New Technology - Using a Mesh Router

This new technology might help those of us with barns and detached shops. Let me explain. Our house is a kit house made in three sections with three separate foundations. Under the main house is a finished basement. Under the bedroom section of the house is a walk-in crawl space that has about 5.5 - 8 feet of height depending on the location. It has a dirt floor so it's appropriately named the dirt room. There is a cement slab under the garage.


A 8” concrete wall actually exists between each section for some reason. Because of this, getting wireless signals from one section of the house to the other is difficult. My wife couldn’t get an internet signal in the bedroom from the living room. If we moved the router to the middle section of the house, the signal wouldn’t pass to the main part of the house. Wifi extenders offered no help.


I found a newer router that sets up a “mesh” system that utilizes separate wireless routers on the same system. You run Cat 5/6 cable between each of the routers so the routers are hard-wired together. Ideally you will have an overlap of wireless signals similar to what a Venn diagram looks like. The router system in the house is made by Eero. The first version is about 50% off right now because an update came out. We now have Internet all over the house and now in the shop. At the farm I am going to bury a Cat 5/6 wire and do the same thing between the farmhouse and shop space.

I recently switched to a mesh wireless system as our home is incredibly hard to get reliable wireless coverage...largely because of building materials. I specifically bough the Linksys Velops system because not only is it one of the highest rated, it also doesn't expect to be the primary router on the network. The network demark with Verizon for our FiOS service is in the basement of the 250 year old portion of our home and there is no way that any wireless services are going to emanate from "down there". There are three Velops units in the house and one in my shop building now. The three in the house provide uninterrupted service in all three major sections of our 4200 sq ft home. Velops would normally only need two units based on square footage, but again, the physical nature of our home required more granular coverage. The primary unit in the oldest part of the house and the unit in our 2008 addition are hard wired. The unit in the center of the home currently uses wireless connection via the third wireless connection that Velops uses between units and it has line-of-sight through a doorway to the primary unit. I'll eventually get that one hard-wired, too, but that part of the home isn't easy to fish the cable to where it needs to get to. As mentions, I put a unit in my shop...in the window that faces the house and it's getting a good wireless connection via that third channel to either the primary unit or the unit in our addition, depending on the phase of the moon. So I now have network service in my shop and my wireless phone actually works reliably out there now via ATT WiFi. (We have very poor cellular coverage, despite being close to the tower, because of the big chunk of limestone mountain right behind our house)

These mesh systems are not inexpensive, but they are SO much better than "playing around" with multiple traditional access points. And I say that as a very experienced telecom professional who's tried "whole bunches" of different solutions and configurations over the past decade to provide wireless services throughout our home.

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Originally Posted by Rich Riddle

...I found a newer router that sets up a “mesh” system that utilizes separate wireless routers on the same system. You run Cat 5/6 cable between each of the routers so the routers are hard-wired together. Ideally you will have an overlap of wireless signals similar to what a Venn diagram looks like. The router system in the house is made by Eero. The first version is about 50% off right now because an update came out. We now have Internet all over the house and now in the shop. At the farm I am going to bury a Cat 5/6 wire and do the same thing between the farmhouse and shop space.

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I must say this method really works well. I've been using this technique since I got my shop office wired up 3-4 years ago, not with a "system" but with individual routers working together as one. It works the same way but needs special configuration (which one son did for me). The routers are not even the same brands. The shop is 250 from the house so I ran direct burial CAT 5 (in conduit) at the time I dug the trench for the power. I never been happy with extenders or special antennas.

JKJ

In my experience mesh systems are an improvement over conventional even if you don't wire the routers together. I installed the AmplifiHD system made by Ubiquiti consisting of a base router with the two wireless remote points included in the package. It improved my coverage and signal significantly and I did not see the need to add another base station (router). Previously I had been using an Apple Airport Extreme and two Airport Express extenders.
As others have pointed out, if you do add another base station and plug it into a Cat5/6 port on the network thus creating a feature called wired backhaul, it will expand coverage and performance further.

I am not a networking pro, but I just spent a couple of painful months reading about mesh systems, trying to figure out what to install to cover my house and barn. Beware that a lot of systems using the "mesh" jargon are not actually mesh systems, and a couple of the most popular systems don't support wired backhaul, so won't work if you have buildings that are too far apart.

