Mesh vs APs

[TVille]

I have what can best be described as a compound. It covers an acre with three different buildings spanning about 200 feet from one end to the other of the buildings. All of the buildings have metal roofs which pretty much destroys wifi outside of the buildings. I currently have a Google Mesh setup with six pucks/APs/whatevertheycallthem, and am not happy. I am not happy because all but one of the APs is hardwired. The problem began several months ago when one of them decided to go mesh instead of hard wired. Remember those metal roofs? Yeah, mesh building to building don't work. The 20 year old CAT5 cable running between buildings tests from computer to computer at 600 - 800 Mbps reliably, never seen a glitch, which I think is pretty good going through a couple of switches along the way.

But add in a fifth AP, and it goes to heck. Add in the fifth, four wired, and it all goes to mesh, not using the wired backhaul. It is obvious because the speeds drop off to like 10-30 Mbps, from 150-250 Mbps to SpeedTest.net. I've changed out patch cables, swapped APs for different locations, swapped PSs, rebooted everything, nothing works. If I take the one off line in the furthest building, it works, add either one back, and POOF! Gone! I currently have a very old router setup as an AP for that building, but it is a kludge, with a different SSID.

I'm considering just replacing the whole mess, but that would be expensive. I have Comcast/Xfinity and my own modem, then use the Googles for the wifi. I would need at least five APs, two in one building, one in each of the other two, and one repeater/mesh in attic, although I could hard wire that.

1. Any google Wifi experts know how to kick these damned things hard enough to get them to work?
2. Can I mix and match APs with the same SSIDs and not create issues? I have a whole box of older routers I could reconfigure as APs.
3. If not, any recommendations?

 

[looney2ns]

I would be looking at Ubiquity equipment, and using P2P bridges, and their real access points inside the buildings.
Someone that knows more about this than me will be along soon.

 

[Swampledge]

I have 4 access points in 4 buildings spread over about 2 acres of our 10 total acres. No mesh. Three of the access points share the same SSID, based on recommendations from this forum. (They all would, except I’m too lazy to reconfigure every wireless device to the SSID I’d prefer to use.) Two of the AP’s are in the house; one is my Netgear router, and the second is my older Linksys router downgraded to AP only. I restricted the 2.4 gHz radio in that one to Channel 11 in an attempt to avoid interference. One access point is a Ubiquiti AP lite in my shop, the fourth a Linksys range extender programmed to serve as an AP only. All are connected via Cat6 cable, except the last one, which is fed from a power line adapter connected to a 135’ cat 6 run. All of my buildings are about 100’ from each other in various directions. It’s all been reliable with no complaints on performance, except for Apple devices that cling to a weak signal from a remote access point instead of reconnecting to the strongest one. That is generally not a problem, though, if the device has had an opportunity to ”sleep” between connection sessions.

Sorry I’m not more help to you on the mesh thing. My son and his family moved in with us for 11 months and piggybacked his 3 node Google mesh system on to ours and was happy, even successfully appearing on national TV several times using the most distant node from the Ethernet connection. I occasionally connected through it, but wasn’t as happy with it, though I never ran any speed tests while connected.

 

[TVille]

@looney2ns yeah, as I need more I'll be getting Ubiquity. I have a set of the P2P radios, I forget which ones, and they work great, even though one is mounted inside. At 75', one is outside, the other inside the garage, works fine, 90% signal!. With the ehternet, and conduit to pull more should it die, I'll stick with it for the time being.

@Swampledge thanks for the response. I liked the Googles until it had this problem. I only have one AP with a different SSID, so i can change it without too much of an issue. Although they do top out around 300 Mbps, so that is an issue if you needs lots of bandwidth. I'll change the SSID and see how things work. Thanks!

 

[NielK]

I have what can best be described as a compound. It covers an acre with three different buildings spanning about 200 feet from one end to the other of the buildings. All of the buildings have metal roofs which pretty much destroys wifi outside of the buildings. I currently have a Google Mesh setup with six pucks/APs/whatevertheycallthem, and am not happy. I am not happy because all but one of the APs is hardwired. The problem began several months ago when one of them decided to go mesh instead of hard wired. Remember those metal roofs? Yeah, mesh building to building don't work. The 20 year old CAT5 cable running between buildings tests from computer to computer at 600 - 800 Mbps reliably, never seen a glitch, which I think is pretty good going through a couple of switches along the way.

But add in a fifth AP, and it goes to heck. Add in the fifth, four wired, and it all goes to mesh, not using the wired backhaul. It is obvious because the speeds drop off to like 10-30 Mbps, from 150-250 Mbps to SpeedTest.net. I've changed out patch cables, swapped APs for different locations, swapped PSs, rebooted everything, nothing works. If I take the one off line in the furthest building, it works, add either one back, and POOF! Gone! I currently have a very old router setup as an AP for that building, but it is a kludge, with a different SSID.

I'm considering just replacing the whole mess, but that would be expensive. I have Comcast/Xfinity and my own modem, then use the Googles for the wifi. I would need at least five APs, two in one building, one in each of the other two, and one repeater/mesh in attic, although I could hard wire that.

1. Any google Wifi experts know how to kick these damned things hard enough to get them to work?
2. Can I mix and match APs with the same SSIDs and not create issues? I have a whole box of older routers I could reconfigure as APs.
3. If not, any recommendations?

I have previously struggled with wireless meshes when they get to 5+ APs and have a mix of wirelss mesh and ethernet backhaul. The result has been network storms every now and then.

I currently have 5 Ubiquiti APs, all ethernet connected to the same network and with wireless meshing disabled. All APs have the same SSID and devices roam between the APs as they move around. Modern devices move much more readily and the Ubiquiti system will steer them to the most appropriate AP and band. (Some old 2.4GHz devices try to cling onto the AP they started with for too long.) Ubiquti stuff isn't cheap but so far it has been rock solid and easy to manage.

 

[user8963]

2. Can I mix and match APs with the same SSIDs and not create issues? I have a whole box of older routers I could reconfigure as APs.

you can, but they have to be on different channels when near/accessable.

3. If not, any recommendations?

i stopped using unifi/ubiquiti in new setups
too expensive, too slow.

now i buy/changed some APs to tplink omada (cheapest on the market) ... and they are working better than any ubiqiuiti when it comes to speed. range here in europe no big benefit, because transmission power is limited by law.
big benefit.. they have standalone webinterface and not this cloud/controller bullshit if you dont want to use it... controller is also possible, but mostly if only 1-3 APs i dont use it.

if you want to pay ubiquiti price, you can just buy ruckus , this is another world.

 

[icpilot]

3. If not, any recommendations?

I saw this YouTube video the other day about a guy abandoning Ubiquiti in favor of Ruckus ....
Since then I picked up a few of the Ruckus Unleashed APs and have been incorporating them into my system. To this point I am really happy with them. Might be worth considering.