Home WiFi

[RJH]

Recently had a Virgin cable internet service connected to my new home. All
fine except (predictably) the Virgin Hub 3 wifi can't stretch to the furthest
corners of the house, so I'm using a basic 3 point Tenda mesh array I happened
to have.

This works very well, except the speed is about half (5MB/s vs 12 MB/s) that
of router's wifi. So I've got it set up so that the TV, media player and main
computer uses the router wifi, and everything else uses the mesh, on separate
SSIDs - one for the router, one for the mesh.

It seems to work, except the computer can't communicate with mesh connected
devices (webcams for example).

First question is whether this arrangement is a good idea in any event . . .

Second is - is there a way to enable devices to see across the SSIDs - so the
main computer on the router SSID can 'see' the mesh devices?
--
Cheers, Rob, Sheffield UK

[Pancho]

I suspect both the Tenda Mesh and the VirginMedia hub are acting as
routers. So the Tenda connected devices are probably behind a second
layer of NAT. You could forward ports on the Tenda devices for specific
services to be visible from the Virgin Hub devices. In effect, the
Virgin Hub devices appear like devices on the Internet/WAN to the Tenda
devices.

Possibly you could disable NAT on the Tenda, but the Mesh technology
probably needs it to be a router rather than just an access point.
Without specifics of kit or configuration it is hard to know what is
going on.

For my home I cable the multiple Wifi "array" devices (Mercusys)
together and use their fast roaming capability, not mesh, they are just
access points. That is cheap and gets good speeds.

Fast roaming is what I actually care about, I walk about my house and my
phone switches Wifi nodes seamlessly, but I don't need mesh.

[Vir Campestris]

On 11/12/2023 09:53, RJH wrote:

> It seems to work, except the computer can't communicate with mesh connected
> devices (webcams for example).

I was using a TP Link range extender to get the WiFi up to the spare
room where my wife has here desk. It worked, and the remote devices were
on the same net as all the others. It was just transparent.

I don't know what the network topology was - it just worked.

My home office is in the garden, and I use an old ADSL router on the end
of some CAT5e with all the NAT features turned off - so its just an
access point. Devices hop between it and the main one in the house
transparently.

Andy.

[Andy Burns]

RJH wrote:

not familiar with tenda in particular

> It seems to work, except the computer can't communicate with mesh connected
> devices (webcams for example).

Are the devices on the two SSIDs on the same, or different subnets?

e.g are some 192.168.1.xxx and the others 192.168.0.yyy ?

> First question is whether this arrangement is a good idea in any event . . .

not necessarily bad, but might require more configuration, e.g. adding
some static routes (either on the wifi kit, or if not possible, then on
each PC)

[Daniel James]

On 11/12/2023 09:53, RJH wrote:

> ... the Virgin Hub 3 wifi can't stretch to the furthest corners of

> the house, so I'm using a basic 3 point Tenda mesh array I happened
> to have.
>
> This works very well, except the speed is about half (5MB/s vs 12
> MB/s) that of router's wifi.

That may simply be the result of the way that mesh works -- a mesh
access point uses half its throughput to talk to the wireless device and
the other half to pass the messages back to the router.

Some mesh devices can use different channels for the two connections,
and this can improve performance, but each message still has to be
stored and forwarded so you won't get the same performance as direct
communication with the router.

It should be OK for streaming (e.g. to your TV and media player),
though. All the messages in streaming are going in the same direction
(assuming it's UDP and there's no handshake) and they'll arrive at the
same rate, just timeshifted by an imperceptible amount.

> It seems to work, except the computer can't communicate with mesh connected
> devices (webcams for example).

As others have said, that suggests that the Tenda box is acting as a
router rather than simply as an access point. If you can configure it
not to do that (I don't know Tenda kit) then you should get everything
to be able to talk to everything else.

When I set up the WiFi here, after we built an extension, the advice I
received (from this newsgroup and elsewhere) was that if possible I
should wire all the APs to the router rather than using mesh, and that I
should turn OFF the router's WiFi and rely on the APs throughout. I now
have good coverage throughout the house from three Ubiquiti APs cabled
directly (via a switch) to the router -- to be honest two would probably
have been enough. As we had builders and electricians in the house it
was easy to get Cat-6 cables put where we needed them, you may not have
that luxury.

Mesh is a compromise. It's a pretty good compromise, but if speed is
important you can't beat wires!

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

[Daniel James]

On 11/12/2023 17:17, Vir Campestris wrote:
> My home office is in the garden, and I use an old ADSL router on the end
> of some CAT5e with all the NAT features turned off - so its just an
> access point. Devices hop between it and the main one in the house
> transparently.

That's good ... and maybe you're lucky.

The point about Fast Roaming (which is different from mesh, but often
implemented alongside it) is that the APs talk to each other, and agree
which is getting the best signal from each client device. The other APs
then disconnect from that device forcing it to reconnect to the one with
the best signal. This is helpful if you have a device that tries too
hard to hold onto a connection with one AP when better possibilities
become available.

It sounds like your devices are well-behaved.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

[RJH]

I had my old home hard wired - it was excellent, reliable and quick. Chucking
GB files about was a hoot. But as I don't use the NAS any more, I'm finding
wifi to be pretty good. Even the printer's working . . .

> Mesh is a compromise. It's a pretty good compromise, but if speed is
> important you can't beat wires!

Thanks (and to everyone else in this thread). I'm not sure about the exact
configuration (subnet, access points etc.) beyond the fact it seems to work
across all devices if I stick to the Tenda (Mesh 3F AC1200). I didn't do any
setting up beyond faffing about in the router to give each unique SSIDs. I'll
use the router's wifi when/if I need the speed.