Warm? TPLink Archer AX-11000 $200 at Costco (instore only I guess?)

StoleMyOwnCar

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Not sure how good of a deal this is. It does beat Amazon's price by about $35. This is the product. It isn't listed at this price tag on the web site, but this is stuck on every single one of them at my store:
Honeyview_IMG_5381.jpg

I don't have any incredibly compelling need for this, but considering how many connected devices I have at this point, I decided to just go ahead and upgrade my Nighthawk XR450 to this. Works fine, setup was pretty trivial out of the box, everything works as intended. Hopefully it will handle more devices a little smoother as I did notice some hiccups on my older router. I have 90 days to decide if I have buyer's remorse.
 
Nice find! When costco does these unadvertised deals they're usually a solid deal. :)
 
If you live in a small house or apartment this is fine. But as soon as your house gets big enough, you need a mesh system. Single point of WiFi is going to be more and more problematic as we start to use higher frequency signals like Wifi 6E (6GHz).
 
Bringing up Wifi 6E in general is interesting. I didn't actually know there was a new standard out, so maybe that's why this is marked down. I did some research on 6E. The range on the 6Ghz band is pretty bad (1 room over and it's gone). The people that would benefit from 6E do not seem to be large home owners, but people with small apartments, due to the congestion... but ironically they would not really need a mesh network as a single router would easily cover their apartment most of the time. The mesh networks for 6E are also very expensive (~1.5k+), and (from what I have read anyway) actually lackluster in both software support and reliability, with the one option that I see on the Costco website being rated at ~3 stars and many having issues with connectivity. I guess a 6E router would be good if you had an Oculus that you wanted to use near your router, though.

As far as the range on this router, my ISP router/modem is located at the very end of my house, so it's actually easily to test the range. These are the speeds (via google speed test) I got on my Surface Pro 7, in the restroom all the way at the other end of the house, which is about 50 feet away (through a few walls and other things):
1663788791146.png

This thing has antenna evenly spaced all around its perimeter, so the radius this covers is 50 feet all around (the area of that circle being > 7.8k sqft), supposing the router was centered, and many larger homes have multiple floors anyway, so it's easier to reach more rooms. I have to wonder how much bank you would be bringing in to afford (and upkeep) a home that exceeds that size and still live in an area that gets high enough internet speeds to really want 6E to begin with. At that point you might as well just hire professionals in the commercial space to set up a distributed solution. I suppose there's NAS to consider? That's about the only thing I can think of, but I would think that 600 Mbps should be fast enough for streaming most things from your NAS. I don't mind returning this if there is a good reason to go with a 6E distributed solution, but I'm drawing blanks at the moment, maybe you could point out some reasons. Maybe just differing insulation and wall density?
 
Bringing up Wifi 6E in general is interesting. I didn't actually know there was a new standard out, so maybe that's why this is marked down. I did some research on 6E. The range on the 6Ghz band is pretty bad (1 room over and it's gone). The people that would benefit from 6E do not seem to be large home owners, but people with small apartments, due to the congestion... but ironically they would not really need a mesh network as a single router would easily cover their apartment most of the time. The mesh networks for 6E are also very expensive (~1.5k+), and (from what I have read anyway) actually lackluster in both software support and reliability, with the one option that I see on the Costco website being rated at ~3 stars and many having issues with connectivity. I guess a 6E router would be good if you had an Oculus that you wanted to use near your router, though.

As far as the range on this router, my ISP router/modem is located at the very end of my house, so it's actually easily to test the range. These are the speeds (via google speed test) I got on my Surface Pro 7, in the restroom all the way at the other end of the house, which is about 50 feet away (through a few walls and other things):
View attachment 512418
This thing has antenna evenly spaced all around its perimeter, so the radius this covers is 50 feet all around (the area of that circle being > 7.8k sqft), supposing the router was centered, and many larger homes have multiple floors anyway, so it's easier to reach more rooms. I have to wonder how much bank you would be bringing in to afford (and upkeep) a home that exceeds that size and still live in an area that gets high enough internet speeds to really want 6E to begin with. At that point you might as well just hire professionals in the commercial space to set up a distributed solution. I suppose there's NAS to consider? That's about the only thing I can think of, but I would think that 600 Mbps should be fast enough for streaming most things from your NAS. I don't mind returning this if there is a good reason to go with a 6E distributed solution, but I'm drawing blanks at the moment, maybe you could point out some reasons. Maybe just differing insulation and wall density?
So the main benefits of a Mesh Network are expandability, flexibility, and wide range coverage through your home and even to remote areas of your yard all while maintaining high performance. I highly recommend buying products that allow you to expand and contract your mesh network independently across different product generations and 802.11 standards as you're never really in an "all or nothing" upgrade situation, you can upgrade 1-2 nodes at a time as you see fit and still maintain your Mesh network across multiple Wi-Fi bands (2.4G, 5G, 6G).

The idea that you need to have a single wireless Hub unit for all your devices to connect to is frankly dated, they put more and more antennas on those things to make them look like AWACS but it was counterproductive with the higher freq ranges because they are by nature, short wave and don't pass through walls and floors well. The new preferred topology is still hub and spoke, but you use a wired backhaul for each of the satellite nodes back to your main mesh unit to extend the mesh network. Also, with the newer Mesh units, they answered the demand for each of these satellite Mesh nodes to become their own wired hub to a different part of the house by giving them at least 4 RJ-45 outputs like a common router. This allows each remote node to still provide high performance wired connectivity to entertainment and media devices, like your consoles, Apple TV, or Nvidia shield etc in a different part of the house.

What this also does, is it provides high bandwidth, high performance WiFi up to 6E in rooms you frequent the most, so distance isn't necessarily an issue, since you have that powerful WiFi signal in the room you are in with a highspeed wired backhaul back to the primary node that connects to your ISP router/modem. 6E isn't that big of a deal right now since few devices actually support it. No iPhone support it yet, even my newest laptops only support WiFi6 and the only device I have is my 12900K/Z690 build but it connects directly via gigabit LAN. I've been using Linksys' Velop system since the original AC2200 3-node kit and I've upgraded/changed out nodes multiple times. I currently have the 6E Linksys Atlas kit and it is nice, but the 6E/6G band isn't being used right now, however the WiFi6 5G speeds are amazing throughout the house and they provide wired connections via wired backhaul to a bunch of devices in the rooms they are in. I also have wireless units in the basement and upstairs and these tend to perform better when connected wirelessly since they shift the performance from the wireless radio in the device (generally pretty poor) to a wired connection to the wireless radio on the Mesh node (generally much better).

I know TP-Link does make some nice Mesh networking equipment as well, so I would definitely look to make sure this unit can be integrated into their Mesh framework, or have a mesh network built around it. Because in the end it really is all about flexibility and being able to add/change nodes to your mesh network as you need to or as you swap out better equipment.
 
I have to wonder how much bank you would be bringing in to afford (and upkeep) a home that exceeds that size and still live in an area that gets high enough internet speeds to really want 6E to begin with. At that point you might as well just hire professionals in the commercial space to set up a distributed solution.
I can answer this--A LOT. Think commercial sized bills for utilities and repairs, etc. And when you do something this large, you put multiple wired jacks in every room. :D wired>wireless
 
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So the main benefits of a Mesh Network are expandability, flexibility, and wide range coverage through your home and even to remote areas of your yard all while maintaining high performance. I highly recommend buying products that allow you to expand and contract your mesh network independently across different product generations and 802.11 standards as you're never really in an "all or nothing" upgrade situation, you can upgrade 1-2 nodes at a time as you see fit and still maintain your Mesh network across multiple Wi-Fi bands (2.4G, 5G, 6G).

The idea that you need to have a single wireless Hub unit for all your devices to connect to is frankly dated, they put more and more antennas on those things to make them look like AWACS but it was counterproductive with the higher freq ranges because they are by nature, short wave and don't pass through walls and floors well. The new preferred topology is still hub and spoke, but you use a wired backhaul for each of the satellite nodes back to your main mesh unit to extend the mesh network. Also, with the newer Mesh units, they answered the demand for each of these satellite Mesh nodes to become their own wired hub to a different part of the house by giving them at least 4 RJ-45 outputs like a common router. This allows each remote node to still provide high performance wired connectivity to entertainment and media devices, like your consoles, Apple TV, or Nvidia shield etc in a different part of the house.

What this also does, is it provides high bandwidth, high performance WiFi up to 6E in rooms you frequent the most, so distance isn't necessarily an issue, since you have that powerful WiFi signal in the room you are in with a highspeed wired backhaul back to the primary node that connects to your ISP router/modem. 6E isn't that big of a deal right now since few devices actually support it. No iPhone support it yet, even my newest laptops only support WiFi6 and the only device I have is my 12900K/Z690 build but it connects directly via gigabit LAN. I've been using Linksys' Velop system since the original AC2200 3-node kit and I've upgraded/changed out nodes multiple times. I currently have the 6E Linksys Atlas kit and it is nice, but the 6E/6G band isn't being used right now, however the WiFi6 5G speeds are amazing throughout the house and they provide wired connections via wired backhaul to a bunch of devices in the rooms they are in. I also have wireless units in the basement and upstairs and these tend to perform better when connected wirelessly since they shift the performance from the wireless radio in the device (generally pretty poor) to a wired connection to the wireless radio on the Mesh node (generally much better).

I know TP-Link does make some nice Mesh networking equipment as well, so I would definitely look to make sure this unit can be integrated into their Mesh framework, or have a mesh network built around it. Because in the end it really is all about flexibility and being able to add/change nodes to your mesh network as you need to or as you swap out better equipment.
So with a wired backhaul and some tuning of AP antennas, you can basically set up your own setup using any old router and a wired backhaul that will perform pretty good and cost far less. By the time you're messing with advanced 'mesh' systems, you can just buy used real enterprise gear.
 
So with a wired backhaul and some tuning of AP antennas, you can basically set up your own setup using any old router and a wired backhaul that will perform pretty good and cost far less. By the time you're messing with advanced 'mesh' systems, you can just buy used real enterprise gear.
Using the same SSID and wired backhauls with a bunch of random routers isn’t remotely the same as a centrally managed mesh network with compatible hardware, there’s so many issues with multiple different routers in the same home which is why mesh networks became a thing to begin with:

1. Channel conflicts, mesh networks manage this so you don’t have to.
2. Single SSIDs across different routers don’t always hand off or allow devices to roam efficiently.
3. Some older routers don’t even support multiple WiFi bands on the same SSID, and many “smart” home devices only support 2.4ghz, which is a complete pain in the ass when it comes to device management.
4. You have to configure your backhauled networks and either bridge them or configure network peering so devices connected to one router can communicate with devices connected to another. With bridge mode you lose a lot of visibility and control over devices connected to the bridged router. Given most home routers default to 192.168.1.0 /24 be prepared to configure network ranges for every router in your mesh network.
5. Single portal to view and manage all connected devices, networks, connected AP, and WiFi bands. I can see and configure everything from a single pane of glass with one point or access, one set of credentials, one SSID, etc.
6. Cost isn’t much different than if you bought a $200-300 AWACS router every 2 years and then tried to hack them together into a frankenmesh system.
7. Wireless speed and coverage isn’t going to be very good on older random routers, which is probably why it was replaced to begin with by a new primary router. A mesh node with the latest 802.11 standard is close to gigabit speeds and you can get those speeds to any room you have a wired backhaul.
8. Commercial grade equipment costs a ton more and uses the same tech with similar limitations. $1500 WAPs and $1000 firewalls to manage them and you still run into coverage issues over 3000sq/ft and 25-50 device limits. And they’re still only 802.11AC at that price!

Spend the extra money for a solution that works well instead of wasting time and energy dealing on a solution that only presents additional problems.
 
I'm not going to argue against the virtues of mesh networking, but I will question:
So the main benefits of a Mesh Network are expandability, flexibility, and wide range coverage through your home and even to remote areas of your yard all while maintaining high performance. I highly recommend buying products that allow you to expand and contract your mesh network independently across different product generations and 802.11 standards as you're never really in an "all or nothing" upgrade situation, you can upgrade 1-2 nodes at a time as you see fit and still maintain your Mesh network across multiple Wi-Fi bands (2.4G, 5G, 6G).
Who actually needs all of this in a residential establishment? Why do I even need wifi on the remotest corner of my yard? I actually just tested this router on the outer fringes of my own yard... which I do not have a huge lot, it's only 0.31 acres, but that's pretty average for a suburban single family home lot that's even remotely close to the city. I got 300mbps down on my iPhone 8 Plus on the furthest corner away from my router (essentially a bit behind and diagonally away from where that restroom was). That's probably ~75-85 feet away from it. I get that it's nice to go for the "super maximum", considering this is [H], but when I can get speeds faster than what most families in the US can even get at the furthest point in my entire (averagely sized) property... does it matter? I suppose I can also just buy and hardwire more access points if I need to, off of it (considering it has 10 ethernet ports, not hard to do).

