TP-Link Deco did not have a single unit add on that I could find. This might have changed, but we made the existing 3-unit config work. It's been fine, so I haven't looked recently to add on.

I was also considering the offerings from Google (which people said I should go with it I had a bunch of Google devices - I do not) or Amazon (which seemed relatively new).

Anyway, when I was researching it felt like cordless drills: everyone seemed happy with what they owned - even years later; I'm headed for that camp. It's good enough that I don't think about it much, which is what I wanted.

[Bruce Page]

I installed an Orbi Mesh Network last year mainly to better WiFi reception in the shop and improve overall reliability. I went from an iffy 2-3 bars in the shop to a solid 5 bars. It has not hiccupped once. The not so old WiFi router it replaced needed to be reset almost daily.
https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Orbi-Ultra-Performance-Whole-System/dp/B01K4CZOBS

[Jim Becker]

Do you recommend the eero Pro? I see the three-pack version with wifi 6 is about $600 on Amazon. As typical, reviews are mixed. One apparently lucid early adopter had some compelling reservations but his frequent reviews ended in early Dec '20. I have no use for Zigbee in the foreseeable future - is the cost higher because of that?

I think three units would be good for me:
** one connected by ethernet to the cable modem, the second wireless elsewhere in the house, and the third by ethernet cable to the shop, ethernet continuing to computer **.

Correct me if I misunderstand, but seems this should give me the same function I had before the lightning adventure:
** cable modem -> house wifi router -> ethernet to shop access point for wifi -> ethernet to shop computer **.

JKJ

I paid about $200 less than that for my three pack...I guess I caught a sale! And yes..."cable modem" --> Primary node --> Ethernet --> other node(s) --> Ethernet to hard wired. Each node has a two port GigE switch in them. If you need more than that one port for wired devices in an area serviced by a node, just add a small GigE unmanaged Ethernet switch. I have that in my shop at present. for extra flexibility even though only the CNC control computer is currently plugged into it. At the old property, I had a lot of wired devices (that house was a bear to get consistent wireless coverage due to building materials) as that provided the best performance...

[Dave Cav]

I have a Google WiFi with three nodes. It's connected to Comcast via a Surfboard modem and a 16 port gigabit switch; the switch provides wired ethernet throughout the house and shop. I am running the pucks wired as well. I also have small switches in the home and shop office for connecting additional laptops, Raspberry Pis, etc. We are on just under an acre with a 2700 sq ft house and an approximately 1000 sq ft shop (with metal siding) and I have good wireless connectivity everywhere. It was easy to install and set up.

[Erik Loza]

We installed an Orbi mesh system and it was a huge improvement. Now, I can stream Youtube videos out in our (detached) garage, which is very helpful.

Erik

[Clifford McGuire]

I also have the Google Mesh system. One hub and two 'points'. Hub is pretty central to the house, so one point at one end of the house and the other in the apartment above the garage.

Why did we choose the Google system? I saw it at a big box store and brought it home to try.

Current price for the hub and two points is $349.

[George Yetka]

I put the orbi mesh at home but used the set with 1 large modem and 3 small plugin satelites. I don't recommend this one. I setup my office which is 2 times the size as home with this one
https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/mesh/rbk852/
It is awesome. I cant speak to other brands but Im sure there are many other good ones out there

[Derek Meyer]

I recently installed Ubiquity NanoHD access points in my house, which are great, but they do require control software to be installed on a computer in your house. If I had it to do over again (and I may do it anyway) I would go with the new Aruba access points. They use a cloud-based management system (AWS I believe) so there is no need for an on-premise controller, and depending on the model(s) you buy they can support thousands of simultaneous device connections, including Bluetooth and Zigbee devices. I don't know if they are a mesh system or not, but I have mine wired to a PoE switch anyway. From what I saw, they are price-competitive with the Unifi system, at least for the lower-end devices.

