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Comment by kmlx | Hacker News Reader

i do not recommend mesh. mesh networks halve your bandwidth. if you can just use an ethernet cable to the next access point. the good news is that all their APs use power-over-ethernet, so you just need an ethernet cable, no sockets.

https://store.ui.com/products/u6-lr-us this single long range one should cover most of your home (depending on walls etc). and if it's not enough, just get another one from this list: https://www.ui.com/wi-fi#compare

of course, if you can't/won't use ethernet cables for your APs, you can try this mesh: https://store.ui.com/products/access-point-wifi-6-mesh

as a reference, a single long range AP covered a 7 bedroom house (wood), with just a couple of minor blind spots. but for a double wall brick house we needed 3x U6 lite.

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> mesh networks halve your bandwidth.

This is only true for single band networks. You can use one band as backhaul, another for AP, and still get ~300Mbps.

> of course, if you can't/won't use ethernet cables for your APs, you can try this mesh

All of the latest UniFi APs support meshing. Ubiquiti is not great at naming their products, apparently.

Also, I would advise against the LR. It does output more power and has a larger antenna than the lite, but there is little to it for indoors use, compared to the Pro, which I believe is cheaper and definitely is speedier.

> All of the latest UniFi APs support meshing. Ubiquiti is not great at naming their products, apparently.

good one, this is true, i was mistaken.

Proper mesh APs have a dedicated radio for AP-to-AP traffic. Unless traffic takes multiple mesh hops, bandwidth will not be affected.

Yeah. Unfortunately my office is 4 hops from the modem :facepalm:

Unfortunately Ubiquiti hardware is not "proper mesh," despite their advertising. They don't have a dedicated backhaul radio.

> mesh networks halve your bandwidth

Oh. I actually didn't know this. Damn.

> power-over-ethernet

I used to use PoE and was getting great speeds everywhere in the house, but then I got solar panels and an inverter. Turns out, that a lot of people ended up having the same issues as me on whirlpool.net.au :(

But yeah, I've also considered getting an electrician in and wiring some rooms with CAT-6 and go wireless AP in that room. But sounds like it's still going to be the same as mesh doing this and halving my speed?

Awesome! Thank you for the links. I'll check them out!

> But yeah, I've also considered getting an electrician in and wiring some rooms with CAT-6 and go wireless AP in that room. But sounds like it's still going to be the same as mesh doing this and halving my speed?

as long as there is an ethernet cable from your switch/router to the AP, then speed will not halve. speed halves only when using mesh.

> Awesome! Thank you for the links. I'll check them out!

no problem. i started out my career in networking, and have always kept a soft spot for it even thou i'm doing software these days.

the minimum you need is:

- 1x Dream Machine (Pro or SE doesn't matter)

- 1x Access Point (could be long range, could be lite, depends on your needs)

you plug in the internet and the AP into the Dream Machine and that's about it.

from this barebones setup you can add further hardware depending your needs. for example I've added a PoE switch and another smaller non-poe switch (that funnily enough is powered by the other PoE switch).

aha! Sweet, thanks... ok, looks like this is the way to go!

Edit: to be honest, I'm actually excited to try this out now. I've been on bad wireless for at least 4 years

You might look at some of the replies in this thread. The poster you’re replying to has an outdated view of how mesh networks work with modern hardware.

Mesh networks can use Ethernet as backhaul and they can also use dedicated radios on 6GHz for backhaul. I’m using a mix of both (still have a couple I need to run Ethernet to) and it’s fantastic.

> Mesh networks can use Ethernet as backhaul and they can also use dedicated radios on 6GHz band for backhaul. I’m using a mix of both (still have a couple I need to run Ethernet to) and it’s fantastic.

I wouldn’t recommend wireless backhaul to people who have bad experience with WiFi. Some people have bad WiFi because their (older?) buildings have problems with wireless in general: I am not saying they live in a faraday cage but still their if their WiFi isn’t great, wireless backhaul won’t be either. Go wired if you have a choice.

This has a lot to do with the construction layout and materials used.

Thus, in older houses, WiFi signal may not be great, and brick walls will make wiring the house an absolute pain.

I have seen some people dropping wire outside of the house, which is not great either (surges can and will happen).

> Go wired if you have a choice.

For sure, that's why I mentioned that I'm still in the process of switching over to pure ethernet for backhaul.

That said, if you have enough nodes, 6GHz for backhaul works pretty nice right now. My home has concrete block exterior walls with some interior concrete and plaster walls and the nodes that use dedicated 6GHz for backhaul are doing just fine as is.

I would never consider 5GHz for backhaul, though.

FYI Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and Powerline adapters are two entirely different things.

lol, sorry I got mixed up. Yeah, I meant to say that EoP seems to drop out and lose bandwidth on my lines. For devices rated at 300Mbps, I'm getting about 19Mbps

If you happen to have existing coax cable runs in your house, you might look into MOCA. It's used by some modern cable tv boxes and similar devices to route ethernet packets over the existing coax cable.

It can be used on the same coax as is used for your cable modem, though if you can isolate the coax you want to use as an ethernet link, you might have better results.

I've used the competing standard DECA in the past, as it was significantly cheaper than MOCA about 5-8yrs ago ($25/unit vs $150/unit) but MOCA is now the much better option with it supporting GB speeds and pricing being down around ~$50/unit. I think the max speeds I saw over DECA was about 100Mbps, maybe 200Mbps on shorter runs.

>i do not recommend mesh. mesh networks halve your bandwidth. if you can just use an ethernet cable to the next access point. the good news is that all their APs use power-over-ethernet, so you just need an ethernet cable, no sockets.

Mesh dropping bandwidth is less of an issue these days as we have much more bandwidth and you are unlikely to run the largest channel width anyway, then newer solutions support mu-mimo with separate backhaul.

Depends what you mean by mesh. For me, the defining characteristic is better support for roaming/fast handoff, things like 802.11k and 802.11r.

Agreed it's best to connect the access points with Ethernet.

Note that 802.11r is only useful if you’re using WPA enterprise authentication (certificates and radius and all). Most home networks use WPA personal pre shared keys (aka here’s my Wi-Fi password).

802.11r accelerates the multi step handshake that you have to perform with WPA enterprise when you roam from one access point to another. There is a much shorter handshake for WPA personal so there is no advantage to enabling 802.11r if you’re not using Enterprise auth.

Not entirely true: for WPA2 it is the case that all APs and clients use the same key, but even in that case, 11r adds mobility domain and FT-PSK and results in more devices having better roaming.

For WPA3-SAE and WPA3-OWE it is required as each client has a different (session) key.

Interesting- thanks for the correction. I’m off to read more!

Any thoughts on MoCA? I've got gigabit fttp and I need two APs for coverage. Place is already wired with coax, so hoping to utilize that.

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