About the only downside I can see to just purchasing this router (or a similar one) and being done with it for the foreseeable future is simply that it's not Wifi 6E. That has me pausing a bit. But that has nothing to do in particular with me wanting mesh, just that it doesn't have the latest current standard at all. Which if I actually wanted Wifi 6E to my entire house, though, it would probably cost me thousands in access point equipment even on my small lot, because of 6Ghz's remarkably short range. A bit of a conundrum, considering that for 200$ this services my entire home (and yard) with fairly high speeds.
 
I'm not going to argue against the virtues of mesh networking, but I will question:

Who actually needs all of this in a residential establishment? Why do I even need wifi on the remotest corner of my yard? I actually just tested this router on the outer fringes of my own yard... which I do not have a huge lot, it's only 0.31 acres, but that's pretty average for a suburban single family home lot that's even remotely close to the city. I got 300mbps down on my iPhone 8 Plus on the furthest corner away from my router (essentially a bit behind and diagonally away from where that restroom was). That's probably ~75-85 feet away from it. I get that it's nice to go for the "super maximum", considering this is [H], but when I can get speeds faster than what most families in the US can even get at the furthest point in my entire (averagely sized) property... does it matter? I suppose I can also just buy and hardwire more access points if I need to, off of it (considering it has 10 ethernet ports, not hard to do).

About the only downside I can see to just purchasing this router (or a similar one) and being done with it for the foreseeable future is simply that it's not Wifi 6E. That has me pausing a bit. But that has nothing to do in particular with me wanting mesh, just that it doesn't have the latest current standard at all. Which if I actually wanted Wifi 6E to my entire house, though, it would probably cost me thousands in access point equipment even on my small lot, because of 6Ghz's remarkably short range. A bit of a conundrum, considering that for 200$ this services my entire home (and yard) with fairly high speeds.
Of course your WiFi speed requirements are going to be limited by the fastest supported device you have, I believe iPhone 8 plus is still WiFi5/AC so around 250-300Mbps is more or less maxing it out. But what if you had a phone or laptop that supported WiFi 6/AX and could potentially double the speed up to 600-700Mbps and you were still getting half of that on the fringes of your house or on different floors? Again, maybe don't need to have full speed coverage, its just a nice to have. For my yard we have a firepit that's about 100ft away from the house and having the flexibility of additional AP and mesh networks certainly help. I have friends and family that ask about coverage on pools or man-sheds set away from the house and mesh network extensibility helps there as well. But its not just about wireless coverage as I mentioned before, you can basically extend wireless coverage to any room in your house using wired or wireless backhauls, which are typically going to result in better signal strength and speeds than if your individual device is trying to connect to your single router or access point. Also, if you have a lot of smart devices or IoT, you do have to start looking at QoS and number of supported devices. I probably have 100+ devices on my mesh network, about 60 active any given time from Ring video cameras streaming 1080p video, to smart TVs, Apple TVs, Echo units, smart photo frames, door locks/sensors, smart speakers, etc. While not all of them require high amounts of bandwidth, they certainly perform better with stronger signal strength and require less maintenance with device drop-offs etc. Also, I'm not sure if I'd want 60+ devices on a single WAP as that certainly pushes some of the connected device limits for a single router/WAP.

As for WiFi 6E, that'd be my least concern at this point in time. Probably the first device you'll own that supports it or even comes close to needing it will be a laptop, tablet or a phone, and realistically, I'm not sure if they would actually benefit as they're typically media consumption devices more than storage/high bandwidth requiring devices for most people. Maybe a gaming laptop or a MacBook Pro for video/photo editing or something. The Linksys 6E system I use can use the 6GHz band for dedicated wireless backhaul but like you said the poor range for 6GHz makes its range really limiting for node to node connectivity. For devices in the same room its great however, I can max out wireless speeds for wireless devices and I can use a hardwire for the devices that support it instead of having to deal with wireless, like for m PS5 downloads/updates, Apple TV streaming, XBox etc.

There's nothing wrong with buying a traditional router if you think that will support your needs, but personally, I'd at least buy one that can be expanded and integrated into a mesh network at some point in the future so you aren't just starting from scratch every few years, you can simply add another router and start building out a native mesh network to expand both your wired and wireless coverage.
 
Using the same SSID and wired backhauls with a bunch of random routers isn’t remotely the same as a centrally managed mesh network with compatible hardware, there’s so many issues with multiple different routers in the same home which is why mesh networks became a thing to begin with:

1. Channel conflicts, mesh networks manage this so you don’t have to.
2. Single SSIDs across different routers don’t always hand off or allow devices to roam efficiently.
3. Some older routers don’t even support multiple WiFi bands on the same SSID, and many “smart” home devices only support 2.4ghz, which is a complete pain in the ass when it comes to device management.
4. You have to configure your backhauled networks and either bridge them or configure network peering so devices connected to one router can communicate with devices connected to another. With bridge mode you lose a lot of visibility and control over devices connected to the bridged router. Given most home routers default to 192.168.1.0 /24 be prepared to configure network ranges for every router in your mesh network.
5. Single portal to view and manage all connected devices, networks, connected AP, and WiFi bands. I can see and configure everything from a single pane of glass with one point or access, one set of credentials, one SSID, etc.
6. Cost isn’t much different than if you bought a $200-300 AWACS router every 2 years and then tried to hack them together into a frankenmesh system.
7. Wireless speed and coverage isn’t going to be very good on older random routers, which is probably why it was replaced to begin with by a new primary router. A mesh node with the latest 802.11 standard is close to gigabit speeds and you can get those speeds to any room you have a wired backhaul.
8. Commercial grade equipment costs a ton more and uses the same tech with similar limitations. $1500 WAPs and $1000 firewalls to manage them and you still run into coverage issues over 3000sq/ft and 25-50 device limits. And they’re still only 802.11AC at that price!

Spend the extra money for a solution that works well instead of wasting time and energy dealing on a solution that only presents additional problems.
No, the reason 'mesh' became a 'thing' is because consumers are to stupid and lazy and would rather pay large sums of money for something that 'just works'.

  1. All access points manage this automatically now, and need to when other devices in the air are doing the same as setting a fixed channel will just get your signal trampled.
  2. That's because the clients don't transfer properly or the signal levels were not set correctly for proper handoff
  3. Strange, segmenting 2.4 and 5ghz has always been a 'best practice' to manage the airwave traffic.
  4. Um, lulwut? You just plug the access points in and they work as normal. The handoff is done by the client device hence why ap placement and signal strength is the most important thing.
  5. That's just convenience. You should be doing this from your router, not your access points.
  6. omg, I'm never spending that much on my whole network. Used enterprise gear is much cheaper than that.
  7. The only thing I've ever seen close to gigabit speeds on wireless is a Ruckus AP--no consumer ones will hit much higher than 500-600Mbs.
  8. It's not the tech that's the limitation. Don't get lost in the specs. Like how no one cares about wifi6 right now because it doesn't work as well as gen 5 stuff. And used gear is much cheaper. Enterprise and commercial gear is reliable and that's its strongest point. No one cares if they can only hit 700Mbs when the moon and stars are aligned and will take a steady 500Mbs over that anyday.
You can get a mesh system complete with its limitations and vendor lock-in. Or you can buy and build a set up that works exactly how you want with the upgrade path you choose, not some vendor.
 
I'm not going to argue against the virtues of mesh networking, but I will question:

Who actually needs all of this in a residential establishment? Why do I even need wifi on the remotest corner of my yard? I actually just tested this router on the outer fringes of my own yard... which I do not have a huge lot, it's only 0.31 acres, but that's pretty average for a suburban single family home lot that's even remotely close to the city. I got 300mbps down on my iPhone 8 Plus on the furthest corner away from my router (essentially a bit behind and diagonally away from where that restroom was). That's probably ~75-85 feet away from it. I get that it's nice to go for the "super maximum", considering this is [H], but when I can get speeds faster than what most families in the US can even get at the furthest point in my entire (averagely sized) property... does it matter? I suppose I can also just buy and hardwire more access points if I need to, off of it (considering it has 10 ethernet ports, not hard to do).

About the only downside I can see to just purchasing this router (or a similar one) and being done with it for the foreseeable future is simply that it's not Wifi 6E. That has me pausing a bit. But that has nothing to do in particular with me wanting mesh, just that it doesn't have the latest current standard at all. Which if I actually wanted Wifi 6E to my entire house, though, it would probably cost me thousands in access point equipment even on my small lot, because of 6Ghz's remarkably short range. A bit of a conundrum, considering that for 200$ this services my entire home (and yard) with fairly high speeds.
lol! You don't! It becomes an attack vector for your devices. :eek:

And before looking at newer standards, look at a Ruckus AP as these are ridiculously well designed even on gen 5 wifi.
 
Of course your WiFi speed requirements are going to be limited by the fastest supported device you have, I believe iPhone 8 plus is still WiFi5/AC so around 250-300Mbps is more or less maxing it out. But what if you had a phone or laptop that supported WiFi 6/AX and could potentially double the speed up to 600-700Mbps and you were still getting half of that on the fringes of your house or on different floors? Again, maybe don't need to have full speed coverage, its just a nice to have. For my yard we have a firepit that's about 100ft away from the house and having the flexibility of additional AP and mesh networks certainly help. I have friends and family that ask about coverage on pools or man-sheds set away from the house and mesh network extensibility helps there as well. But its not just about wireless coverage as I mentioned before, you can basically extend wireless coverage to any room in your house using wired or wireless backhauls, which are typically going to result in better signal strength and speeds than if your individual device is trying to connect to your single router or access point. Also, if you have a lot of smart devices or IoT, you do have to start looking at QoS and number of supported devices. I probably have 100+ devices on my mesh network, about 60 active any given time from Ring video cameras streaming 1080p video, to smart TVs, Apple TVs, Echo units, smart photo frames, door locks/sensors, smart speakers, etc. While not all of them require high amounts of bandwidth, they certainly perform better with stronger signal strength and require less maintenance with device drop-offs etc. Also, I'm not sure if I'd want 60+ devices on a single WAP as that certainly pushes some of the connected device limits for a single router/WAP.

As for WiFi 6E, that'd be my least concern at this point in time. Probably the first device you'll own that supports it or even comes close to needing it will be a laptop, tablet or a phone, and realistically, I'm not sure if they would actually benefit as they're typically media consumption devices more than storage/high bandwidth requiring devices for most people. Maybe a gaming laptop or a MacBook Pro for video/photo editing or something. The Linksys 6E system I use can use the 6GHz band for dedicated wireless backhaul but like you said the poor range for 6GHz makes its range really limiting for node to node connectivity. For devices in the same room its great however, I can max out wireless speeds for wireless devices and I can use a hardwire for the devices that support it instead of having to deal with wireless, like for m PS5 downloads/updates, Apple TV streaming, XBox etc.

There's nothing wrong with buying a traditional router if you think that will support your needs, but personally, I'd at least buy one that can be expanded and integrated into a mesh network at some point in the future so you aren't just starting from scratch every few years, you can simply add another router and start building out a native mesh network to expand both your wired and wireless coverage.
Interesting points and setup, but at the stage of investment you're talking about, it really makes sense to run hardwires to get a lot of those things off wifi that can be wired instead. And you can then just add access points where you need them, for what you need them for, versus one whole wireless system that everything has access to. This is why wired setups when they get larger have vlans for segmentation--to move away from one large flat network. Making one large wireless network basically creates the same management mess in the air and then introduces the problems with wireless on top of that. Yuck.
 
No, the reason 'mesh' became a 'thing' is because consumers are to stupid and lazy and would rather pay large sums of money for something that 'just works'.

