Finally upgraded my home wifi to something that works - managed wifi review

[rage2]

Originally posted by flipstah
Meraki has an awesome, easy-to-understand cloud interface. Baller af.

$4500 for the hardware + 1 year license, then $800/year licensing for 4 APs. Definitely baller af.

[revelations]

Highly illegal in Canada:


http://www.jammerall.com/products/Ad...l-Antenna.html

[HiSpec]

Originally posted by rage2


Neighbor has a Chinese router cranked past maximum allowable limits in Canada, and it continually channel hops. It's so strong that in my basement I pick up a stronger signal strength from their router than I do mine 6 ft away. My neighbors all complain of bad wifi performance probably because of this one guy.

Just to clarify, so their router was 'overclocked' to extend their range?

[adam c]

Originally posted by rage2

$4500 for the hardware + 1 year license, then $800/year licensing for 4 APs. Definitely baller af.

4APs? Only need 1 to do the job, I had 2 dead zones in my house using the Meraki, one in the bathroom of all places and one in my daughters bedroom which I was actually ok with

[rage2]

Originally posted by HiSpec
Just to clarify, so their router was 'overclocked' to extend their range?

Basically adjusted transmit power to max. It doesn't actually increase range, because the client device doesn't have the power to transmit back. It only fucks over the neighbors.

The only time you'd want to run illegal power levels like that is to setup a long range remote uplink on an AP so that both APs can talk to each other.

Originally posted by adam c
4APs? Only need 1 to do the job, I had 2 dead zones in my house using the Meraki, one in the bathroom of all places and one in my daughters bedroom which I was actually ok with

Ya, can't live with deadzones. We walk around the house with our baby monitor app running and it dies when there's no coverage. I had initially bought just 2 APs but still had deadzones all over the place. My house sucks for wifi and high bandwidth applications.

Remember, I'm optimizing for low powered wifi devices such as cell phones. If I'm tuning for laptop with a much more powerful radio I can probably get away with a single consumer grade AP.

[DENZILDON]

I have a low wifi area in my house and I was thinking of using this

http://ca.dlink.com/product-category...ect/powerline/

then adding another wireless router after.

Anyone know if this power line routers work? They seems pretty cheap.

[kenny]

Originally posted by rage2
Ya, can't live with deadzones. We walk around the house with our baby monitor app running and it dies when there's no coverage. I had initially bought just 2 APs but still had deadzones all over the place. My house sucks for wifi and high bandwidth applications.

Probably could've spent less on a better cam (wired) for baby monitoring

The Unifi setup is working well for me with 1 AP on upper floor and 1 on main floor both ceiling mounted. I have a weak spot in the master bedroom on 5ghz which was annoying but now that I've switched to a single SSID for both 2.4/5 and enabled band steering my devices just drop down to 2.4ghz if I'm right up against the window.

Using iperf I'm getting just under 400mbps on my S6 all over my house. In the master it's anywhere from 140 to 250 depending on where I am. There's also a couple corners in the basement where it drops to about 120 or so.

I may drop another AP in the basement to totally fix up coverage down there since the APs are pretty cheap but not in any rush as it's working well enough as is. I do want one of these for the garage since I have ethernet wired out there already:

http://ubnt.ca/unifi/406-unifi-ap-ac-international.html

[rage2]

Originally posted by DENZILDON
I have a low wifi area in my house and I was thinking of using this

http://ca.dlink.com/product-category...ect/powerline/

then adding another wireless router after.

Anyone know if this power line routers work? They seems pretty cheap.

Powerline generally works fine. Not the greatest amount of bandwidth available, and introduces a bit of latency (80ms or so) but in general it works. Adding another wireless router will introduce the same roaming problems.

Originally posted by kenny
Probably could've spent less on a better cam (wired) for baby monitoring

Not really. The cameras themselves are fine as they don't move so wired, wireless, makes no difference. It's the receiver (iPhone) that moves around the house where the problem lies. Regardless, our cams are simply the kid's iPad/iPod, so even if we wanted wired, it won't work.

Originally posted by kenny
I may drop another AP in the basement to totally fix up coverage down there since the APs are pretty cheap but not in any rush as it's working well enough as is. I do want one of these for the garage since I have ethernet wired out there already:

http://ubnt.ca/unifi/406-unifi-ap-ac-international.html

So you'll end up with 4 APs like me in the end haha. But yea, if I were to do it again, I would've gone with the cheaper UniFi route. It's just too bad that I stopped following UniFi after all the customer complaints, and sure enough within that 3 month timespan they fixed all the software problems and released new AP's at half the price.

[PAV]

Thanks for the write up Rage2.