Instead of a "mesh" system I ended up installing a several Ubiquiti Unifi Pro APs, giving them all the same ID and passwords, making sure they were on different channels and turning the power down on the ones that were closer to each other. I can now walk around the house, barn and outdoors and stay connected seamlessly with very fast, very solid connections. I do not notice when I am passed from AP to AP, it happens without any lag or issue. From the user's point of view it is a single large WIFI network, despite handoffs taking place. This system was recommended to me by a wifi guru who said I didn't need the complexity and overhead of mesh. It looks like he was right. The Ubiquiti Cloudkey provides a very comprehensive management tool. Mesh is apparently the way to go if you can't have wired connections to your APs.

I'm way out of my depth with this stuff, but the new system is a dream compared to what I had before.

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Originally Posted by John K Jordan

I must say this method really works well. I've been using this technique since I got my shop office wired up 3-4 years ago, not with a "system" but with individual routers working together as one. It works the same way but needs special configuration (which one son did for me). The routers are not even the same brands. The shop is 250 from the house so I ran direct burial CAT 5 (in conduit) at the time I dug the trench for the power. I never been happy with extenders or special antennas.

JKJ

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John, the only major similarity with using multiple discrete "routers" (actually all but one should normally be configured as access points...you should only have one router as a gateway to the Internet in most circumstances) is that they provide overlapping wireless coverage; sometimes with the same SSID and sometimes not, depending on the configuration. They are all still separate systems and there are pitfalls, such as roaming issues with some devices, frequency contention, etc. Mesh systems are different in that they are "one system" that happens to provide multiple cooperative nodes to expand the effective coverage to a larger area. The better ones use a minimum of three "radios" with one reserved exclusively communication between nodes so that traffic to/from devices isn't affected by backhaul to the Internet gateway. (the actual router at the edge) The two remaining radios on the better mesh systems independently handle 2.4ghz and 5ghz device traffic to maintain superior performance. The system also usually manages transmit power to optimize performance while minimizing frequency clashing.

Now in your case, since youre shop building is so far away from your home, using a separate, independent access point is a perfectly sane thing to do since you're at the very edge of or beyond where frequency interference occurs with whatever you have in your home. You can use a mesh system (hardwired, obviously because of distance) with no problem and it somewhat simplifies configuration and management, but the real value of mesh systems comes into play for folks who have larger homes or have homes that present difficulties to wireless signals like mine does. Two units wasn't enough (and the Velops product I'm using is pretty much the highest rated product in the current class) and adding the third did the trick to solve our in-home issue. Having a node in my shop was a bonus benefit and the whole combination has also been beneficial on our property outside of the home given we're in a cellular semi-dead spot.

There is an easy fix for bad signals through walls, put the router in the roof space as high as possible above the walls and the problems go away.

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Originally Posted by Chris Parks

There is an easy fix for bad signals through walls, put the router in the roof space as high as possible above the walls and the problems go away.

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You would think...but trust me, it doesn't always work that way. My home is a very good example. I know for a fact that height didn't solve the problem. It's the hardest wireless environment that I've had to deal with and that includes professionally during a long career in the telecom industry. That said, it's absolutely the first thing that should be tried, however.

It worked for me.

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Originally Posted by Jim Becker

John, the only major similarity with using multiple discrete "routers" (actually all but one should normally be configured as access points...you should only have one router as a gateway to the Internet in most circumstances) is that they provide overlapping wireless coverage; sometimes with the same SSID and sometimes not, depending on the configuration. ...
Now in your case, since your shop building is so far away from your home, using a separate, independent access point is a perfectly sane thing to do ... Having a node in my shop was a bonus benefit and the whole combination has also been beneficial on our property outside of the home given we're in a cellular semi-dead spot.

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Thanks. I quit following e-tech about 15 years ago unless it involves resistance heaters for my livestock waterers. :)

I have poor cell coverage in the shop due to the metal roof so I installed a femto-cell personal "tower" so both wifi and cell signals are strong now.

When my WiFi system dies someday I'll know who to call for a tech update! Our house is timberframe with some huge internal timbers so this mesh might be good for a few weak spots. I hope it outlives me, though.

My two routers do have the same SSID and it surprised me how far they reach. When I tested it I could maintain continuous WiFi coverage walking between the buildings. BTW, I don't stare at my phone when walking, I have no idea how the teens do that and not trip or run into things. Hey, that made me think of a safety app someone could write (although someone probably already has): feed the camera to the screen as a background and overlay it with text from snapchat or whatever - sort of a HUD - they will never have to look at the real world again!

JKJ

Moving to the mesh network allowed me to shut down the micro-cell in the house in favor of using ATT WiFi and the coverage is better, too. The micro-cell signal was also affected by the building characteristics.