  1. All access points manage this automatically now, and need to when other devices in the air are doing the same as setting a fixed channel will just get your signal trampled.
  2. That's because the clients don't transfer properly or the signal levels were not set correctly for proper handoff
  3. Strange, segmenting 2.4 and 5ghz has always been a 'best practice' to manage the airwave traffic.
  4. Um, lulwut? You just plug the access points in and they work as normal. The handoff is done by the client device hence why ap placement and signal strength is the most important thing.
  5. That's just convenience. You should be doing this from your router, not your access points.
  6. omg, I'm never spending that much on my whole network. Used enterprise gear is much cheaper than that.
  7. The only thing I've ever seen close to gigabit speeds on wireless is a Ruckus AP--no consumer ones will hit much higher than 500-600Mbs.
  8. It's not the tech that's the limitation. Don't get lost in the specs. Like how no one cares about wifi6 right now because it doesn't work as well as gen 5 stuff. And used gear is much cheaper. Enterprise and commercial gear is reliable and that's its strongest point. No one cares if they can only hit 700Mbs when the moon and stars are aligned and will take a steady 500Mbs over that anyday.
You can get a mesh system complete with its limitations and vendor lock-in. Or you can buy and build a set up that works exactly how you want with the upgrade path you choose, not some vendor.
Uh, no, there's literally the opposite of vendor lock-in, which is vendor proprietary and the incompatibilities that come with them. Whether that's chipset, firmware, hardware, you name it. Even the most popular form of network expansion (DD-WRT with WDS) isn't even an actual Wi-Fi standard and has literally dozens of permutations and incompatibilities.

1. No, they don't. Some documentation even specifically tells you to set to same channels or disable auto-detect completely. And forget about auto-detection with multiple routers in an urban area where you are literally contending with dozens of other SSIDs competing for channels. Its the Wild Wild West when it comes to channel negotiation.
2. Its because the wireless access points are masquerading different networks as the same SSID and not communicating with one another to facilitate the hand-offs. How does your client device know there's another WAP with the same SSID with a stronger signal and that its supposed to connect to it when moving around when its primary directive is to try its best not to drop network connection? There's other issues with trying to masquerade different hardware and networks with the same SSID too, as some smarter devices like Windows laptops will detect the difference and start enumerating the different versions like Network(1), Network(2) etc. What a nightmare lol, its like moving your usb dongle to a different usb outlet and suddenly you have a 2nd headphone device.
3. The 2.4 and 5GHz bands are still segmented, the mesh network however negotiates the client connection to 2.4 or 5GHz based on compatibility, signal strength and performance/bandwidth. And its all done over the same single SSID for both and now, all 3 bands (2.4/5/6GHz). Also, you aren't on 3 different wireless networks for each band so each device can detect and communicate with one another without having to mess around with peering, port forwarding or anything else on any of the primary or bridged routers. This is great for printing wirelessly to a single networked printer (many of which are 2.4GHz only), which means you don't have to switch your Wi-Fi network just to print or communicate with a 2.4GHz-only smart device. Oh man trip back to the Stone Ages of wireless networking, can't say I miss it!!!
4. Yeah again, it depends on whether you are connecting them via wired bridge or truly independent routers with their own wireless AP. Wired bridge is the best method and does require some configuration but less overall then setting up independent vlans on each router and then peering them. Also, Wired bridges between routers is highly mfg dependent especially when trying to set up the same SSID on the wireless networks.
5. Yes, it is about convenience. Why limit myself to managing this while connected to my router's network when I can log in even from my phone from anywhere and manage all of this?
6. $200-300 ievery few years is expensive? lol. Yeah you know what's expensive? Time wasted trying to configure used enterprise gear to do what $200-300 mesh networks do in about 30 minutes max. And they're faster, more user-friendly and more flexible for home users. Now they may not last 20 years like enterprise gear but at that point who cares really.
7. Just ran this on my WiFi 6E Z690 board, didn't even attach the antennas and maxed out my Gigabit FiOS connection. Need to download the 8/30/2022 drivers from Intel or speeds are in that 500Mbps range. So yeah, won't be long until WiFi speeds on consumer devices outstrips your home LAN's speeds.
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8. It is the tech that's the limitation, Enterprise gear is literally designed for coverage, QoS (and traffic shaping) and reliability over a larger commercial space which isn't the case with home networking equipment that needs to cover much smaller areas while giving fewer users higher bandwidth priority (which I can set via the centrally managed App btw). And that's not to say quality home networking equipment isn't reliable, its just not going to come with 5 Nines of uptime or any kind of SLA, but that doesn't mean it won't meet or exceed those levels of reliability.

With regard to vendor lock-in my experience has been the complete opposite, what you call vendor lock-in I call guaranteed compatibility, flexibility, and reliability over multiple years. Unlike my previous experience with home networking equipment from multiple vendors that was the complete opposite, poor compatibility, poor support, poor documentation, poor performance, poor reliability. And if you go with a mash-up of Enterprise equipment, good luck with that! Not only are you your own support, best of luck finding documentation or even online 3rd party support especially with diff mfg hardware.
 
Interesting points and setup, but at the stage of investment you're talking about, it really makes sense to run hardwires to get a lot of those things off wifi that can be wired instead. And you can then just add access points where you need them, for what you need them for, versus one whole wireless system that everything has access to. This is why wired setups when they get larger have vlans for segmentation--to move away from one large flat network. Making one large wireless network basically creates the same management mess in the air and then introduces the problems with wireless on top of that. Yuck.
How would it make sense to run hardwires to every room? I have maybe 10 wired devices now and just 5 (maybe 6) that actually need a wired connection and they're all in my office (my gaming PC, wife's gaming PC, work dock, NAS, media server) except for the PS5 that's in the family room. Sure there's some devices that are "nice" to have on a wired connection, like the PS5, Apple TV, maybe the Smart TVs but their AC/AX WiFi speeds are more than sufficient for fast menu responsiveness and streaming 4K/Dolby Vision/Atmos on multiple TVs. I have wired backhauls for the Family Room, Kitchen and Living Room, which then allows connection of up to 4 clients for full gigabit wired speeds, but also provides gigabit bandwidth for WiFi 5/6/6E in that room. Its literally the best of both worlds instead of having to go all wired or all wireless.

Everything else is designed to be wireless and don't even have ethernet ports anymore. Smart devices, cameras, smart speakers, lighting, large appliances, coffee maker, robot vacuums etc. Even most of my laptops don't have them, you have to use a dongle or dock if you want ethernet connectivity.

Running hardwires to every room would be great if I was building a new home, but at this point Its not worth running them to the basement or the upstairs when I can just use another mesh node with a wireless backhaul for devices that don't need much bandwidth and don't benefit from latency of a hardwire connection. Maybe when the kids are old enough they'll want a hardwire to their rooms, but given the trend of wireless for everything from iPads to laptops, I'm not holding my breath on that one.

As for the networking segmentation with Mesh, it hasn't been an issue at all and from what I can tell everything is on a single /24 subnet, but being centrally managed, it would be very easy for the Mesh network to assign each node a smaller range in that subnet. So imagine if you have multiple mesh nodes in your network, and you simply split your subnet for each mesh node. So for example, node 1 gets a x.x.x.0/26 address , node 2 gets a x.x.x.64/26 address, node 3 gets a x.x.x.128/26, node 4 gets a x.x.x.192/26 etc. so you can reduce network traffic within each of the smaller subnets while still allowing network connectivity between them.
 
Uh, no, there's literally the opposite of vendor lock-in, which is vendor proprietary and the incompatibilities that come with them. Whether that's chipset, firmware, hardware, you name it. Even the most popular form of network expansion (DD-WRT with WDS) isn't even an actual Wi-Fi standard and has literally dozens of permutations and incompatibilities.

1. No, they don't. Some documentation even specifically tells you to set to same channels or disable auto-detect completely. And forget about auto-detection with multiple routers in an urban area where you are literally contending with dozens of other SSIDs competing for channels. Its the Wild Wild West when it comes to channel negotiation.
2. Its because the wireless access points are masquerading different networks as the same SSID and not communicating with one another to facilitate the hand-offs. How does your client device know there's another WAP with the same SSID with a stronger signal and that its supposed to connect to it when moving around when its primary directive is to try its best not to drop network connection? There's other issues with trying to masquerade different hardware and networks with the same SSID too, as some smarter devices like Windows laptops will detect the difference and start enumerating the different versions like Network(1), Network(2) etc. What a nightmare lol, its like moving your usb dongle to a different usb outlet and suddenly you have a 2nd headphone device.
3. The 2.4 and 5GHz bands are still segmented, the mesh network however negotiates the client connection to 2.4 or 5GHz based on compatibility, signal strength and performance/bandwidth. And its all done over the same single SSID for both and now, all 3 bands (2.4/5/6GHz). Also, you aren't on 3 different wireless networks for each band so each device can detect and communicate with one another without having to mess around with peering, port forwarding or anything else on any of the primary or bridged routers. This is great for printing wirelessly to a single networked printer (many of which are 2.4GHz only), which means you don't have to switch your Wi-Fi network just to print or communicate with a 2.4GHz-only smart device. Oh man trip back to the Stone Ages of wireless networking, can't say I miss it!!!
4. Yeah again, it depends on whether you are connecting them via wired bridge or truly independent routers with their own wireless AP. Wired bridge is the best method and does require some configuration but less overall then setting up independent vlans on each router and then peering them. Also, Wired bridges between routers is highly mfg dependent especially when trying to set up the same SSID on the wireless networks.
5. Yes, it is about convenience. Why limit myself to managing this while connected to my router's network when I can log in even from my phone from anywhere and manage all of this?
6. $200-300 ievery few years is expensive? lol. Yeah you know what's expensive? Time wasted trying to configure used enterprise gear to do what $200-300 mesh networks do in about 30 minutes max. And they're faster, more user-friendly and more flexible for home users. Now they may not last 20 years like enterprise gear but at that point who cares really.
7. Just ran this on my WiFi 6E Z690 board, didn't even attach the antennas and maxed out my Gigabit FiOS connection. Need to download the 8/30/2022 drivers from Intel or speeds are in that 500Mbps range. So yeah, won't be long until WiFi speeds on consumer devices outstrips your home LAN's speeds.
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8. It is the tech that's the limitation, Enterprise gear is literally designed for coverage, QoS (and traffic shaping) and reliability over a larger commercial space which isn't the case with home networking equipment that needs to cover much smaller areas while giving fewer users higher bandwidth priority (which I can set via the centrally managed App btw). And that's not to say quality home networking equipment isn't reliable, its just not going to come with 5 Nines of uptime or any kind of SLA, but that doesn't mean it won't meet or exceed those levels of reliability.

With regard to vendor lock-in my experience has been the complete opposite, what you call vendor lock-in I call guaranteed compatibility, flexibility, and reliability over multiple years. Unlike my previous experience with home networking equipment from multiple vendors that was the complete opposite, poor compatibility, poor support, poor documentation, poor performance, poor reliability. And if you go with a mash-up of Enterprise equipment, good luck with that! Not only are you your own support, best of luck finding documentation or even online 3rd party support especially with diff mfg hardware.
Every single mesh system is proprietary--you're totally vendor locked in, system locked in, and product locked in. Even the original mesh system made by Meraki was locked into Meraki APs.

