"Brian Reay" wrote in message
...


Our house is a bit of pain Wi-fi coverage wise. I suspect it is
combination
of layout (split level over 3 floors), size(especially length), and
materials. While I have got it covered by using several access points, it
means being aware of which one(s) are best in a given room. Im ok with
this but Senior Management would prefer a single system and even I would
find a seamless system more convenient.

Im considering one of the MESH systems which are currently being
promoted,
BT sell one, Tplink do several, and there are others. These are linked
together and provide a single Wi-fi zone for want of a better world, with
a common SSID etc, and, rather like a mobile phone system, the idea is you
are €˜handed automatically from box to box as you move around.


Im curious if anyone has tried any of the systems and can comment on
particular ones. They all work on essentially the same principle, so I
looking for comments on how well they work, problems, etc.


I have dabbled with MESH previously, although in a different context,
using
some modified routers but my interest here is the off the shelf beasts.

We live in an L-shaped house which is mostly a bungalow, but with a bedroom
above at one end of the house. The router has to be at the opposite end of
the L because that's where the phone sockets are (and laying an extension
cable would be difficult) and it's where my computers are.

The house is partly 1850s build, so the walls are very thick. Getting access
to the loft to run an Ethernet cable to an access point (which would have
been my preferred solution) is very hard because of restricted space in the
loft and a breezeblock fire-break wall up there.

We experimented with a Powerline/Wifi extender which worked pretty well for
me: my phone automatically switched between the router's wifi and the
extender's wifi pretty well, and only the conservatory was out of range of
the extender. But the backhaul Ethernet-over-mains was very variable, and my
wife's Android phone and, even more so, her iPad, had great difficulty
roaming between networks.


So... we invested in a Linksys Velop mesh network and it works very well. We
need 6 devices to cover the whole of the house, and even that took judicious
placement of devices so each could see the next. I'd hoped that some of the
devices would have had two routes back to the router, rather than just a
daisy chain, but the Velop app only shows each device connected to *one*
neighbour.

Coverage and speed is good. The VDSL sync speed is about 35 D / 20 U, and
the Ookla Speedtest app on my phone shows about 25/15 for almost everywhere
in the house. My wife's iPad roams freely without any manual intervention.
I've played a HD video on Youtube and it's played without stuttering as I
roam around the house and my phone has to go from one Velop node to another.

My computers connect at the moment to the router by Velop mesh wifi (though
I'll probably run a flat Cat 7 cable between my study and the lounge where
the router is) and if I copy TV recordings that are made on my Raspberry Pi
(acting as a PVR) to my PC, via an SMB share, I get around 150 Mbps which is
probably about the limit for the Pi; I think the best I've had with both
devices connected by Ethernet to the router is about 250 Mbps - some way
short of the theoretical maximum of 1000 Mbps of gigabit.

One of the frustrations with mesh is that it tends to use 5 GHz wifi (rather
than 2.4 GHz) for the backhaul connection between one node and the next,
back to the "primary node" which is connected by Ethernet to the router, so
nodes need to be placed closer together than for 2.4 GHz because 5 GHz has a
shorter range and is attenuated more by walls. The Velop still provides both
2.4 and 5 GHz for devices to connect, but node-to-node uses 5 GHz.

Rebooting (eg in the event of a power cut) takes about 5 mins before the
last Velop in the chain has connected: first the primary node goes blue
(connected) then its nearest node goes blue and so on down the chain.
Unfortunately we've had several brief power glitches over the past few weeks
as the village supply switches from one high-voltage feed to another
(according to phone number 105 which is used for reporting power cuts).

I needed a couple of special features: address reservation (so specific
computers always get given the same IP address by DHCP) and
port-forwarding/mapping so our security cameras can be accessed from outside
the LAN. The Velop can be configured to do both of these. If you're doing
port-forwarding, it needs *both* the router and the primary Velop to be
configured with the ports:

router

WAN port 81 - Velop-IP:81
WAN port 82 - Velop-IP:82

(where Velop IP is the reserved IP address in the 192.168.x.x subnet that
the router gives to the primary Velop node by address reservation)


primary Velop

WAN port 81 - camera1-IP:80
WAN port 82 - camera2-IP:80

(where camera1-IP and camera2-IP are the reserved addresses in the
10.120.x.x subnet that the Velop gives the cameras by address reservation)


From outside the LAN (eg using mobile internet) I can then access the
cameras as public-IP:81 and public-IP:82 (where a dynamic DNS server
supplied with the camera supplies that public IP address).