I’m looking for some advice as to what product(s) I would need to replace an access point in my house.
My current setup is crudely drawn below. The house is ancient and weirdly shaped, so needs multiple wireless access points to get decent coverage everywhere.
I have 300Mbps fibre to the premises which goes into the Wi-Fi router ®. I have a Cat 6 cable (red line) running from the router, outside the front of the house and back in through the back of the house where it connects to an old router (AP1) that is configured as a Wi-Fi bridge/access point.
Another Cat 6 cable (blue line) then runs from that access point to my cabin into another old router (AP2) that is configured as an access point so I can have Wi-Fi in there.
Basically I’ve chained the old routers and set them all up with the same Wi-Fi network and password so I can seamlessly connect automatically wherever I am, and all devices can see each other where relevant.
The issue is AP1 is failing every few days and giving very slow speeds. It’s fine after a reboot and goes back up to 300Mbps for a couple of days until it needs another kick.
I’d like to replace AP1 with something else. What I don’t know, is what would give the fastest/most consistent speeds.
Should I:
a) Just replace AP1 with another newer, more reliable router set to bridge/AP mode.
b) Replace AP1 with an Ethernet switch so that the red line and blue line connect to the switch, and connect a dedicated AP to the switch where AP1 is. Most inexpensive dedicated access points I’ve looked at don’t seem to have enough Ethernet ports to allow chaining, which is why I’m wondering if a switch is necessary.
c) Something else?
Assume I can’t run any new cables outside the house, i.e. I can’t be arsed to replace the red line because it would be a huge pain.
If you have specific recommendations of products, that would be great. Cost is a factor - I’m not looking to replace the whole setup with some expensive mesh product because 80% of the time I’m getting maximum speed with this current cheapo setup, it’s just that it’s annoying to have to reset AP1 regularly.
Running copper between different buildings like that is risky, because if they have different ground potential you could get current traveling through the cable and zapping the equipment. A lot of people use fiber for those runs for that reason.
If you want to solve your issue as cheaply as possible while eliminating the aforementioned risk, move AP2 to where AP1 is and replace AP2 with a PoE-powered access point. This will ensure all devices are powered from the same house, and you get rid of the failing device.
so this is definitely going to be the cheapest and jankiest option, but you can basically implement it instantly.
buy a digital outlet timer and schedule it to be on from 03:01 am - 02:59am. The router will lose power for 2 minutes at 3am in the cabin, but it will get rebooted every day.
but i can tell you this is an industry standard enterprise approach to this type of issue.
Haha thanks, I’ve actually considered that before. Hacky, but if it works, who cares.
I’ve come to conclude that whenever there is a home networking issue, the solution is to avoid consumer grade hardware as much as possible. This usually takes care of having to reboot routers and access points every few days.
What I’d do in your case:
- Turn off wifi on router. Bonus points if you can just set it to bridge mode and supply your own router, but that’s a bit beyond most people. Just disabling wifi will do for now.
- run cables from your router locations to the AP1 and AP2 location, so that you can avoid daisy chaining any access points.
- Get a small PoE switch. “Any” will do.
- Get three PoE access points and install them, one next to the router, one in the ap1 location, and one in the ap2 location.
- Be sure to not set them up on the same channel. Same SSID and password, but didn’t fderent channel: 1, 6, and 11 is usually a pretty solid choice if there aren’t external factors affecting those.
If you want to do this as cheaply as possible, I suggest just doing the cable runs to avoid daisy chaining, but I suspect the wireless access points themselves might be the main issue.
As for APs, there are many that are good. I personally use three Aruba Instant-On that cover my entire three floor house with no problem.
This is the right approach.
I personally use UniFi 6 dishes for my APs, and am never going back to “consumer”.
A note unsaid: typically these also handle band steering and roaming awareness. This means that you can walk from one AP to another and they will connect you seamlessly without fighting over who is stronger, and will adapt to prevent collisions.
Not sure about Aruba (almost guaranteed they have the same), but you want the options to deploy a Wifi config universally across your house, with each member being aware of and cooperating with the others. In UniFi case, they will occasionally scan the spectrum and auto assign the channels for what is least crowded in the range. The group automatically avoids each other during this process and it’s beautiful.
Yup, I have my Unifi gear for the automated allocation like you said, though I think pretty much every SOHO manufacturer does this to some degree these days.
Yup, I’ve seen those features in some of the models - an AP will hand off a client to a different AP automagically as necessary.
I assume (wild guess, actually :) that AP1 is low on RAM and therefore close to crashing all the time.
If that’s the real reason, just replace it and look for a new one with the double amount of RAM.
Probably. This combined with a Memory leak from shitty consumer grade firmware is usually what necesitates a power cycle every so often.
To piggyback of what neidu3 said, I think your issue is a wonky application of consumer hardware.
You can utilize your existing cable runs, but I would: -grab gigabit 4-8 port switch (a cheap Netgear 5p would work) -grab 2 access points (I’m a fan of Uniquiti, the nanos can be fairly inexpensive, especially older ones, these work as well). Make sure they include POE injectors (ubiquitis do)
Install the switch where you have AP1 and mainline that to your router (red wire), run an AP and the blue line to AP2 off the switch. Connect the POE injectors inline from the switch to the 2 APs. Bonus points if you want to add a 3rd AP at the main router (disable wifi on your router).
Uniquitis are pretty rad in that they’ll automatically select the best channel and power level to operate on give the density within your house as well as minimize interference from neighbors operating on the same wifi channels, and they’re self managing to a certain extent.
The biggest point is that you want to avoid chaining through devices as much as possible to minimize latency and throughput. Switches are especially designed for this application, while chaining through devices will absolutely impact performance. The ideal topography is wheel-and-spoke, where every device has a minimal hop path back to the router (router -> [optional switch] -> dedicated line to each AP/device). While you can rig an old router to act as an AP, especially with open firmware like openwrt, it’s still kind of a hacky way of going about it.
Edit: for reference, here’s my topography:
Granted this is quite a few years of collecting hardware when I spot deals or get old devices from friends (Though I’m not sure why my proxmox and pinhole are showing off the router, they’re connected to the switch).
UXG_PRO buddies!
I’ve noticed the topology view doesn’t handle non-Ubiquity devices well. They tend to just go to the very top.
Like others have, I also run unifi access points, run a dedicated network cable to each one and you should be sorted, bit of work but totally worth it in the long run. I think a couple of the pro models have dual network ports so you could in theory daisy chain one from the other, never tried it.
I’m using TP-Link Omada series access points and they are amazing. You can run them off of a power brick or POE (power over ethernet) and put then anywhere that you can run ethernet. They can also work in mesh mode if desired and are not super expensive. Combine them with the OC200 controller or run the controller software on an always on PC and they work flawlessly.
You can pick your preferred wifi version and upgrade to a newer version later on by just changing out the access points and adopting them into the system.
Another vote for Omada.
I can’t tell from your diagram but are you using the WAN ports on any of your downstream devices? Did you disable DHCP on them? They should be providing layer2 access only. Leaving those L3 services on can cause all sorts of odd issues.
Omada is cheap but their router isn’t simple. Their poe switch and APs work but you’ll need a controller. I use the oc200.
