I have a ranch home that is about 1,600sqft. In one of the bedrooms is a FlexHD and there is one in the living room. My problem is that 2 of the bedrooms (One with the FlexHD) are separated by a wall (drywall). The 2nd bedroom (One without the FlexHD) gets a poor signal according to WIFi Admin. To solve this problem I was thinking about getting another FlexHD and putting it in the bedroom. So I would essently have 3 FlexHD’s One in bedroom 1,2 and in the living room. Would that make sense?
Another question is: I know Tom likes to have everything set to Auto. Wondering if I do this could I get away with the 2 FlexHD’s instead of 3?
I personally haven’t used the FlexHD’s, I use the UAP’s but I have never had any issues getting a signal through a single wall.
In fact, I had to turn the transmit power from auto to low / medium on my AP’s as the signal reached so far, devices weren’t roaming the way I wanted them to.
Is it possible there is something else going on in that wall? Perhaps moving the AP from bedroom 1, to the hallway between bedroom 1 and 2 would solve the signal issue?
Adding another AP I’m sure would solve the issue, but if you can save some money for another piece of hardware why not right?
I helped a friend setup their Unifi equipment and he purchased the FlexHD because of esthetics. I found the 2.4GHz performance of the FlexHD to be quite poor and the 5MHz to be average to mediocre. He eventually returned it and got a Nano and the performance is far superior compared to the FlexHD.
Sure, you can have 3 FlexHDs…You should not use the auto settings for power or channel. Auto power is just highest power. For channel, you want to put 2.4GHz on channel 1, 6, or 11 only with a 20MHz bandwidth. For 5GHz, use channel 44 or 155 with a bandwidth of 80. Don’t put the FlexHDs on the same channels, you want to alternate channels of nearby units providing you don’t have interference. As far as power, less is better as you want the least amount of power overlap between access points. Use a utility like Netspot, WiFi Analyzer, or Wifi Explorer to see access point coverage in your environment. On an iPhone, you can even download the old AirPort Utility app and do a wifi scan for 30 seconds in different locations. Power levels down to -70 to -75dB can be OK. -60 to -65dB is better. If the power levels are too high then the WiFi client won’t roam between access points and you do want them to roam.
There are other tweaks you can use to optimize the WiFi networks such as limiting connectivity if the link rate to too low…usually for to distance/weak signals but give the above a try first.
Thanks for the reply. Did you have to mount the Nano on the ceiling? I can’t mount anything on the eilings in this house. Do you think it would work OK on a table top?
No, we didn’t mount on ceiling. We actually found a good location on a shelf and we just leaned it up against the wall. It is essentially a wall mount but just leaning on the wall.
This location worked out OK as there is only a narrow kitchen behind the access point and there is still good coverage there. the access point can cover most of the house and even extends down to the basement.
Look at the newer U6-LR. It’s the same price as the nano. I use two of them in my home. Seems to work well.