  1. I have lived in an urban setting with 100APs strong enough to be in our apartment. And the ONLY solution in that situation was to set auto-channels and let everyone duke it out because setting on a single channel was just playing russian roulette with if the signal was going to get killed this minute or the next. The true solution was just to up the bandwidth since the airwaves were totally and completely blocked 24x7 otherwise. And we know it wasn't like this before when we first moved in and were pretty much the only tenants there for the first few months.
  2. The clients have always done this. The 'controller' in all these systems is essentially a 'cheat' to get around good network design that would work as expected.
  3. If your 2.4 and 5Ghz networks were separate physical networks, you were doing it wrong. I've been running 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz on the same network for years without an issue. And with two different APs by two different manufacturers. The access point is simply that--an access point where ethernet is converted to wireless ethernet, nothing more. But if you don't have it configured properly (or simply messed with the settings too much), you can end up in the situation which you described. And to further complicate why you shouldn't have 2.4 and 5Ghz on the same ssid is that there are devices that can use both simultaneously which was never implemented correctly by anyone so it usually makes a mess.
  4. Holy cow you're doing it the hard way. :eek: DHCP off if a router being used as an AP, use the LAN port and plug into the other LAN port--job done. No peering, no bridge mode, no other complicated and unnecessary stuff. LAN is LAN and any access point will simply take that LAN traffic and forward it to the wireless MAC if the destination requires it (just like a switch but for wired and wireless clients). It's ethernet at its purest because you're not routing here as that's a higher layer in the 7 layers of networking.
  5. Because you can do that anyways with a proper router? I can see all this stuff when I tunnel into my firewalls, and big bonus--I can directly access anything I want on the network too since it's a tunnel.
  6. Fool and their money imo. I'm using gear that used to cost thousands of dollars. If the mesh stuff was that great, enterprises would be ditching their multi-thousand dollar setups for these much cheaper systems...and they're not. And user-friendly and networking is a hypocracy. That's like 'easy differential equations'--there's no shortcut if you want to do it right. But I acknowledge the triple constraint problem here and that's why these products have a market--fast, cheap, easy--pick two. Enterprise gear isn't about lasting 20 years, but having the flexibility that is needed in a diverse environment that makes a home look like a kindergarten versus a college campus. There's a reason why consumer stuff is always lacking features--because the flexibility isn't there from day one. Used enterprise gear let's you do nearly anything under the sun and do it well. Sure, there is a learning curve, but anything worth doing well has this. No one just jumps into a car the second they're 16 and enters the Indy 500 expecting to win.
  7. If you ran it from 2ft away, I'd expect this. And no way to outrun 2.5/5Gb as that's here on the same wire for the LAN and at least 10yrs away for wireless. ;)
  8. Obviously you've not used enterprise gear. Enterprise APs are designed to 'just work' in ways that consumer APs pale in comparison to. And the traffic shaping and other requirements are usually managed at the enterprise router vs the AP itself, decoupling the consumer problem of 'all-in-one' devices. And you can manage anything you want (and probably more) just as easily if not more easily since IT pros don't have time for bad UIs, and enterprise equipment makers have the money and incentive to make sure mangement consoles are efficient. There's also different flavors of enterprise gear that pretty much all do the same thing--fortigate, cisco, juniper, palo alto, etc--so you can get used to what is intuitive to you. I'm not sure if you've noticed (yet), but everything consumer is generally made for planned obsolesence, and more so knowing there's people out there that are literally going to throw $200-300 every few years to replace gear. The flip side is that for the same money you can get a service contract for used enterprise gear that you don't even need, but will get ridiculous service if you have it (24hr advance swap for doa, live telephone support that is an engineer, etc). It just money either way, but the way I see it, I'm not going to spend my money on something designed to be 'throwaway'.

    So you get that you're totally locked in, and that you have to spend $200-300 to play that game. Your choice if you want to play that game, but I know a lot of people don't want to be in that situation, myself included. If anything failed on any of the networks I manage, I could just as easily change out the manufacturer to another one if it suited my fancy. Sure, there's some time to reconfigure, but then that's my choice, not being forced by some manufacturer because they decided to change something I didn't like. And that freedom combined with buying less and getting more value is where I think a lot of people would be happy if they're willing to put in their time.
 
How would it make sense to run hardwires to every room? I have maybe 10 wired devices now and just 5 (maybe 6) that actually need a wired connection and they're all in my office (my gaming PC, wife's gaming PC, work dock, NAS, media server) except for the PS5 that's in the family room. Sure there's some devices that are "nice" to have on a wired connection, like the PS5, Apple TV, maybe the Smart TVs but their AC/AX WiFi speeds are more than sufficient for fast menu responsiveness and streaming 4K/Dolby Vision/Atmos on multiple TVs. I have wired backhauls for the Family Room, Kitchen and Living Room, which then allows connection of up to 4 clients for full gigabit wired speeds, but also provides gigabit bandwidth for WiFi 5/6/6E in that room. Its literally the best of both worlds instead of having to go all wired or all wireless.

Everything else is designed to be wireless and don't even have ethernet ports anymore. Smart devices, cameras, smart speakers, lighting, large appliances, coffee maker, robot vacuums etc. Even most of my laptops don't have them, you have to use a dongle or dock if you want ethernet connectivity.

Running hardwires to every room would be great if I was building a new home, but at this point Its not worth running them to the basement or the upstairs when I can just use another mesh node with a wireless backhaul for devices that don't need much bandwidth and don't benefit from latency of a hardwire connection. Maybe when the kids are old enough they'll want a hardwire to their rooms, but given the trend of wireless for everything from iPads to laptops, I'm not holding my breath on that one.

As for the networking segmentation with Mesh, it hasn't been an issue at all and from what I can tell everything is on a single /24 subnet, but being centrally managed, it would be very easy for the Mesh network to assign each node a smaller range in that subnet. So imagine if you have multiple mesh nodes in your network, and you simply split your subnet for each mesh node. So for example, node 1 gets a x.x.x.0/26 address , node 2 gets a x.x.x.64/26 address, node 3 gets a x.x.x.128/26, node 4 gets a x.x.x.192/26 etc. so you can reduce network traffic within each of the smaller subnets while still allowing network connectivity between them.
Ummmm....that's literally what everyone that custom builds a home does (or should do). If you think your wireless devices are fast enough, that's great, but wired > wireless--today, yesterday, and it will be the same far into the future. If you already have wired backhauls to various rooms, it's trivial to add a switch and wire up more devices that are there. This frees your wireless airwaves since they are a shared medium unless wired switching which is not.

Yep, the devices are being made that way because consumers are that way. But you will find ports if you look for them--I found it on a solar energy system even though everything talked about using their app and a bunch of asinine steps to get into the unit wirelessly. For wired you literally plug in and go to the IP address--found this gem in the owners manual after the pages dedicated to the app crap. :ROFLMAO: Sure there are IOT devices, but they're also the biggest security threats and attack vectors for any network. Now, you can think that you have nothing to lose, but just imagine the damage if someone had your bank numbers, mortgage numbers, and ssn. Those attacks aren't as well known, but they are definitely ramping up as the baddies learn that people that are good targets will foolishly trade security for convenience. You can think that the banks, etc will be eager to help a situation like this, but I know from what my brother told me about dealing with this at his work that it was a 6mo nightmare for people that had their ID compromised. 'Almost as bad as a divorce' he told me. :eek:

There's easier ways to get ethernet in every room if you don't already have it. And on older constructions there is the cost. But I've yet to find one person that wired ethernet everywhere that regretted it. In fact, it's typically them wishing they ran more runs while they had stuff worked on.

What you're talking about is simply subnetting, not truly segmenting at the lower layers. You do reduce your IP broadcasts, but it doesn't change anything for ethernet broadcasts which are always there in wireless since it is a CSMA/CA collision domain. So in essense, subnetting like this doesn't solve the problem and in fact may increase it as you now have more routing going on.

Wireless is here to stay, but I don't think a day will come when it will be superior to a wired connection. Even today, wired telephone lines are still the cleanest voice connection on a phone call, even with all the newer gimmicks on cellular phones. It's just gotten to the point where the clarity of a wired telephone call has been surpassed by voip, which again is best served wired. ;)
 
Every single mesh system is proprietary--you're totally vendor locked in, system locked in, and product locked in. Even the original mesh system made by Meraki was locked into Meraki APs.

  1. I have lived in an urban setting with 100APs strong enough to be in our apartment. And the ONLY solution in that situation was to set auto-channels and let everyone duke it out because setting on a single channel was just playing russian roulette with if the signal was going to get killed this minute or the next. The true solution was just to up the bandwidth since the airwaves were totally and completely blocked 24x7 otherwise. And we know it wasn't like this before when we first moved in and were pretty much the only tenants there for the first few months.
  2. The clients have always done this. The 'controller' in all these systems is essentially a 'cheat' to get around good network design that would work as expected.
  3. If your 2.4 and 5Ghz networks were separate physical networks, you were doing it wrong. I've been running 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz on the same network for years without an issue. And with two different APs by two different manufacturers. The access point is simply that--an access point where ethernet is converted to wireless ethernet, nothing more. But if you don't have it configured properly (or simply messed with the settings too much), you can end up in the situation which you described. And to further complicate why you shouldn't have 2.4 and 5Ghz on the same ssid is that there are devices that can use both simultaneously which was never implemented correctly by anyone so it usually makes a mess.
  4. Holy cow you're doing it the hard way. :eek: DHCP off if a router being used as an AP, use the LAN port and plug into the other LAN port--job done. No peering, no bridge mode, no other complicated and unnecessary stuff. LAN is LAN and any access point will simply take that LAN traffic and forward it to the wireless MAC if the destination requires it (just like a switch but for wired and wireless clients). It's ethernet at its purest because you're not routing here as that's a higher layer in the 7 layers of networking.
  5. Because you can do that anyways with a proper router? I can see all this stuff when I tunnel into my firewalls, and big bonus--I can directly access anything I want on the network too since it's a tunnel.
  6. Fool and their money imo. I'm using gear that used to cost thousands of dollars. If the mesh stuff was that great, enterprises would be ditching their multi-thousand dollar setups for these much cheaper systems...and they're not. And user-friendly and networking is a hypocracy. That's like 'easy differential equations'--there's no shortcut if you want to do it right. But I acknowledge the triple constraint problem here and that's why these products have a market--fast, cheap, easy--pick two. Enterprise gear isn't about lasting 20 years, but having the flexibility that is needed in a diverse environment that makes a home look like a kindergarten versus a college campus. There's a reason why consumer stuff is always lacking features--because the flexibility isn't there from day one. Used enterprise gear let's you do nearly anything under the sun and do it well. Sure, there is a learning curve, but anything worth doing well has this. No one just jumps into a car the second they're 16 and enters the Indy 500 expecting to win.
  7. If you ran it from 2ft away, I'd expect this. And no way to outrun 2.5/5Gb as that's here on the same wire for the LAN and at least 10yrs away for wireless. ;)
  8. Obviously you've not used enterprise gear. Enterprise APs are designed to 'just work' in ways that consumer APs pale in comparison to. And the traffic shaping and other requirements are usually managed at the enterprise router vs the AP itself, decoupling the consumer problem of 'all-in-one' devices. And you can manage anything you want (and probably more) just as easily if not more easily since IT pros don't have time for bad UIs, and enterprise equipment makers have the money and incentive to make sure mangement consoles are efficient. There's also different flavors of enterprise gear that pretty much all do the same thing--fortigate, cisco, juniper, palo alto, etc--so you can get used to what is intuitive to you. I'm not sure if you've noticed (yet), but everything consumer is generally made for planned obsolesence, and more so knowing there's people out there that are literally going to throw $200-300 every few years to replace gear. The flip side is that for the same money you can get a service contract for used enterprise gear that you don't even need, but will get ridiculous service if you have it (24hr advance swap for doa, live telephone support that is an engineer, etc). It just money either way, but the way I see it, I'm not going to spend my money on something designed to be 'throwaway'.

    So you get that you're totally locked in, and that you have to spend $200-300 to play that game. Your choice if you want to play that game, but I know a lot of people don't want to be in that situation, myself included. If anything failed on any of the networks I manage, I could just as easily change out the manufacturer to another one if it suited my fancy. Sure, there's some time to reconfigure, but then that's my choice, not being forced by some manufacturer because they decided to change something I didn't like. And that freedom combined with buying less and getting more value is where I think a lot of people would be happy if they're willing to put in their time.
So again, you would choose vendor proprietary and roll the dice and hope they all work given there's no actual mesh or WiFi bridging standard compared to a proprietary system that guarantees compatibility amongst their own proprietary devices even across multiple generations of hardware? I'll pass, been down that road and it sucks lol.

