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Comment by crsv | Hacker News Reader

Any chance you could elaborate on this or point to some helpful docs? I'm just kicking off refactoring the house wifi and some instruction here would be amazing, especially in the context of the Google mesh product.

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FWIW, I use Google Wifi, having bought a 3-pack on sale around the holidays. I did not setup any sort of "completely separate backhaul network for client mesh handover". This may be an implementation detail of some sort. The setup experience is pretty much plug-and-play.

I'd buy them again in a heartbeat, and I'm normally quite hesitant to buy Google products.

Agree, The setup was easy, and I then just transitioned devices to the new network after it was setup. It solved my connection issues in certain parts of the house, and has been trouble free for over 6 months now.

If you haven't made a hardware decision I'd also take a hard look at Ubiquiti's Unifi line. They take a little more setup but offer a lot more functionality and future expansion.

I have unifi but it isn’t very user friendly.

Well they take a bit more setup but honestly if you've bought your own router before it shouldn't be unfamiliar.

I personally found the interface a step up from Asus/Netgear/etc.

I love my unifi setup at home. Yes some more configuration for sure, but once it's up, it's so rock solid. Compared to the Asus router I had before the wifi reliability is fantastic

One nice thing the Asus firmware has is nice grouping of devices for family members which can show monitoring, overall usage and even quick shutoff controls if necessary. Does the Unifi stuff have the equivalent, even if a huge pain to set up?

You have to run a unifi server or get a cloud key. That enables advanced guest access, deep packet inspection, and other stuff. There's nothing as simple as what you describe per se. It's basically enterprise class networking. I originally got it because I thought I would use the mesh networking.. but the standard AP has been way more sufficient in coverage that I don't need to mesh. I like the form factor too, I have ethernet in my house and I was able to use one of the small PoE in wall APs.

The best mesh network though would be through a smoke alarm setup. Then you could do backhaul over the power line and then you'd have WiFi everywhere. It would work really well for newer construction where hard wired smoke alarms are mandatory.

> backhaul over the power line

Argh, please don't proliferate ethernet over power lines. They cause horrible RFI by turning every unshielded power line into a broadband antenna[1].

[1] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/showing-the-hf-interference-problem-...

OK, I was hoping others had perhaps found something I'd not, even though I'd tried to read whatever documentation I could. Thanks, though.

If you have Ethernet or coax or even power line you can backhaul the mesh network. This means that the meshed WiFi boxes don’t need to coordinate over WiFi so you get better throughout. The mesh part is important if you want multiple base stations with the same ssid.

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