Mounting Access Point on Raked Ceiling

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sfrasernz

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Topic # 229075 6-Feb-2018 14:07

In our new house which is under construction I'll be installing a new Grand Stream GWN7000 Router and GWN7610 Access Point - thank you @michaelmurfy for your review.

The logical place for the AP is in the center of the house. From this planned location to the corners of the house is about 25m so I expect the one AP will suffice.

The place where the AP is to be mounted has a raked ceiling. If the AP is mounted at an angle (roughly 25 degrees) will this have any significant impact on the performance?

Also, will a cheap POE switch be sufficient to power this AP along with (later down the track) a couple of Cameras and IP phone?

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Reply # 1952436 6-Feb-2018 14:41

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One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Richard rich.ms

sfrasernz

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Reply # 1952500 6-Feb-2018 16:28

richms:

One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Thanks. Grandstream specify a range of 175m so I had wrongly assumed 25m would be well in. I'll plan for two Access Points - this will give a maximum distance for devices of 10m per AP with only a wall or two to penetrate. It also eliminates the problem of the raked ceiling because the new locations have flat ceilings.

Have you mounted your AP's in the center of the rooms or somewhere less conspicuous (such as above a door so you don't immediately see the AP when you walk in)?

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richms

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Reply # 1952536 6-Feb-2018 16:57

Upstairs, hallway one on the roof just over the stairs, and the other end in the junkroom on the wall facing inwards. Downstairs one is sitting in the kitchen because I pulled that part of the cieling down, the front room one is just ontop of a bookshelf pointing up because I am still to gut the false cieling in that room so no point attaching it till that happens.

Richard rich.ms

RunningMan

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Reply # 1952545 6-Feb-2018 17:16

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sfrasernz:[snip] Grandstream specify a range of 175m

That will be in ideal conditions across open ground with no obstacles, interference etc, with the minimum possible connection rate. Different story if you want good throughput, and there's obstacles in the way.

Dratsab

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Reply # 1952556 6-Feb-2018 18:10

sfrasernz:

richms:

One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Thanks. Grandstream specify a range of 175m so I had wrongly assumed 25m would be well in. I'll plan for two Access Points - this will give a maximum distance for devices of 10m per AP with only a wall or two to penetrate. It also eliminates the problem of the raked ceiling because the new locations have flat ceilings.

Have you mounted your AP's in the center of the rooms or somewhere less conspicuous (such as above a door so you don't immediately see the AP when you walk in)?

I have the setup you're looking to implement thanks to @michaelmurfy. I have the AP mounted in roughly the centre of the downstairs level. I get excellent coverage throughout my 2 storey house, in the shed in the backyard, and even down by the bridge at the front of my property which is a good 30m away from the house. The radio's in the AP's are pretty powerful (spec sheet here) - I'd be surprised if you did actually need more than one.

All that said, I think you'll find the 175m range specified by Grandstream is a diametric range in absolutely perfect conditions.

EDIT: @sfrasernz - are you saying your house is ~50m long?

sfrasernz

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Reply # 1952565 6-Feb-2018 18:58

I have the setup you're looking to implement thanks to @michaelmurfy. I have the AP mounted in roughly the centre of the downstairs level. I get excellent coverage throughout my 2 storey house, in the shed in the backyard, and even down by the bridge at the front of my property which is a good 30m away from the house. The radio's in the AP's are pretty powerful (spec sheet here) - I'd be surprised if you did actually need more than one.

Thats really good to know. Are you referring to 5Ghz performance?

EDIT: @sfrasernz - are you saying your house is ~50m long?

More likely ~40m. Its quite long and skinny in shape.

Dratsab

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Reply # 1952591 6-Feb-2018 20:06

sfrasernz:

I have the setup you're looking to implement thanks to @michaelmurfy. I have the AP mounted in roughly the centre of the downstairs level. I get excellent coverage throughout my 2 storey house, in the shed in the backyard, and even down by the bridge at the front of my property which is a good 30m away from the house. The radio's in the AP's are pretty powerful (spec sheet here) - I'd be surprised if you did actually need more than one.

Thats really good to know. Are you referring to 5Ghz performance?

TBH - I when I did my walk test (I was still getting coverage on the other side of my 20m bridge - it was patchy though) I didn't look to see what frequency was being used. I have the AP set to prefer 5GHz but it's quite possible my phone (Nexus 6P) was using 2.4GHz at the time. I'll have a wander round late tomorrow morning and get a better measure of house-bridge distance and will see what frequency I'm connected to.

EDIT: @sfrasernz - are you saying your house is ~50m long?

More likely ~40m. Its quite long and skinny in shape.

Wow - sounds huge!

tdgeek

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Reply # 1952598 6-Feb-2018 20:16

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sfrasernz:

I have the setup you're looking to implement thanks to @michaelmurfy. I have the AP mounted in roughly the centre of the downstairs level. I get excellent coverage throughout my 2 storey house, in the shed in the backyard, and even down by the bridge at the front of my property which is a good 30m away from the house. The radio's in the AP's are pretty powerful (spec sheet here) - I'd be surprised if you did actually need more than one.

Thats really good to know. Are you referring to 5Ghz performance?

EDIT: @sfrasernz - are you saying your house is ~50m long?

More likely ~40m. Its quite long and skinny in shape.