1. Exactly! Your only solution and recourse is to just up the noise on the airwaves and try to outcompete the others, which is why everyone and their mother is buying new $200-300 AWACs systems every 2-3 years they see a "deal" at Costco instead of investing in a mesh system that directs bandwidth to the areas you actually need it.
2. No they haven't always done this lol, this is still an issue when roaming across multiple access points where clients will stay connected to a distant AP even when there's a stronger signal coming from one that's closer. Some devices will scan for stronger signals for SSIDs they have access to, but most will not until they drop connection completely. In a mesh network that's centrally managed, you can see this easily as you physically move around as your device will be handed off to different APs because the mesh network is aware of the other APs in the network. With a system that uses different hardware vendors and management tools they're not aware of other APs, and you'd have to log into each AP just to see what's connected to them.
3. This was the issue with the Verizon Gateway Router, which I had to use to get Fios TV to their boxes, and any router APs connected to them via wired bridge. The Verizon router segmented both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands (and still does since I still need it for their wireless TV boxes) and passed those segmented networks onto any bridged routers. Once I ditched bridge mode and went to Mesh, no more issues. 2.4 and 5GHz on the same SSID isn't an issue at all, as I said both the client and AP negotiate which band to use based on capability, signal strength etc. and it all works seamlessly.
4. In hindsight using the Verizon gateway as the primary router was probably the cause of a lot of the bridged mode issues and setting up a new router as the primary for a different network would've been a better path. That's what I'm doing now with the Mesh network where I just connect the LAN from the Verizon gateway to the primary mesh node and then to an 18-port switch and build my client network off of that.
5. Sure you can, without the convenience of doing it all from a single pane of glass without having to tunnel or keep track of your public IP.
6. Time is money and only a fool wouldn't understand that lol. Again, you grossly oversimplify the situation, enterprise level gear has a LOT of additional features that you need in a multi-user, multi-admin, security and reliability focused environment that a home user with 1-2 admins and <10 users will NEVER need. You'll never need to manage VLANs, security and network policiies, web filtering, traffic shaping, QoS, etc. on a home networking system at the level of control you need to in an enterprise environment. Also, PLENTY of SOHOs use home-grade networking equipment because they simply do NOT need the functionality of enterprise-grade hardware. And its certainly not about speed lol, because if these enterprise grade gear supported those speeds they would literally charge you tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege instead of just thousands for AC (lol) speeds which are then throttled/limited because they understand IT pros simply don't want you getting full bandwidth or consuming that much data at work over WiFi. For $200-300 there is no constraint, Mesh is fast, cheap and easy, pick all 3 for $100 per problem solved instead of spending less on old enterprise gear that was already slow before it got tossed in the dumpster and overly complicated with features you will never need or use, and then forgetting to bill yourself for the time to set it all up.
7. Wired to Wireless is apples to oranges, we're comparing apples to apples with a really fast 6E connection that is 2-3x the performance you'll get from ancient AC enterprise gear. And yeah that's about 10 feet away from a wired 6E node, but the good news is I have 2 more of these nodes in the rooms that I spend the most time in. Now I just need more 6E devices! But yes if you want to compare Apples to Oranges, how much are you spending to upgrade your home network to 2.5-5GbE or are you finding leftover enterprise gear in the dumpster for that too? lol. Sure you can get some 2.5-5GbE speeds if your switch/router and your client endpoints support those speeds but those kinds of ISP internet speeds are certainly not commonplace. My two Z690 rigs will do 2.5GbE and my NAS can be upgraded to 5GbE (with an expensive NIC upgrade), but I'm currently internet capped at 1Gbps with maybe 2Gbps next year so not a big difference there. However, I am definitely looking forward to my next laptop and phone supporting 6E as that'll be a nice bump in performance on those devices.
8. And obviously you'd be wrong, I've used and set-up plenty of enterprise devices (just put in an order for $15K worth of Fortigate gear for a new office) so I know what I'm not missing lol. These kinds of set-ups are what I was referring to previously with having to manage different VLANs, peering, networking policies and yes it is all managed at the firewall appliance, the AP itself is an $1800 overpriced
antenna that doesn't even get the range it advertises. We had to put a 2nd one in an office we expanded that simply goosenecked onto the other side of the building with a central hallway. It couldn't even passthrough some drywall and metal studs in the hallway in an otherwise open floorplan so we had to get another one to get adequate WiFi coverage.

Yeah again, you make it sound like $200-300 is a lot of money while ignoring all the time and effort you've spent over the years configuring and reconfiguring and finding these "deals" on used enterprise equipment. But really that's out of scope for most people, including the OP, who are just looking to buy home grade networking equipment and then get maximum useful life out of them for roughly the same $200-300. For most people, that's not a lot of money, and if they could spend that money and actually build out a robust, backward compatible mesh networking spending $200-300 every few years instead of throwing those old APs in the trash and buying the next AWACs, they might consider that a better option. Heck even 3 node WiFi6 options are in that $300 range now, so its certainly not cost prohibitive by any stretch.

I've upgraded my mesh network countless times, adding nodes, replacing nodes, rebuilding with a new primary node and it literally takes minutes. I've got AC nodes, AX nodes and now AXE nodes I've added to the same network over time, I simply swap out the faster gear in the areas I need them most and move the slower gear to areas that don't get as much use. Some of those nodes are at least 7 years old with the original Velop AC6600 3-node kit and still running great, so certainly not throwaway with planned obsolescence.
 
Ummmm....that's literally what everyone that custom builds a home does (or should do). If you think your wireless devices are fast enough, that's great, but wired > wireless--today, yesterday, and it will be the same far into the future. If you already have wired backhauls to various rooms, it's trivial to add a switch and wire up more devices that are there. This frees your wireless airwaves since they are a shared medium unless wired switching which is not.

Yep, the devices are being made that way because consumers are that way. But you will find ports if you look for them--I found it on a solar energy system even though everything talked about using their app and a bunch of asinine steps to get into the unit wirelessly. For wired you literally plug in and go to the IP address--found this gem in the owners manual after the pages dedicated to the app crap. :ROFLMAO: Sure there are IOT devices, but they're also the biggest security threats and attack vectors for any network. Now, you can think that you have nothing to lose, but just imagine the damage if someone had your bank numbers, mortgage numbers, and ssn. Those attacks aren't as well known, but they are definitely ramping up as the baddies learn that people that are good targets will foolishly trade security for convenience. You can think that the banks, etc will be eager to help a situation like this, but I know from what my brother told me about dealing with this at his work that it was a 6mo nightmare for people that had their ID compromised. 'Almost as bad as a divorce' he told me. :eek:

There's easier ways to get ethernet in every room if you don't already have it. And on older constructions there is the cost. But I've yet to find one person that wired ethernet everywhere that regretted it. In fact, it's typically them wishing they ran more runs while they had stuff worked on.

What you're talking about is simply subnetting, not truly segmenting at the lower layers. You do reduce your IP broadcasts, but it doesn't change anything for ethernet broadcasts which are always there in wireless since it is a CSMA/CA collision domain. So in essense, subnetting like this doesn't solve the problem and in fact may increase it as you now have more routing going on.

Wireless is here to stay, but I don't think a day will come when it will be superior to a wired connection. Even today, wired telephone lines are still the cleanest voice connection on a phone call, even with all the newer gimmicks on cellular phones. It's just gotten to the point where the clarity of a wired telephone call has been surpassed by voip, which again is best served wired. ;)
Yeah again, this is like the moment in Matrix where Smith asks what's the point of a phone call if you can't speak? In this case it'd be what's the point of a wired connection in every room if you don't have a device in that room that can use a wired connection? At most I'd do 2 more hardwire runs but only so that I could get 4 hardwires in the basement/home theatre and also extend wired > wireless coverage. For the upstairs I'd maybe get another hardwired access point but its completely unnecessary. We have Smart TVs, Smart cameras/monitors, light switches/lights, iPads and a PS4 that never gets used, so yeah no wired connections needed. Both are accessible enough from the office to wire if I wanted to without too much drywall patching but at this point its wholly unnecessary as I can only see FEWER wired devices throughout the house, not more over time.

IoT security issues are overstated, you don't actually connect to most of them directly over your network and they don't have access to each other, they go out to the internet over 443 and you connect your management device to them via internet/cloud. So yeah, they can certainly compromise whatever service/credentials you use to access them via Cloud but that's about it. If you're really worried about it, you can segment the devices to their own network and you can still access them from anywhere since again, its all going to the internet and back to your app/portal device. I actually do this with the Ring devices for both security and QoS since 6-7 streams of 1080p video do lead to some network congestion. Now privacy and eavesdropping on those IoT devices, that's a totally different issue. :D

Yeah again, if it were new construction I'd pay the $100/room to have ethernet run to every room, but its not and I'm not in any hurry to get a wired connection to rooms that don't have any wired devices. 1 room per floor for the basement and upstairs maybe, but not a priority now and a relatively job when the time comes.

As mentioned you can certainly segment IoT devices without much interruption on different physical hardware and virtual networks and still get full functionality. I'm doing this with my Ring devices and you can even do this for Alexa since that also controls devices via Internet rather than direct device to device connections over the network. Its still better than just increasing signal strength and antennas and brute forcing all devices to a single AP.

Yeah there's no doubt wired vs. wireless has its tradeoffs but in reality, wireless is going to continue to be used where it can simply because its impractical to have hundreds of additional cables to hundreds of devices spread all over the house, especially when those devices continue to get smaller and smaller and some don't even have the physical capability of having an RJ-45 port, much less a dongle with NIC on it.
 
So again, you would choose vendor proprietary and roll the dice and hope they all work given there's no actual mesh or WiFi bridging standard compared to a proprietary system that guarantees compatibility amongst their own proprietary devices even across multiple generations of hardware? I'll pass, been down that road and it sucks lol.

1. Exactly! Your only solution and recourse is to just up the noise on the airwaves and try to outcompete the others, which is why everyone and their mother is buying new $200-300 AWACs systems every 2-3 years they see a "deal" at Costco instead of investing in a mesh system that directs bandwidth to the areas you actually need it.
2. No they haven't always done this lol, this is still an issue when roaming across multiple access points where clients will stay connected to a distant AP even when there's a stronger signal coming from one that's closer. Some devices will scan for stronger signals for SSIDs they have access to, but most will not until they drop connection completely. In a mesh network that's centrally managed, you can see this easily as you physically move around as your device will be handed off to different APs because the mesh network is aware of the other APs in the network. With a system that uses different hardware vendors and management tools they're not aware of other APs, and you'd have to log into each AP just to see what's connected to them.
3. This was the issue with the Verizon Gateway Router, which I had to use to get Fios TV to their boxes, and any router APs connected to them via wired bridge. The Verizon router segmented both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands (and still does since I still need it for their wireless TV boxes) and passed those segmented networks onto any bridged routers. Once I ditched bridge mode and went to Mesh, no more issues. 2.4 and 5GHz on the same SSID isn't an issue at all, as I said both the client and AP negotiate which band to use based on capability, signal strength etc. and it all works seamlessly.
4. In hindsight using the Verizon gateway as the primary router was probably the cause of a lot of the bridged mode issues and setting up a new router as the primary for a different network would've been a better path. That's what I'm doing now with the Mesh network where I just connect the LAN from the Verizon gateway to the primary mesh node and then to an 18-port switch and build my client network off of that.
5. Sure you can, without the convenience of doing it all from a single pane of glass without having to tunnel or keep track of your public IP.
6. Time is money and only a fool wouldn't understand that lol. Again, you grossly oversimplify the situation, enterprise level gear has a LOT of additional features that you need in a multi-user, multi-admin, security and reliability focused environment that a home user with 1-2 admins and <10 users will NEVER need. You'll never need to manage VLANs, security and network policiies, web filtering, traffic shaping, QoS, etc. on a home networking system at the level of control you need to in an enterprise environment. Also, PLENTY of SOHOs use home-grade networking equipment because they simply do NOT need the functionality of enterprise-grade hardware. And its certainly not about speed lol, because if these enterprise grade gear supported those speeds they would literally charge you tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege instead of just thousands for AC (lol) speeds which are then throttled/limited because they understand IT pros simply don't want you getting full bandwidth or consuming that much data at work over WiFi. For $200-300 there is no constraint, Mesh is fast, cheap and easy, pick all 3 for $100 per problem solved instead of spending less on old enterprise gear that was already slow before it got tossed in the dumpster and overly complicated with features you will never need or use, and then forgetting to bill yourself for the time to set it all up.
7. Wired to Wireless is apples to oranges, we're comparing apples to apples with a really fast 6E connection that is 2-3x the performance you'll get from ancient AC enterprise gear. And yeah that's about 10 feet away from a wired 6E node, but the good news is I have 2 more of these nodes in the rooms that I spend the most time in. Now I just need more 6E devices! But yes if you want to compare Apples to Oranges, how much are you spending to upgrade your home network to 2.5-5GbE or are you finding leftover enterprise gear in the dumpster for that too? lol. Sure you can get some 2.5-5GbE speeds if your switch/router and your client endpoints support those speeds but those kinds of ISP internet speeds are certainly not commonplace. My two Z690 rigs will do 2.5GbE and my NAS can be upgraded to 5GbE (with an expensive NIC upgrade), but I'm currently internet capped at 1Gbps with maybe 2Gbps next year so not a big difference there. However, I am definitely looking forward to my next laptop and phone supporting 6E as that'll be a nice bump in performance on those devices.
8. And obviously you'd be wrong, I've used and set-up plenty of enterprise devices (just put in an order for $15K worth of Fortigate gear for a new office) so I know what I'm not missing lol. These kinds of set-ups are what I was referring to previously with having to manage different VLANs, peering, networking policies and yes it is all managed at the firewall appliance, the AP itself is an $1800 overpriced
antenna that doesn't even get the range it advertises. We had to put a 2nd one in an office we expanded that simply goosenecked onto the other side of the building with a central hallway. It couldn't even passthrough some drywall and metal studs in the hallway in an otherwise open floorplan so we had to get another one to get adequate WiFi coverage.