I was curious if you had looked into using Apple Extreme Routers to do the same thing.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202056

It doesn't have all the same features as some of the products you mentioned. However, it was very easy to set up. I have it with one latest model Airport Extreme and an older one. Seems to do the trick. I was going to connect them wired, but wireless seemed good enough for our needs (and was too lazy to run wire if it wasn't needed). Also used it to move the printer to where the 2nd router was.

The AE can set up different networks for 2.4, 5 and guest. TBH I'm not sure what frequency the guest network is on. Can easily set up networked HDs or other accessories. Guest network keeps devices off your shared printers/HDs.

Would be nice to have more monitoring/control features (like the guest bandwidth restrictions), but for working seamlessly (set it up once by changing a couple options, and leave it), and with Apple being fairly good about keeping it up to date, I've been happy with it.

Thanks again to rage2 for the write up, I had asked him about it when he posted his other routers for sale. Always nice to find out about other options!

[revelations]

Originally posted by DENZILDON
I have a low wifi area in my house and I was thinking of using this

http://ca.dlink.com/product-category...ect/powerline/

then adding another wireless router after.

Anyone know if this power line routers work? They seems pretty cheap.

They can be hit and miss depending on how your home electrical system is laid out and what noise it carries.

Ive tried dozens and they all worked to varying degrees. In the end just went with a bridge and connection problems were solved.

[phreezee]

Try The Lexus of Routers : http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-rt-ac88u-router/

Asus routers are the only ones that have given me whole house coverage without an AP.

[killramos]

Why go Lexus when you can buy a lamborghini!

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/RT-AC5300/

I don't even know what their market is for that thing because who is doing serious gaming on a wireless connection

[adam c]

Originally posted by killramos
Why go Lexus when you can buy a lamborghini!

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/RT-AC5300/

I don't even know what their market is for that thing because who is doing serious gaming on a wireless connection

First thing I think about when seeing that, a guest comes over and asks what it is

"Oh that's my gaming router and devil worship device"

[phreezee]

Originally posted by killramos
Why go Lexus when you can buy a lamborghini!

To go with the RC-F of course. Just need to paint it orange

[rage2]

haha, like I said, single routers just doesn't have the range in the 5ghz if it has to pass through 2+ walls, regardless if I'm getting the Veyron of routers or not. I've been buying/testing/returning these baller routers from bestbuy forever trying to find a better solution.

If my 2.4ghz performance at my house wasn't so flaky, I probably wouldn't even have this problem.

[killramos]

Originally posted by rage2

If my 2.4ghz performance at my house wasn't so flaky, I probably wouldn't even have this problem.

Coat the exterior walls in tin foil

But you are right. 2 or 3 200 dollar mid range or slightly out of date routers wired (Key as wired is king) as multiple APs will outperform 1 ridiculous router any day of the week.

I have no idea who buys those stupid things.

[revelations]

Originally posted by rage2
haha, like I said, single routers just doesn't have the range in the 5ghz if it has to pass through 2+ walls, regardless if I'm getting the Veyron of routers or not. I've been buying/testing/returning these baller routers from bestbuy forever trying to find a better solution.

If my 2.4ghz performance at my house wasn't so flaky, I probably wouldn't even have this problem.

Some of my clients live in wood condos with 40 WIFI units broadcasting and they have no issues with the proper (typically ASUS for consumer-level) WIFI device.... although they dont have walls to deal with in their suite for their own signal.

That neighbour must be putting out some really strange signals. Wonder if CRTC would do anything (or even care).

[rage2]

Originally posted by revelations
That neighbour must be putting out some really strange signals. Wonder if CRTC would do anything (or even care).

I'm bombarded by about 80 wifi signals, but the problem is the one neighbor for sure. As a test, I set all my APs to a single channel for 2.4ghz, and it works fine until that neighbors AP hops over to that channel +/- 3 channels because of overlap. When it sits on the exact same channels as my AP, I can barely get 1mbps using iperf on 2.4Ghz. Because it keeps hopping channels every hour or so, there is no one channel I can choose to avoid the problem.

I tried to use auto mode to channel hop myself, but it only does it once a day. So now I've got my 4 APs all on different channels to avoid overlap, make sure it's a 20mhz channel and not a wide channel to minimize getting hit, and it works decent enough for the areas with spotty 5ghz coverage.

Yea, I doubt the CRTC would even care, but I will at some point track down exactly where this signal is coming from and try to convince them to fix their shit. Like I said, some of my neighbors have complained about their wifi as well, getting 2 hour drops every night, and they've all upgraded as much as they can to 5ghz to mitigate the issue, but it'd be nice to get it permanently fixed for everyone in the area.

[codetrap]

.

[Sal0]

Hey Rage,

How did you ever figure that you have interference? Is there specific software you used?

I'm thinking I might have the same problem. We replaced the hardware, and we are still having similar problems. Seems to happen very randomly though. I tried to fix it, and so did Telus with no luck. We now have two AP points so I just connect to a different signal when it happens.