Suggestion on covering big house with Wifi

[gregor]

Hi neowin community,

 

I need an advice on what/how to cover pretty big house (approx 600 sqm) with Wifi signal.

 

This is how current coverage looks like and how everything is installed.

- 600sqm house has pretty thick walls, even inner walls

- ground floor side room (office room) has ISP cable modem installed, bound to ASUS AC router,

- there are basically no disturbances coming from the ISP side or router side.

- there are at least 20 devices connected to the wifi in every moment (if nearby)

- wifi should also be available in the 1st floor on the complete opposite side of the location of modem/router

 

Problems and good to knows

- there are no ethernet cables going through the house and this isn't an option or something I could do 

- any IT accessories should be hidden as much as possible (no extra routers lying around on the tables should be visible)

- router + modem lies in the office cabinet

- being in another room (which is connected to the office), the signal drops to 20%. the internet on 20% is unusable (too much of package drops)

- 1st floor doesn't find the router AP at all.

- last year, AP extender was installed in 1st floor exactly above the office- it was used as WIFI extender (the one you put in power wall slot)- it was horrible. not only it dropped packages but it also stopped working after few minutes being connected on it.

- also keep in mind that the people living in the house aren't born IT professionals so the solution should be really reliable and if one of the parts dies, it should be replacable with and ease.

 

What are the possibilities?

- buying more wifi extenders? (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wifi+extender), but, where to put them?

- buying ethernet-over-power adapters? (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lan+over+power&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alan+over+power), but, will it handle the ground to first floor difference?

- buying Wifi mesh system (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wifi+mesh&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Awifi+mesh), but, is it really worth the price?

- something else? should I use different adapters and bind them together? 

 

 

Please give me suggestions on what should be the best choice to buy and cover all the rooms of house. 

 

I will respond to any question coming from your side.

 

Regards

 

Gregor

[Circaflex]

What is your budget? Avoid repeaters/extenders like the plague.

[gregor]

Thank you for answering @Circaflex. Lets say the budget lies around 300EUR or 350$. For starters, if this is the price with which we could cover half of house, this is also aceptable.

[Circaflex]

There are other members here, who are better qualified to give you an answer based on your requirements. I hope they pop in, but I would think the Ubiquiti Mesh system would be a start, they are elegant looking so nothing hideous will be displayed. @BudMan is the resident networking guru here, and @xendrome and @sc302 are very knowledgeable in this area as well. I have tagged them in hopes that they will chime in as well.

[xendrome]

Wireless Mesh, the AmpliFi HD as Circaflex has mentioned. they either talk directly to the router, or can pass through each other back to the router. Obviously directly to the router is the way to go, but distance may not allow for that. If you have specific questions just ask. A diagram of the house might help as well

[Nargg]

Use a "Mesh WiFi" solution.  Google's latest router is a great example, but there are quite a few.  Works wonders!

[Astra.Xtreme]

You could try a higher powered router like the TP-Link OnHub.  It has a lot of internal antennas and gets great coverage.  If you find it still doesn't get the range you want, you can add some of those Google WiFi mesh hubs onto it.  It's a really simple system (sometimes too simple for the techy people), but it sounds like that might be a good thing for this application.

[+BudMan MVC]

Powerline adapters would be the simple easy solution, and not all that expensive.

 

Then you could place AP or wifi routers as AP in the appropriate locations connected to the network via the powerlines.

 

Floors would not make any difference..  Unless this was say an apartment complex or something where the different floors power was completely isolated on their own circuits, etc.  To be honest the soho mesh setups are very very basic in their abilities currently.  They have no ability to do any sort of vlans.. So your wifi clients are all connected together - you can not create different wifi networks to isolate different devices.  In the world of iot devices with ###### for security.. Such devices should be isolated from the rest of your network.

 

Correct solution would be to use something like the Unifi AP which are poe, and run a wire to each of them and proper place them in the ceiling for best coverage of the area you need.  But they can be set on a shelf or put under a couch/table etc...  So you could leverage these with powerline adapters.  Or if you supply them with just power they could be used with wireless uplink..

 

The difference with wireless uplink and full mesh is the ability to do more than 1 wireless hop.

 

So wireless uplink is like this

 

wire - AP ---- wirelesss ---- AP --- wifi client

 

Where full mesh can do this

 

wire AP --- wireless --- AP ---- wireless ---- AP ---- wifi client

 

The difference between uplink or mesh is that a different radio is used for the uplink, while a repeater just uses the same radio as clients connect to so you /2 the available bandwidth to clients.  With uplink/mesh there is no loss of bandwidth to the clients wireless like in a repeater..

 

edit:  I didn't show any clients on the other AP, but yes they can also have clients connected to them, not just uplink..

 

edit2:  I have not done a lot of research on these... So I am not sure if they can do vlans or not, etc.  But this sort of setup is prob the best sort of deal for a large house when you want min amount of devices that people can see.

https://www.plumewifi.com/

 

You plug them into the wall, you could do one in every room - or the rooms you want wifi in - and there you go mesh

 

 

[Bryan R.]

What Budman said... Powerline adaptors have come a long way. Provided your wiring will allow it, that is the way I would go, scattering APs about with the same SSID.

 

I've used this in many tough spots. https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Powerline-1200Mbps-TL-PA8010-KIT/dp/B01EO5A4TI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1512159247&sr=8-2&keywords=tp+link+powerline+1200

[tmorris1]

44 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

What is your budget? Avoid repeaters/extenders like the plague.

Unless they are connected by wired ethernet, but it sounds like that is out.

[+BudMan MVC]

If you want to step up to the next gen of powerline stuff.. You could go with the unifi ethermagic line.

 

https://store.ubnt.com/products/ethermagic

EtherMagic™ is a MultiPoint Gigabit Powerline Communication (PLC) System with integrated PoE features. EtherMagic instantly transforms your electrical circuit into a 1200 Mbps Ethernet network without the need to install Ethernet cabling. With multipoint capability, up to 32 EndPoints can be connected to a single EtherMagic Switch, and with PoE built into each EndPoint, separate PoE adapters are not needed. Setup is quick and easy using the EtherMagic mobile app. EtherMagic is the ideal solution for networking wired devices in buildings where Ethernet cabling is unavailable or difficult to install.