Yeah again, you make it sound like $200-300 is a lot of money while ignoring all the time and effort you've spent over the years configuring and reconfiguring and finding these "deals" on used enterprise equipment. But really that's out of scope for most people, including the OP, who are just looking to buy home grade networking equipment and then get maximum useful life out of them for roughly the same $200-300. For most people, that's not a lot of money, and if they could spend that money and actually build out a robust, backward compatible mesh networking spending $200-300 every few years instead of throwing those old APs in the trash and buying the next AWACs, they might consider that a better option. Heck even 3 node WiFi6 options are in that $300 range now, so its certainly not cost prohibitive by any stretch.

I've upgraded my mesh network countless times, adding nodes, replacing nodes, rebuilding with a new primary node and it literally takes minutes. I've got AC nodes, AX nodes and now AXE nodes I've added to the same network over time, I simply swap out the faster gear in the areas I need them most and move the slower gear to areas that don't get as much use. Some of those nodes are at least 7 years old with the original Velop AC6600 3-node kit and still running great, so certainly not throwaway with planned obsolescence.
Not really since you're not really vendor locked in since you're using industry standard stuff that actually is not even close to proprietary. Router+AP has been around since the dawn of wifi--nothing at all proprietary about that.

  1. A mesh system isn't doing any magic in a noisy environment either--it literally can't do anything but the same thing every other AP is doing--constantly hop around looking for clear air.
  2. And that's why I said earlier that this problem occurs because the clients don't transfer properly or the signal levels were not set correctly for proper handoff. Proper signal levels on APs will allow good handoffs without the 'hanging on' issue. Using a controller or manager is a cheat imo. Kinda like curling using a leaf blower, lol.
  3. If you're using the isp router, you're typically doing it wrong. I remember when I had verizon back in the day (75/75 service for like $50/mo!) and I needed to connect my router for all the work stuff consumer stuff can't do like IPsec tunnels. You could get the ethernet activated at the ont and it just handed out a public IP that you could use. But this did only work with Internet and tv was still over some other signals. But then found out that my TV had a verizon app that worked right over the ethernet so still didn't need their router. This was back in 2013 I believe. TV does make ditching an isp's equipment harder, but frankly, I would either just get a dedicated internet account and one for TV or figure out a way to get the TV over the ethernet network that already exists.
  4. Yep, that's where a lot of people end up with problems--isp (vendor locked ;)) routers. But in the setup you have now, now you've got a double-nat situation which can cause its own issues.
  5. And compromise security while doing so? That's the hidden tradeoff you've got going on. And there's no magic way of not having to track an IP--it has to be done somewhere by something, manually or automated. My IPs change only ever few years and I have my own domain so I can just assign a sub-domain to each one. Not only do I not have to memorize the IP, but I get to choose what I want to call it. ;) The automated way to do this is some sort of dynamic domain service.
  6. Time and money are inversely proportional until you get over a significant hump. And there's a point where time does cost--but I think most people overestimate how much their time is worth because they're looking at gross vs net. It's your net that determines your time's worth, not the gross. If something costs you $200, it's not $200 of income that replaces it, but $200 of net income. If you're making 10% to the bottom line after all expenses are paid, it's actually $2000 of income you need to cover that $200 expense. Then your time becomes a lot less valuable since you're trading hours for weeks (depending on income level of course). It's clear you definitely haven't touched enterprise gear. Because I once thought like you did--that I didn't need this level of control. Until I realized all the head banging and workarounds I was doing on consumer gear was easily solved with normal built-in functions on enterprise gear (multi-wan, secure ip-sec tunnels with remote access, and more). I have a lot of smb/soho gear as well. That's basically 'pretend enterprise' where they work great if the features actually work, but they're as buggy as consumer gear so that's the tradeoff. They look great when you compare the prices between them and new enterprise, but once you realize used enterprise is the same price and will typically blow the smb stuff out of the water, you quickly move to enterprise. If you think people are dumping fortigate 50e and palo alto gear because they're slow, you definitely haven't seen the ports on some of these things. Enterprise was doing gigabit wan to lan when consumers didn't even know it existed because internet speeds barely broke 100Mbs. And management of all this is actually probably on par with your mesh systems as that's were a lot of the mesh features and design came from in the first place. Again, the statements you've made about enterprise gear are not true, and you've got a bit of an ostrich approach to the whole thing with a head in the sand about how networking really works. This is fine if that's your approach, but it's not the only one and certainly not one others need to take. It's like you're talking about how easy it is to drive your car because you have a paid driver--well, most of us can't take that approach.
  7. You were earlier talking about how bandwidth is bandwidth, wired or wireless--and now somehow wireless bandwidth is a different animal? Bandwidth is bandwidth because that's why people stopped paying over a grand a month for a 1.55Mb T1 line when a cable modem that was 5M/128k was $100. A Ruckus AP without 6e will probably hit those same speeds when sitting as close. There's nothing like a Ruckus AP--anyone here who has one can attest to that--makes even unifi stuff seem weak by comparison. 2.5/5Gb is current generation so if you're finding anything in a dumpster, it's probably broken. And the upgrade cost is literally just nics and switches as the wires are the same. I could do it overnight at one of my sites and be 5x faster than your 6e will be for the next 5yrs. And that's for the areas where I wouldn't move to 10Gb DACs or run some fibre which in preterminated lengths which is also now getting cheap. In the end, you'll pay more for your 6e stuff since the industry is gouging 6e adopters right now, and then you'll still be left in the dust. But hey, it's your foolishness and money...
  8. You may have ordered it, but I have serious doubts you've used it or set it up. And again, you're overcomplicating things by setting up things not appropriate for the network. Why are you setting up vlans, peering, and network policies in a network unless they have a purpose--especially for just 3 APs? That would make no sense. And if you're buying new enterprise gear, yes it is deadly expensive. But the same stuff lightly used or slightly older becomes surprisingly affordable and literally buries consumer stuff in terms of sheer capability. And if this fortigate set up was such a pain, why did you not follow your own advice and just ditch it for a mesh system?

    As your own setup proves, nothing is really throwaway but repurpose. And that's the crux of used enterprise gear--something that is now underpowered for a 10,000 person office with a 10Gb line that's moved to 40Gb will still be stellar for a home that is full of lots of devices that needs granular control and fast routing. And the APs are the same. Used Ruckus APs that were over $1000 new and would cover part of a stadium now can be put in the central spot in a typical home and give coverage beyond belief. It has a bit of a learning curve, but stupid is the only thing made simple imo.

    The OP posted this deal because even in the consumer space, people do take the time to save money. Because going back to my previous example, your time isn't worth as much dollar-wise as you think it is. However, there is a market for people who will just 'throw money at the problem' and there's many very large companies that have been built with that money to serve that market. I personally don't think the value is there until you literally have more money than you know what to do with, but people will lesser means for some reason do and then complain about not having enough money. I will always be chasing the value point and getting exactly what I want versus what someone has told me is the best for me. And you have to remember the audience here--if people here were happy with cookie cutter solutions for the masses, they wouldn't be custom building systems with custom waterloops and overclocking. You're preaching to the wrong congregation.
 
Yeah again, this is like the moment in Matrix where Smith asks what's the point of a phone call if you can't speak? In this case it'd be what's the point of a wired connection in every room if you don't have a device in that room that can use a wired connection? At most I'd do 2 more hardwire runs but only so that I could get 4 hardwires in the basement/home theatre and also extend wired > wireless coverage. For the upstairs I'd maybe get another hardwired access point but its completely unnecessary. We have Smart TVs, Smart cameras/monitors, light switches/lights, iPads and a PS4 that never gets used, so yeah no wired connections needed. Both are accessible enough from the office to wire if I wanted to without too much drywall patching but at this point its wholly unnecessary as I can only see FEWER wired devices throughout the house, not more over time.

IoT security issues are overstated, you don't actually connect to most of them directly over your network and they don't have access to each other, they go out to the internet over 443 and you connect your management device to them via internet/cloud. So yeah, they can certainly compromise whatever service/credentials you use to access them via Cloud but that's about it. If you're really worried about it, you can segment the devices to their own network and you can still access them from anywhere since again, its all going to the internet and back to your app/portal device. I actually do this with the Ring devices for both security and QoS since 6-7 streams of 1080p video do lead to some network congestion. Now privacy and eavesdropping on those IoT devices, that's a totally different issue. :D

Yeah again, if it were new construction I'd pay the $100/room to have ethernet run to every room, but its not and I'm not in any hurry to get a wired connection to rooms that don't have any wired devices. 1 room per floor for the basement and upstairs maybe, but not a priority now and a relatively job when the time comes.

As mentioned you can certainly segment IoT devices without much interruption on different physical hardware and virtual networks and still get full functionality. I'm doing this with my Ring devices and you can even do this for Alexa since that also controls devices via Internet rather than direct device to device connections over the network. Its still better than just increasing signal strength and antennas and brute forcing all devices to a single AP.

Yeah there's no doubt wired vs. wireless has its tradeoffs but in reality, wireless is going to continue to be used where it can simply because its impractical to have hundreds of additional cables to hundreds of devices spread all over the house, especially when those devices continue to get smaller and smaller and some don't even have the physical capability of having an RJ-45 port, much less a dongle with NIC on it.
That's like asking why a car has to go 0-60 in under 2 seconds or why people need to have a 10,000 sq ft house or a yacht? Because it opens possibilities versus limit them. I never have to worry about having anything less than full gigabit in any room, and if I want some sort of wireless, I just plug in an AP right there where I need it. No fussing around with wifi coverage and that nonsense. No lag from wireless latency. Just something reliable that works and will always work--that's why you have it.

I remember one of our apartment complexes that was brand new didn't wire ethernet jacks (most new ones do). When I asked them why not they said AT&T said they didn't need them because everything would be wireless. Well, in short order once the complex started filling up there were problems with airwave congestion and stuttering and lag and all the usual issues. AT&T came back in and upgraded the property to 1Gb everywhere to compensate. I bet there are still lag issues. Point of this story is that at some point wireless everything implodes on itself and the only solution is wired to remove the congestion. You can fight this fact all you want, but there is no way around it.

Well, you just told me that you know ZERO about the state of security these days. :eek: This was just last month:
https://www.securityweek.com/ring-camera-recordings-exposed-due-vulnerability-android-app

Attacks on networks are getting more and more, and the backdoors are being planted more and more. Even segmenting on vlans won't help at some point. Airgaps are even being compromised. There is a global cyberwar that is going on 24x7 and the targets in this war are the civilians and their IoT devices. IoT are the threat that is inside the network and are pretty much just a security compromise waiting to happen, especially on consumer gear. A head in the sand about all this will only make you a victim and casualty in this war.

Yikes that expense. :eek: I would just do it myself and leave wire unterminated for me to terminate later or have someone else terminate. On existing sites, I try to use whatever wire is already there. Moca does a fine job getting 2.5Gb ethernet to places over coax.

That's good that you're segementing those IoT devices--I may have to deal with some of those things myself and I'll probably get a completely separate, dedicated, cheap Internet plan for it because there's no way I want that junk traffic near my important ones. I usually will just prevent those things from calling home and make them lan only. I do that with all our NAS units and they'll complain, but they're also ransomware proof since they literally have zero internet access. Of course, if my wife wants all this IoT crap, then dedicated connection for said crap.

Wireless will always have its purpose for wireless only devices--but at some point, the chatter from so many devices will cause problems that only wires will solve. ;)
 
I'm sure I'll get flamed but I have used eero in my home since 2017 (and upgraded to their latest units along the way - on eero Pro 6E now) and it has worked awesome. Today, I have full wired backhaul so it really hums - but last year and previously it was all wireless (3 units, sometimes more - but I found for my ~2600 square foot home more units caused issues).

