Need help with my Colombia Apartment Home Network

Hello,

Thanks in advance for your help. I work for an Audio/Video Company and have done some basic networking (Mainly Video/Audio over IP - IMGP stuff). And need help with a Wifi Mesh or the best way to go forward with my apartment in Bogota, Colombia. Sadly all my walls are concrete, and the Wi-Fi sucks. My wife and are some nerds and into Brawl Stars (Mobile Gaming) but my goodness if we don’t lag :(.

I just bought the Dream Machine but because of COVID-19, i cannot move back to Colombia just yet. I Saw UI just came out with a design website. https://design.ui.com/ , and I see my Dream Machine won’t cut it so I created the following design:
AV Rack in the “Habatacion de las Ninas” This is our Dogs room, and where the Modem is located

  • (1) Dream Machine
  • (1) 5 Port Flex Switch

Chicken Camita - Wife and I bed (Chicken is her nick-name long story… LOL)

  • In Wall AP - Plan to get some Belkin RJ45 to USB Adapters to directly connect our phones/tablets. We also have a Chrom Cast device

Cocina/Sala (Living Room/Kitcken)

  • NanoHD AP

Should I create a mesh system? Or have different SSID and lower the output of the AP so my phone connects to whatever is stronger? I just never done a Mesh system before and don’t know what would be good. Our download speed is 50 Down/ 8 Up.

I was only allowed to upload one Imagine at a time, here is the 5 GHz Coverage Map.

Thanks again!

Think a hammer-action drill might be a better option !

Previously I had routers/access points/extenders in my house, ultimately however I tweaked things, I think I had too much interference from neighbours.

However, I think these mesh setups have improved so that might be a better option for the client devices. Though I don’t think they will ever come close to plumbing in ethernet cables.

I have the TP-Link EAP 245 AP, it has two ethernet ports on the device, this allows a second AP to be daisy-chained, it won’t look pretty but might be possible in your place so you get 100% rather than 50% of the bandwidth.

That TP-Link device looks interesting, I might need to put in 2 of those and maybe an outdoor version as well.

Find a way to Run cables…

Wireless uplinks halve the connection speed so are not great (half the time is talking to the device, the other half passing that to the next AP).

If you absolutely can’t run cable then it might be worth considering Powerline adaptors that use the main electrical system to distribute ethernet. I really don’t like powerline but I do like it slightly more than mesh… I can’t recommend any specifically though.

Oh my apologies, I did not explain myself correctly. And I guess this shows how little I know about Wireless, so Wireless Mesh is wireless communication between Access Points?

The good thing about my apartment is I have drywall ceilings. So I can run cables above the dry wall. I already have a run to my Master bed Room coming out existing conduit to a wall jack. So I am covered for the in wall Access Point, I would run another run above the ceiling to the living room to connect the NanoHD.

So I was just wondering how would I configure these Access Point. So if I am in my bedroom I am not connected to the Access Point in the living room or the Dream Machine in the hallway but the In-Wall-AccessPoint in my bedroom. and the reverse for when in the living room.

And not sure if you can see the pictures i uploaded above, the blue lines are cat cables.

Thanks again for any feedback.

1 Like

In a good system, the system will determine the best AP for your device at the time you are using it. It may not always be the AP that is right next to you, they will normally weight how much traffic is connected to each AP and may shift you to a farther (distance wise) AP that will give you a better connection because it can’t shift other devices that far away. The above TP-Link devices will do that once you set them up. You can do the same with some of the Unifi stuff, and a few other brands of devices. This is an area I need to do more study on, and then make a plan and install it at home. We have a few spots where I’d like better signal and because we have aluminum siding on the house, I probably need to put an outdoor AP somewhere.

That said, I might try putting one in the attic since it would have “regular” shingles to go through (not the siding), that might prove good enough. Inside the house a single AP is plenty of signal for us and I wire as many things as I can to try and keep the wifi clear.

In my 2 floor house, I’ve found that I’ve had excellent wifi since I was able to place the AP very high up and centrally.

Currently you are probably suffering from interference if your wifi sucks. My guess is that you will get a better experience with a mesh set-up.

Good news!

Yes, mesh normally means that the access points will link to the router through each other without needing a wired uplink. It’s handy as a backup in case your wired link goes down but you still have power but can cause all sorts of problems.

I would say that what you are looking for is wireless handoff or seamless wireless handoff. The unifi stuff certainly does this but as @Greg_E said it might not do exactly what you are expecting.