[roger wiegand]

I thought about mesh, but at the time the systems I was looking didn't support a wired backhaul, which seemed silly given ethernet cabling already in place. I installed Ubiquiti WAPs, gave them all the same SSID but set them to different channels and adjusted the power on the ones that were closer together to help minimize interference. This system gives me perfect coverage over our two acres with three WAPs, with the full ~800 MB/s that our internet provider provides, and even faster access to my local server. I'm not sure that mesh would give me anything more, and because of overhead might be less. I'm never aware of switching among antennae as I move around. The Ubiquiti Unifi hardware has been great; rock solid and easy to configure. It mostly comes with POE support, so you don't have to provide other power at your wireless access points, which is nice.

[Doug Dawson]

I also have the Google Mesh system. One hub and two 'points'. Hub is pretty central to the house, so one point at one end of the house and the other in the apartment above the garage.

Why did we choose the Google system? I saw it at a big box store and brought it home to try.

Current price for the hub and two points is $349.The thing I don’t like about the Google mesh system is that, if you read the fine print, you’re giving Google entitlement to all the data that runs through it. If you’re using the system to handle proprietary data, whether business or government or what have you, this can result in some thorny legal issues. I wouldn’t. The same applies to Google-supplied broadband, last I checked.

Google used to have the mantra “Don’t be evil.” Whatever happened to that.

[roger wiegand]

I recently installed Ubiquity NanoHD access points in my house, which are great, but they do require control software to be installed on a computer in your house.

Can the NanoHD APs not be configured from the Cloud Key interface? (Though I guess that does count as a computer in your house, just not in the sense that most of us think of it)

[Jim Tobias]

We changed over last year to the Eero Mesh system and have liked it a lot.....great coverage! We had a 2nd Eero Pro hardwired in my wife's office area as the space is across the screened porch and she HAS to have uninterrupted coverage as she often is doing demos/training customers online of their software. It has worked flawlessly to date. I added another remote node in my shop(below my wife's office space) and now we have very good coverage everywhere.
Jim

[Jeff Heil]

Another happy Eero Mesh user here. Main unit is hardwired in center of basement and have 3 wireless nodes to blanket the first floor (2500 sq feet) and attached garage. Put one node in home office and no issues working remotely with videoconferencing etc. No connectivity issues and happy with speeds. We recently moved into this new house and went from 1GB fiber in town to 150 mbps copper in the country. All Tvs/Xbox etc are connected via CAT6 network ports so only laptops and tablets and other devices are on the wifi. Our family of 4 (2 adults and 2 teens) are all happy with connectivity speeds. Previously used an Apple Airport for 2012, so we were also ready for a jump to new technology.

[David Bassett]

... Google used to have the mantra “Don’t be evil.” Whatever happened to that.

I'm a cynic I guess, but from where I sit: They grew. It got inconvenient. They got rid of it.

[Alex Zeller]

I need to do something as well. But where I live I only get the internet through a cell hot spot. Verizon loves to make it difficult as their JetPacks don't have eithernet ports. So I would need to get a wireless bridge to get a wired connection that then could go to a standard wireless network. At some point I might go with Musk's Starlink to get faster speeds and unlimited data but it would most likely get mounted on my garage so I think a mesh network would be needed. So I'm looking forward to updates as you get a system up and running.

[Derek Meyer]

Can the NanoHD APs not be configured from the Cloud Key interface? (Though I guess that does count as a computer in your house, just not in the sense that most of us think of it)

They can, but I didn't want to spend the $180 for the CloudKey box. I have a PC that doesn't do much and consumes very little power (Intel NUC).

[John K Jordan]

I connected the Tp-Link Deco to the ethernet to the shop today, through an ethernet switch to keep the other ethernet devices out of the equation. A quick configuration with the app and I how have wifi in the shop. Easier to configure than a router. Good strong signal.

I'll add a few more Deco nodes when I get the time.

JKJ

[Jim Becker]

You'll like having the mesh, John...it's so much better than separate APs in many ways.