The price is also much less than what people are highlighting in this thread for a 6E system. $700 and it can be had for cheaper.

Lots of scary reviews out there. Shrug. The firmware upgrades fairly frequently and issues are quashed often. I swear by it and have my family and friends on it. I manage their networks and they don't even complain.

EDIT: note - I use mine as a AP versus a full gateway (use a Fortinet FortiGate 60F for a gateway).
 
I'm sure I'll get flamed but I have used eero in my home since 2017 (and upgraded to their latest units along the way - on eero Pro 6E now) and it has worked awesome. Today, I have full wired backhaul so it really hums - but last year and previously it was all wireless (3 units, sometimes more - but I found for my ~2600 square foot home more units caused issues).

The price is also much less than what people are highlighting in this thread for a 6E system. $700 and it can be had for cheaper.

Lots of scary reviews out there. Shrug. The firmware upgrades fairly frequently and issues are quashed often. I swear by it and have my family and friends on it. I manage their networks and they don't even complain.

EDIT: note - I use mine as a AP versus a full gateway (use a Fortinet FortiGate 60F for a gateway).
Thank you for sharing. Interesting to hear you're only using it as an AP as that's a bit much imo for $700 + whatever you've spent along the way. Nice to see the 60F as a gateway--do you use it or the AP for managing traffic restrictions?
 
Thank you for sharing. Interesting to hear you're only using it as an AP as that's a bit much imo for $700 + whatever you've spent along the way. Nice to see the 60F as a gateway--do you use it or the AP for managing traffic restrictions?
eero is strictly a wireless device (bridge) - the 60F does all of the UTM functions, ACLs, etc. My license for the Fortinet expires in December so I am getting a Firewalla Gold Plus when they release (pre-ordered).

I think it is well worth it. I paid around $600 for my 6E setup. The Internet is as essential as water, gas, and electricity at my house. :)
 
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Not really since you're not really vendor locked in since you're using industry standard stuff that actually is not even close to proprietary. Router+AP has been around since the dawn of wifi--nothing at all proprietary about that.

  1. A mesh system isn't doing any magic in a noisy environment either--it literally can't do anything but the same thing every other AP is doing--constantly hop around looking for clear air.
  2. And that's why I said earlier that this problem occurs because the clients don't transfer properly or the signal levels were not set correctly for proper handoff. Proper signal levels on APs will allow good handoffs without the 'hanging on' issue. Using a controller or manager is a cheat imo. Kinda like curling using a leaf blower, lol.
  3. If you're using the isp router, you're typically doing it wrong. I remember when I had verizon back in the day (75/75 service for like $50/mo!) and I needed to connect my router for all the work stuff consumer stuff can't do like IPsec tunnels. You could get the ethernet activated at the ont and it just handed out a public IP that you could use. But this did only work with Internet and tv was still over some other signals. But then found out that my TV had a verizon app that worked right over the ethernet so still didn't need their router. This was back in 2013 I believe. TV does make ditching an isp's equipment harder, but frankly, I would either just get a dedicated internet account and one for TV or figure out a way to get the TV over the ethernet network that already exists.
  4. Yep, that's where a lot of people end up with problems--isp (vendor locked ;)) routers. But in the setup you have now, now you've got a double-nat situation which can cause its own issues.
  5. And compromise security while doing so? That's the hidden tradeoff you've got going on. And there's no magic way of not having to track an IP--it has to be done somewhere by something, manually or automated. My IPs change only ever few years and I have my own domain so I can just assign a sub-domain to each one. Not only do I not have to memorize the IP, but I get to choose what I want to call it. ;) The automated way to do this is some sort of dynamic domain service.
  6. Time and money are inversely proportional until you get over a significant hump. And there's a point where time does cost--but I think most people overestimate how much their time is worth because they're looking at gross vs net. It's your net that determines your time's worth, not the gross. If something costs you $200, it's not $200 of income that replaces it, but $200 of net income. If you're making 10% to the bottom line after all expenses are paid, it's actually $2000 of income you need to cover that $200 expense. Then your time becomes a lot less valuable since you're trading hours for weeks (depending on income level of course). It's clear you definitely haven't touched enterprise gear. Because I once thought like you did--that I didn't need this level of control. Until I realized all the head banging and workarounds I was doing on consumer gear was easily solved with normal built-in functions on enterprise gear (multi-wan, secure ip-sec tunnels with remote access, and more). I have a lot of smb/soho gear as well. That's basically 'pretend enterprise' where they work great if the features actually work, but they're as buggy as consumer gear so that's the tradeoff. They look great when you compare the prices between them and new enterprise, but once you realize used enterprise is the same price and will typically blow the smb stuff out of the water, you quickly move to enterprise. If you think people are dumping fortigate 50e and palo alto gear because they're slow, you definitely haven't seen the ports on some of these things. Enterprise was doing gigabit wan to lan when consumers didn't even know it existed because internet speeds barely broke 100Mbs. And management of all this is actually probably on par with your mesh systems as that's were a lot of the mesh features and design came from in the first place. Again, the statements you've made about enterprise gear are not true, and you've got a bit of an ostrich approach to the whole thing with a head in the sand about how networking really works. This is fine if that's your approach, but it's not the only one and certainly not one others need to take. It's like you're talking about how easy it is to drive your car because you have a paid driver--well, most of us can't take that approach.
  7. You were earlier talking about how bandwidth is bandwidth, wired or wireless--and now somehow wireless bandwidth is a different animal? Bandwidth is bandwidth because that's why people stopped paying over a grand a month for a 1.55Mb T1 line when a cable modem that was 5M/128k was $100. A Ruckus AP without 6e will probably hit those same speeds when sitting as close. There's nothing like a Ruckus AP--anyone here who has one can attest to that--makes even unifi stuff seem weak by comparison. 2.5/5Gb is current generation so if you're finding anything in a dumpster, it's probably broken. And the upgrade cost is literally just nics and switches as the wires are the same. I could do it overnight at one of my sites and be 5x faster than your 6e will be for the next 5yrs. And that's for the areas where I wouldn't move to 10Gb DACs or run some fibre which in preterminated lengths which is also now getting cheap. In the end, you'll pay more for your 6e stuff since the industry is gouging 6e adopters right now, and then you'll still be left in the dust. But hey, it's your foolishness and money...
  8. You may have ordered it, but I have serious doubts you've used it or set it up. And again, you're overcomplicating things by setting up things not appropriate for the network. Why are you setting up vlans, peering, and network policies in a network unless they have a purpose--especially for just 3 APs? That would make no sense. And if you're buying new enterprise gear, yes it is deadly expensive. But the same stuff lightly used or slightly older becomes surprisingly affordable and literally buries consumer stuff in terms of sheer capability. And if this fortigate set up was such a pain, why did you not follow your own advice and just ditch it for a mesh system?

    As your own setup proves, nothing is really throwaway but repurpose. And that's the crux of used enterprise gear--something that is now underpowered for a 10,000 person office with a 10Gb line that's moved to 40Gb will still be stellar for a home that is full of lots of devices that needs granular control and fast routing. And the APs are the same. Used Ruckus APs that were over $1000 new and would cover part of a stadium now can be put in the central spot in a typical home and give coverage beyond belief. It has a bit of a learning curve, but stupid is the only thing made simple imo.

    The OP posted this deal because even in the consumer space, people do take the time to save money. Because going back to my previous example, your time isn't worth as much dollar-wise as you think it is. However, there is a market for people who will just 'throw money at the problem' and there's many very large companies that have been built with that money to serve that market. I personally don't think the value is there until you literally have more money than you know what to do with, but people will lesser means for some reason do and then complain about not having enough money. I will always be chasing the value point and getting exactly what I want versus what someone has told me is the best for me. And you have to remember the audience here--if people here were happy with cookie cutter solutions for the masses, they wouldn't be custom building systems with custom waterloops and overclocking. You're preaching to the wrong congregation.
So you're saying everything in the wireless router market is just plug n play industry standard? That's interesting since the last time I had to mess around with this non-industry standard stuff with DD-WRT there were literally land mines everywhere you had to avoid with incompatible or non-standard configs for both firmware and hardware across diff mfgs.

1. It doesn't need to hop around nearly as much or search as far or "pump up the volume" to be heard because you can localize it to where you actually need your signal. If anything higher frequency bands like 6GHz should help clear the airwaves over blasting stronger 2.4 and 5GHz which forces everyone else to do the same.
2. Yeah you can "manually fine tune" everything or you can "cheat" and use the best solution possible, some would call that progress and innovation.
3. ISP router was bought and paid for years ago and until recently there hasn't been a suitable alternative to live TV. Now that everything has gone app/subscription-based ala carte its been easier to trim the TV package down to basically sports and local, but even with subscription internet TV, there's a LOT of latency for live sports which sucks when you're hearing and seeing the highlights 1:30 mins later from friends or tweets etc. Anyways, its in progress and going straight from the ONT is still hit or miss depending on the hardware they have installed. I'm personally holding out for 2GHz FiOS because apparently that comes with even newer ONT hardware so we'll see.
4. Again, no issues whatsoever with my current config even double NAT'd and I even have the ISP router broadcasting on their own SSIDs on their own 2.4 and 5GHz for the TV boxes, which are even more necessary now that the boxes run off WiFi and don't even use MoCa anymore.
5. So you're paying how much a year for dynamic DNS, domain name and hosting? You probably use let's encrypt too for your SSL cert, but hopefully you're automating renewal of that too because that 3 month expiration certainly sucks. I don't have to worry about any of that, username and password with MFA/FaceID, good enough for the industry, good enough for me.
6. No, I can tell you like wasting time and money unnecessarily because you don't value your time or you find some perverse pleasure in wasting it lol. Again, let's take a different tack. What killer feature are you getting from your jumbled gear of old enterprise hardware? Its certainly not ease of set-up, ease of use, speed, centralized management, flexibility or cost. Did you ever stop to realize all the "head banging and workarounds" you've encountered were the same ones I and millions others ran into when trying to fit a square peg in a round hole before going to a mesh network system that solved all of those issues? Have you ever TRIED using a mesh network for yourself, friends or family or are you just too cheap? lol. You keep talking about speed and then refer to wired ports lol, I mean switches since the 2000s have had no issues doing Gigabit speeds so why even bring it up? Obviously the discussion was referring to WiFi speeds and the benefits of mesh networking and yet you keep interjecting some ancient world view of an apartment complex or office building where there needs to be a LAN drop every 4 ft in each cubicle? And what are you going on about a paid driver? lol. Its $200-300 for an entry-level WiFi 6 mesh system vs. how much in bootleg grey market enterprise gear you've uh, appropriated from work or the dumpster or some other shady grey market site no one knows about. Maybe if I try hard enough I can find some really cheap/discounted mesh equipment too at a fraction of what you paid for your used Enterprise gear, ever think of that? Oh wait, there's no need to, its not cost prohibitive to begin with and not worth the time or effort of just buying it new.
7. People don't pay a grand for T1 lines because like all beneficial and useful tech, it becomes ubiquitous with adoption and prices decrease. The same is happening with Mesh WiFi. What was $1200 a year ago for 6E is $900 now, and it'll be $600 next year probably $400 the year after that when 6E devices are actually available on the market and people start buying those 6E mesh networks in higher volume. That's how tech works. The same is true for Enterprise gear except the demand and volume is so low with specs and features that no home user needs or requires it drives up the price exponentially. Not to mention the high price of support and annual subscription for paid features like web filter, firewall subscriptions etc. Again you keep saying your enterprise grade equipment can do better, so prove it lol. It took me 5 mins the first time I've ever used the WiFi 6E on my desktop to show it was outperforming your AC enterprise gear, all at a fraction of the price.
8. That's $15000K for the new office, I have at least 3x that much already set up in our other offices. ;) We have multiple VLANs for different purposes, VoIP/PoE phones, wired clients, wireless internal SSID, wireless guest network. We apply different QoS/traffic shaping rules for the different ports on the FortiGate which then connect to FortiSwitches which are mapped for PC clients and VoIP. Bandwidth priority is distributed based on position and function, for example customer support we give priority to their VoiP phones and for developers or NOC we give priority for client drops. Guest WiFi is given the lowest priority. Web Filtering rules are also different based on position and we are much more strict on wireless since we allow BYOD on wireless. We segment each VLAN so devices on one network can't talk to the other for security reasons, especially for developers and the Guest WiFi. But yeah, that's work, and the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is uh, more work lol. Especially when none of this is necessary for my home network, if I was that concerned about QoS or security I'd just set them up on a completely different SSID and network like I did for my Ring Pro/Eero system.