Our house is 283 sqm 2 level. Apple Extreme is centre but on one side. I just went to the furtherest upstairs bedroom, and 2.4 gave 3ms ping 2.7ms jitter 31/24, 5Ghz double, and 4ms 29ms jitter. There is a stairwell (wifi hates stairwells) but not directly LOS. At tea back of our 1.4 acre section no 5Ghz, 2.4 was good, about the same as that bedroom.

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Crowdie

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Reply # 1952676 6-Feb-2018 22:03

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Unless you are married communication is a two way process. You need to design your wireless network on throughput and with only the one-way distance quoted by the vendor (which I wouldn't believe anyway) you cannot do this. All things being equal a business level laptop will perform better than an iPad, which will perform better than a low cost smartphone. So is the 175m quoted by the vendor for a business level, iPad or low cost smartphone?

You could temporarily place the access point in a set location of the house and then complete throughput testing on the lowest powered device you are going to use in your house. I suspect you will find that you need two or more access points to provide appropriate throughput for all your devices.

Kiwifruta

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Reply # 1952679 6-Feb-2018 22:16

RunningMan:
sfrasernz:[snip] Grandstream specify a range of 175m

That will be in ideal conditions across open ground with no obstacles, interference etc, with the minimum possible connection rate. Different story if you want good throughput, and there's obstacles in the way.

Agreed and there is also the other factor of how far your devices can transmit back to the AP. Battery powered smart phones aren’t nearly as capable as a decent AP.

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Reply # 1952682 6-Feb-2018 22:35

richms: One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Crowdie: Unless you are married communication is a two way process. You need to design your wireless network on throughput and with only the one-way distance quoted by the vendor (which I wouldn't believe anyway) you cannot do this. All things being equal a business level laptop will perform better than an iPad, which will perform better than a low cost smartphone. So is the 175m quoted by the vendor for a business level, iPad or low cost smartphone?

You could temporarily place the access point in a set location of the house and then complete throughput testing on the lowest powered device you are going to use in your house. I suspect you will find that you need two or more access points to provide appropriate throughput for all your devices.

Both posts which bring up the questions around what are you going to be doing, or expecting to be doing, via wifi at the extremities of your house (or even your property) using wireless as opposed to wired? I'm assuming that, being a new build, you're having ethernet cabling run to all the rooms?

webwat

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Reply # 1952690 6-Feb-2018 23:29

richms:

One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Walls do absorb and reflect signals so you need to allow for this, the quoted range is normally outdoors with line-of-sight.

I would avoid kitchens and bathrooms, and probably not hard up against the walls (looks odd), or flouro lights or speakers (interferance) but they dont need to be in the centre or anything. Much of it is what sort of performance you expect out of it, speed drops off with distance and obstacles. Concrete walls absorb far more signal than gib lining. You will probably find they tend to become part of the furniture after a while, along with the smoke detectors and lighting, so best to line them up with those other things on the ceiling.

Qualified in business, certified in fibre, stuck in copper, have to keep going ^_^

vulcannz

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Reply # 1952733 7-Feb-2018 02:13

richms:

One AP will not be enough to push 25m thru a house and give acceptable results. If it was I would only need one AP here, not 4 inside the house.

Depends on the AP. Not all APs are designed equal, some take shortcuts on the radios and antenna. I have several brands of APs that will happily punch through 25m (and more) of house.

Phones/mobile devices do not necessarily need a high speed return channel, as most of their bandwidth is in downloads. So sure their radios might not be as good as the APs - but that doesn't matter.

I guess the question is do 4 low powered APs cost more than one high powered AP? I guess if you had a bunch of endpoints that required high speed (like a 802.11ac 5Ghz setup) up and down I'd go the 4 AP way.

Crowdie

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Reply # 1952923 7-Feb-2018 13:18

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As a general rule of thumb consumer and SOHO access points are designed for coverage rather than capacity. This is why they commonly quote pointless signal propagation distances as consumer and SOHO users are likely to believe them. Enterprise access points are designed for capacity and therefore, the trade off is signal propagation.

Most consumer and SOHO access points have omni-directional antennas so you need to look at the dBi rating of the antennas. A dBi rating around 2 will propagate signal vertically but mostly horizontal. A dBi rating around 5 to 6 dBi will propagate more signal horizontally and less vertically (in comparison to a 2 dBi antenna). Therefore a 5 to 6 dBi omni-directional antenna is better suited to a single level dwelling (or having an access point per level) while a 2 dBi omni-directional antenna is better suited to multi-level dwellings (or just accept the increased "lost" vertical signal).

The big questions are:

What throughput do you need and that is dependent on which applications/websites you use/access?
How many devices do you have connected to a single radio? All devices connected to a single radio "share" the airtime so a heavy utilisation user can adversely affect the throughput of others devices on the same radio.
What is the ambient airtime utilisation? If you are in a dense residential area the 2.4 GHz airtime utilisation is likely to be high so performance can be adversely affected.

The issue with #2 and #3 for residential users is they generally don't have a good spectrum analyser, like AirMagnet Spectrum XT, so can't see the channel utilisation. Just because a channel has a large number of SSIDs being broadcast does not necessarily mean it has a high airtime utilisation.

sfrasernz

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Reply # 1953456 8-Feb-2018 08:54

I'm going to go with two AP's - one in each wing of the house.

Right now we have a couple of Phones, Ipads, Echo Dots, MiBox and a Sonos speaker on wifi. TV's and PC's are hard wired. The kids are too young to have their own devices but the day is coming where the number of devices will likely double - especially when I start adding more IoT devices.

Thanks for the feedback.

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