Mesh network products for work colleague - what works out of the box?

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Aredwood

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#2037926 15-Jun-2018 02:56

kryptonjohn:

$100 cheaper from Dick Smith (DSE)

Assuming it is around $400 from them, consider that you might have to pay customs fees on top of that price. As my understanding is that DSE is now fully Aussie based.

kryptonjohn

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#2037969 15-Jun-2018 07:49

Aredwood:
kryptonjohn:

$100 cheaper from Dick Smith (DSE)

Assuming it is around $400 from them, consider that you might have to pay customs fees on top of that price. As my understanding is that DSE is now fully Aussie based.

Ooh, I see you are correct about that. Nasty fishhook.

michaelmurfy

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#2038340 15-Jun-2018 14:58

@kryptonjohn Sorry just saw this...

The Covr is quite a confusing product. To be perfectly honest the Ubiquiti Amplifi is potentially one of the best mesh products on the market.

With the Covr all the mesh nodes are "separate" to a degree. IE to firmware update you have to log into each of the nodes individually and start the update. The only thing that syncs is the Wireless configuration from the master. The Covr appears to support Gigabit broadband fine and speeds are pretty good but honestly for the price I can't go recommending them.

It is a good product design wise but with absolutely terrible software. I've currently got mine set up in a large holiday home on Vodafone FibreX and can confirm that wireless works all over at the full speeds (200Mbit) and I have full IPv6 but apart from basic internet settings you simply don't have control over your network like other products from Ubiquiti or Netgear.

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kryptonjohn

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#2038344 15-Jun-2018 15:02

Cheers Murf, will stick with Unifi UAP then... just need to get another one to cover both ends of the house...

davidcole

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#2040436 19-Jun-2018 13:34

So I'm picking, and from previous posts that Amplifi is the flavour of the month at the moment?

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michaelmurfy

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#2040439 19-Jun-2018 13:40

Yep - Amplifi is what I've found to work the best out of everything.

fritzman

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#2040913 20-Jun-2018 10:36

I know you asked specifically about Mesh products, but depending on the size of the building involved... you may want to simply disable the WIFI on the (POS) router supplied by the fibre provider, and go with something decent like the Synology RT2600.

I've done that in a number of situations, and the results have been instantly amazing. Where the Spark router gave a fast.com result using the wifi of 25Mbps, the Synolgy gives 100Mbps every time, and the range is equally fantastic, plus, they are a piece of cake to set up. https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/NETSYN2600/Synology-Router-RT2600ac-4x4-MIMO-Dual-core-17GHz

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#2040953 20-Jun-2018 11:11

My setup is the Synology RT2600ac in home office and a Fritzbox 4790 (AP mode) in the lounge (Ethernet back to Synology) with same SSID for both Router and AP. Best performance.

Crowdie

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#2046061 29-Jun-2018 15:16

michaelmurfy:

Yep - Amplifi is what I've found to work the best out of everything.

I did some testing on the Amplifi product this week and I found:

The Amplifi commonly selected non-optimal channels. You would expect this during discovery (i.e. when the AP is first turned on) but after twenty minutes of operation the mesh AP didn't change channel.
The transmit power of the mesh APs is too high. Normally an access point would reduce it transmit powers to improve client roaming and avoid radio overdriving (when one radio is "shouting" at another radio causing distortions in the amplifier). The Amplifi system did not resulting in all three 2.4 GHz channels appearing solid red in the spectrum analyser and poor client roaming.
Every few minutes a single mesh AP would transmit across the entire 2.4 GHz spectrum. This caused frame loss on a streaming video service we were using as part of the testing.
The Amplifi transmits outside the 20 MHz channel boundaries. You would expect the transmission to be 20 or 40 MHz wide but I captured the Amplifi transmitting from channel 7 to channel 13. This will adversely affect other access points, including neighbours, transmitting on channel 6 (in this example).
The mesh control data plane appears to remains in the 2.4 GHz spectrum with no link to the SSID broadcast spectrum selection. I would expect that the spectrum for the mesh control plane is configurable.
The throughput of the Amplifi system is poor. After initial testing with three mesh APs I dropped to a single mesh AP and the throughput will still poor. The testing was completed in the same room as the mesh AP with clear line of sight.

kryptonjohn

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#2046064 29-Jun-2018 15:19

Tenda have a 3 station mesh wifi AP system that's only US$90 ... I wonder if anyone has looked at it?

I'm sure it is basic and light in features but if it gives what it says on the tin; a simple transparent single SSID over a house with seamless handover... then it would suit a lot of people?

dt

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#2046094 29-Jun-2018 15:57

Crowdie:

The Amplifi commonly selected non-optimal channels. You would expect this during discovery (i.e. when the AP is first turned on) but after twenty minutes of operation the mesh AP didn't change channel.
The transmit power of the mesh APs is too high. Normally an access point would reduce it transmit powers to improve client roaming and avoid radio overdriving (when one radio is "shouting" at another radio causing distortions in the amplifier). The Amplifi system did not resulting in all three 2.4 GHz channels appearing solid red in the spectrum analyser and poor client roaming.
Every few minutes a single mesh AP would transmit across the entire 2.4 GHz spectrum. This caused frame loss on a streaming video service we were using as part of the testing.
The Amplifi transmits outside the 20 MHz channel boundaries. You would expect the transmission to be 20 or 40 MHz wide but I captured the Amplifi transmitting from channel 7 to channel 13. This will adversely affect other access points, including neighbours, transmitting on channel 6 (in this example).
The mesh control data plane appears to remains in the 2.4 GHz spectrum with no link to the SSID broadcast spectrum selection. I would expect that the spectrum for the mesh control plane is configurable.
The throughput of the Amplifi system is poor. After initial testing with three mesh APs I dropped to a single mesh AP and the throughput will still poor. The testing was completed in the same room as the mesh AP with clear line of sight.

Interesting, thanks for sharing.. ive been looking at getting something to replace my two lack luster grandstreams and was considering the amplifies as an option.. I'll hold that thought for now..

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#2046098 29-Jun-2018 16:09

Sorry, I have previously commented the D-Link COVR had a speed restriction when using VLAN ID. This is not correct. The speed was restricted by Windows 10. Once drivers were updated the laptop could connect at much higher speeds.

I've removed my previous reply to avoid confusion.

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