Anyone got Mesh Wifi at home?

[northernladuk]

I'm a bit dubious the range of a single disc compared to a regular router... a decent router will cover most but not all my house.

It will also depend on your house as well. My renovated house has some aluminium struts or something behind the false walls and can only imagine they are working like a faraday cage or something because even my new Asus with 4 ariels only gets through a room and a bit before signal is crap.

I'd ignore the distance claims it says on the packet and use a percentage method against yours to judge whether or not it would improve.

[d000hg]

from what I can tell 'mesh' is purely a marketing term for multiple access points, with the same SSID and linked together.

In the old days you'd get multiple Cisco APs setup identically (except IP/hostname), all wired to the same VLAN and spread them round the building.
Later Cisco APs, with 2 radios, could be used with one radio linked to the nearest other AP as a bridge, and the 2nd radio doing SSID. This 'mesh' appears to be the same as that.
The device switching from one AP to another is not (or certainly wasn't) a function of the AP, rather it was the wireless NIC driver that determined.
So for those trying to build this manually without expensive 'mesh enabled' devices try putting the APs closer so that the overlap is greater that way it should switch to the other AP while the weaker AP is still strong enough. Expect maybe 150-200ms dropout and TCP connections will carry on without dropping.

I don't believe this is the case because even if you set the same SSID on multiple APs they are seen as separate APs (the SSID is for human readability IIRC). Devices definitely won't flit from one AP to another seamlessly... if you force them to swap or have a app to do it, they drop off one device and rejoin the other. I can see this on my phone - it will drop to 4G for 5s in the middle.
Mesh is supposed to require device support - some protocol or the other I think.

If you have wireless devices like a printer you'll need to make sure you're on the same network before accessing it though, which can be an issue (particularly for children).

I was never sure about this, if the printer is plugged into the central router and you're on MyNetwork_kitchen which is a repeater for the router, shouldn't it still work? I have the same curiosity with Google home/chromecast. Not tested yet to find out.

[minestrone]

Mother in law was using Sky q as a mesh. Some devices could not deal with it at all. Modern devices at that.

I switched off IP6 and everything worked fine. Tells me they have not tested the tech that much.

[The Spartan]

If you have wireless devices like a printer you'll need to make sure you're on the same network before accessing it though, which can be an issue (particularly for children).

I bought a dual band WiFi extender and have found this isn't an issue, I can print on the wireless printer regardless of which AP I'm on.

I didn't do anything to configure it to do this either, it was setup to work like this out of the box.

[Lance]

Devices definitely won't flit from one AP to another seamlessly..

They definitely do if you're using Cisco Aeronet APs.
I can't comment on other technologies as I only use Cisco.

[northernladuk]

I was never sure about this, if the printer is plugged into the central router and you're on MyNetwork_kitchen which is a repeater for the router, shouldn't it still work? I have the same curiosity with Google home/chromecast. Not tested yet to find out.

I have a problem relating to this at home. With a weak wifi signal in the office from the main router I put another in the living room next door. The printer was forever dropping in and out and it appears, after some playing, it must see two different options to pick from with the same SSID and instead of picking one like every other device in the house it just bums out. It works with one or the other on, it works when there is two different SSID's, just not when they are the same. That's why I went for the direct wifi connection.

Everything else works hunky dorey and always connects to the strongest signal just this one bloody printer. It's an HP 6970. The HP 6600 I had before wasn't perfect either but never took the time to diagnose it to this level.

I don't know anyone else having the same problem and couldn't be arsed logging it to see if they knew as it works fine as it is.

Maybe something to consider if you start having problems.

[d000hg]

They definitely do if you're using Cisco Aeronet APs.
I can't comment on other technologies as I only use Cisco.

And how much does that cost? And what devices did you test it on? They may have been doing it for years, I don't think anyone claimed Mesh is new but that doesn't mean it doesn't work differently to regular setups. Maybe they had their own proprietary way of broadcasting before anyone got round to agreeing standards (not that they are widely followed which is a good sign Mesh wifi probably isn't ready for general consumer use)


This article mentions Asus adding mesh functionality to their products via firmware which is an interesting idea if others do it.
http://www.alphr.com/technology/1006...-uk-wi-fi-woes

[TheFaQQer]

If you have wireless devices like a printer you'll need to make sure you're on the same network before accessing it though, which can be an issue (particularly for children).

I was never sure about this, if the printer is plugged into the central router and you're on MyNetwork_kitchen which is a repeater for the router, shouldn't it still work? I have the same curiosity with Google home/chromecast. Not tested yet to find out.

If the printer is plugged into the router then it's not wireless though

I have a printer that connects to one SSID in the house. If I connect to the other one (guest wifi rather than main) then I cannot find the printer because it's on a different network.

[d000hg]

Sorry I mis-read that it was wireless both ends. Although I'd still have hoped it could work with a little coaxing.

[b0redom]

Yeah I love the idea but can't see if I can justify the cost just for saving me 5s if I want to play chess on the bog which is covered by the extender

I've seen at least one setup lets you chain devices with ethernet to cover bigger distances e.g. house<-->garden, I wonder if powerline/homeplug (are these the same?) can do this too.

You said you're got 3 discs and presumably turned WiFi off on your original router, is that one per floor or what? How big is your house and how far away is the garden office? I'm a bit dubious the range of a single disc compared to a regular router... a decent router will cover most but not all my house.

Yeah I turned off wifi off on my router - the discs are significantly faster in any case.

I have one disc at the front of the house attached to the router where the DSL enters the house, one in the loft conversion at the back of the house (ie 2nd floor) and one in the office at the bottom of the garden all cabled back via cat5.

I did need to turn off one of the discs (the one in the office) when I was doing some rewiring, and my laptop still had a decent signal back to the house, although my phone didn't.

As with a lot of things my time is way more expensive than just chucking stuff at the problem.

The discs will use wifi to mesh if you don't have cat5, but I've not bothered experimenting with that as I have wires anyway.

They app does add some extra stuff, like the ability to force devices off the network, set up a guest wifi access point in software, show which devices are connected to which disc, and advise on disc placement.

TBH I think given the cost they're great.