Oh man, talk about the wrong tool for the job. Again, no one needs an AP capable of covering a football stadium in their house. Might as well use a megaphone talking to someone in the same room. Nothing is throwaway in a system where those parts are designed to be forward and compatible, there's landfills worth of Wireless networking equipment that AREN'T designed to do this.

Yeah again, I'd rather solve a problem in 30 minutes with $200-300 instead of throwing good money after bad, along with your time which you don't seem to value very much.

As for preaching to the wrong congregation lol, no I think folks here find solutions to be worthwhile when the gains justify the level of effort. Following a roadmap that leads nowhere or to frustration isn't fun for anyone and that's the major difference between a well-supported solution and a poorly supported solution. Do you think people would bother with custom loops if it took 5x as long to set-up, had no impact on overclockability and offered little or even worse performance than an AIO or air cooler? Probably not. ;)
 
That's like asking why a car has to go 0-60 in under 2 seconds or why people need to have a 10,000 sq ft house or a yacht? Because it opens possibilities versus limit them. I never have to worry about having anything less than full gigabit in any room, and if I want some sort of wireless, I just plug in an AP right there where I need it. No fussing around with wifi coverage and that nonsense. No lag from wireless latency. Just something reliable that works and will always work--that's why you have it.

I remember one of our apartment complexes that was brand new didn't wire ethernet jacks (most new ones do). When I asked them why not they said AT&T said they didn't need them because everything would be wireless. Well, in short order once the complex started filling up there were problems with airwave congestion and stuttering and lag and all the usual issues. AT&T came back in and upgraded the property to 1Gb everywhere to compensate. I bet there are still lag issues. Point of this story is that at some point wireless everything implodes on itself and the only solution is wired to remove the congestion. You can fight this fact all you want, but there is no way around it.

Well, you just told me that you know ZERO about the state of security these days. :eek: This was just last month:
https://www.securityweek.com/ring-camera-recordings-exposed-due-vulnerability-android-app

Attacks on networks are getting more and more, and the backdoors are being planted more and more. Even segmenting on vlans won't help at some point. Airgaps are even being compromised. There is a global cyberwar that is going on 24x7 and the targets in this war are the civilians and their IoT devices. IoT are the threat that is inside the network and are pretty much just a security compromise waiting to happen, especially on consumer gear. A head in the sand about all this will only make you a victim and casualty in this war.

Yikes that expense. :eek: I would just do it myself and leave wire unterminated for me to terminate later or have someone else terminate. On existing sites, I try to use whatever wire is already there. Moca does a fine job getting 2.5Gb ethernet to places over coax.

That's good that you're segementing those IoT devices--I may have to deal with some of those things myself and I'll probably get a completely separate, dedicated, cheap Internet plan for it because there's no way I want that junk traffic near my important ones. I usually will just prevent those things from calling home and make them lan only. I do that with all our NAS units and they'll complain, but they're also ransomware proof since they literally have zero internet access. Of course, if my wife wants all this IoT crap, then dedicated connection for said crap.

Wireless will always have its purpose for wireless only devices--but at some point, the chatter from so many devices will cause problems that only wires will solve. ;)
No, that's like asking why I don't have a gas pump installed in my garage when my car is a plug-in EV. Again, what good is a wired connection to every room when there's 1-2 devices upstairs that even have a LAN port and neither of them actually needs it?

I can fight that fact or.....I can never live in an apartment complex, use a mesh WiFi system that directs signal where its needed and continue to use the overwhelming majority of devices I own that are only WiFi capable? I mean you keep speaking as if I'm dealing with absolute inevitabilities but I have to ask again, have you ever personally used a WiFi mesh system?

Did you even read the article you linked? Talk about knowing ZERO about the state of security these days LOL. Its a vulnerable Android app that side-loads into the Ring management app using a local vulnerability on the host management device and gaining access to your Ring credentials/info. The devices themselves on the same network don't have access to anything else on your network and they're as vulnerable as anything else that uses https encryption to the internet.....

As for the rest lol, really not worried about it, the convenience of IoT and smart home far outweighs the potential risks for me anyways. That's part of what you pay those companies for, to worry about the security aspect knowing its their reputation on the line. At this point, trusting only companies that haven't been hacked is akin to Rainman refusing to board a plane unless its Qantas. There's things I'll take precautions about, but there's things that are least concern that could happen...like getting targeted for cyber attack and hacked, getting struck by lightning, getting eaten by a shark (my biggest fear tbh but I still go in the ocean), etc.
 
eero is strictly a wireless device (bridge) - the 60F does all of the UTM functions, ACLs, etc. My license for the Fortinet expires in December so I am getting a Firewalla Gold Plus when they release (pre-ordered).

I think it is well worth it. I paid around $600 for my 6E setup. The Internet is as essential as water, gas, and electricity at my house. :)
Got it. Neat to see those systems able to act as just APs even though they're not just APs, lol.

If Internet is essential, you need multi-wan with two different ISPs if you have them. Once you do this you'll never go back to a single source that can leave you high and dry.
 
I'm sure I'll get flamed but I have used eero in my home since 2017 (and upgraded to their latest units along the way - on eero Pro 6E now) and it has worked awesome. Today, I have full wired backhaul so it really hums - but last year and previously it was all wireless (3 units, sometimes more - but I found for my ~2600 square foot home more units caused issues).

The price is also much less than what people are highlighting in this thread for a 6E system. $700 and it can be had for cheaper.

Lots of scary reviews out there. Shrug. The firmware upgrades fairly frequently and issues are quashed often. I swear by it and have my family and friends on it. I manage their networks and they don't even complain.

EDIT: note - I use mine as a AP versus a full gateway (use a Fortinet FortiGate 60F for a gateway).
I think its great that people share their experiences, WiFi and especially mesh networks in particular have come a long way in a short amount of time and they certainly aren't as cost prohibitive as they once were. Or at least they don't feel as relatively expensive but I think a lot of that is like you said, dependence on wireless and smart-connected wireless devices. People just find WiFi/internet to be an increasingly necessary utility and will spend more to make sure it works well.

Even the Linksys Atlas 6E system I use has dropped in price from $1200 last year to $900 this year. I think the costs are up on this system because it was first to market for 6E Mesh, but they also have 4 network ports and a 5G WAN port driving up costs on each node. I'm sure the price will continue to drop and certaily wouldn't recommend this system for most users unless they actually had some 6E devices which are relatively few and far between.

But yeah, the performance is awesome with wired backhauls and it only gets better over time. The one thing I noticed with the Linksys system is that it really benefits from a "traditional" router with the powerful antennas as the primary node since the range and signal seem to be slightly better than the traditional Mesh tower nodes. Each node connects back to the primary node in a hub and spoke topology, they don't daisy-chain from distant nodes so the extra range for wireless backhaul nodes really helps extend the network. For wired backhauls there's no impact since its still gigabit.
 
Got it. Neat to see those systems able to act as just APs even though they're not just APs, lol.

If Internet is essential, you need multi-wan with two different ISPs if you have them. Once you do this you'll never go back to a single source that can leave you high and dry.
That's what cellular tether is for. My users are not that picky. :) Plus - I don't want to go down that path. I am lucky enough to have two fiber providers in my neighborhood but yet I am still sticking with cable, for now (just the right overall option for us where we are at - kids under 3 so TV is essential for us as an escape). :)
 
So you're saying everything in the wireless router market is just plug n play industry standard? That's interesting since the last time I had to mess around with this non-industry standard stuff with DD-WRT there were literally land mines everywhere you had to avoid with incompatible or non-standard configs for both firmware and hardware across diff mfgs.

1. It doesn't need to hop around nearly as much or search as far or "pump up the volume" to be heard because you can localize it to where you actually need your signal. If anything higher frequency bands like 6GHz should help clear the airwaves over blasting stronger 2.4 and 5GHz which forces everyone else to do the same.
2. Yeah you can "manually fine tune" everything or you can "cheat" and use the best solution possible, some would call that progress and innovation.
3. ISP router was bought and paid for years ago and until recently there hasn't been a suitable alternative to live TV. Now that everything has gone app/subscription-based ala carte its been easier to trim the TV package down to basically sports and local, but even with subscription internet TV, there's a LOT of latency for live sports which sucks when you're hearing and seeing the highlights 1:30 mins later from friends or tweets etc. Anyways, its in progress and going straight from the ONT is still hit or miss depending on the hardware they have installed. I'm personally holding out for 2GHz FiOS because apparently that comes with even newer ONT hardware so we'll see.
4. Again, no issues whatsoever with my current config even double NAT'd and I even have the ISP router broadcasting on their own SSIDs on their own 2.4 and 5GHz for the TV boxes, which are even more necessary now that the boxes run off WiFi and don't even use MoCa anymore.
5. So you're paying how much a year for dynamic DNS, domain name and hosting? You probably use let's encrypt too for your SSL cert, but hopefully you're automating renewal of that too because that 3 month expiration certainly sucks. I don't have to worry about any of that, username and password with MFA/FaceID, good enough for the industry, good enough for me.
6. No, I can tell you like wasting time and money unnecessarily because you don't value your time or you find some perverse pleasure in wasting it lol. Again, let's take a different tack. What killer feature are you getting from your jumbled gear of old enterprise hardware? Its certainly not ease of set-up, ease of use, speed, centralized management, flexibility or cost. Did you ever stop to realize all the "head banging and workarounds" you've encountered were the same ones I and millions others ran into when trying to fit a square peg in a round hole before going to a mesh network system that solved all of those issues? Have you ever TRIED using a mesh network for yourself, friends or family or are you just too cheap? lol. You keep talking about speed and then refer to wired ports lol, I mean switches since the 2000s have had no issues doing Gigabit speeds so why even bring it up? Obviously the discussion was referring to WiFi speeds and the benefits of mesh networking and yet you keep interjecting some ancient world view of an apartment complex or office building where there needs to be a LAN drop every 4 ft in each cubicle? And what are you going on about a paid driver? lol. Its $200-300 for an entry-level WiFi 6 mesh system vs. how much in bootleg grey market enterprise gear you've uh, appropriated from work or the dumpster or some other shady grey market site no one knows about. Maybe if I try hard enough I can find some really cheap/discounted mesh equipment too at a fraction of what you paid for your used Enterprise gear, ever think of that? Oh wait, there's no need to, its not cost prohibitive to begin with and not worth the time or effort of just buying it new.
7. People don't pay a grand for T1 lines because like all beneficial and useful tech, it becomes ubiquitous with adoption and prices decrease. The same is happening with Mesh WiFi. What was $1200 a year ago for 6E is $900 now, and it'll be $600 next year probably $400 the year after that when 6E devices are actually available on the market and people start buying those 6E mesh networks in higher volume. That's how tech works. The same is true for Enterprise gear except the demand and volume is so low with specs and features that no home user needs or requires it drives up the price exponentially. Not to mention the high price of support and annual subscription for paid features like web filter, firewall subscriptions etc. Again you keep saying your enterprise grade equipment can do better, so prove it lol. It took me 5 mins the first time I've ever used the WiFi 6E on my desktop to show it was outperforming your AC enterprise gear, all at a fraction of the price.
8. That's $15000K for the new office, I have at least 3x that much already set up in our other offices. ;) We have multiple VLANs for different purposes, VoIP/PoE phones, wired clients, wireless internal SSID, wireless guest network. We apply different QoS/traffic shaping rules for the different ports on the FortiGate which then connect to FortiSwitches which are mapped for PC clients and VoIP. Bandwidth priority is distributed based on position and function, for example customer support we give priority to their VoiP phones and for developers or NOC we give priority for client drops. Guest WiFi is given the lowest priority. Web Filtering rules are also different based on position and we are much more strict on wireless since we allow BYOD on wireless. We segment each VLAN so devices on one network can't talk to the other for security reasons, especially for developers and the Guest WiFi. But yeah, that's work, and the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is uh, more work lol. Especially when none of this is necessary for my home network, if I was that concerned about QoS or security I'd just set them up on a completely different SSID and network like I did for my Ring Pro/Eero system.

Oh man, talk about the wrong tool for the job. Again, no one needs an AP capable of covering a football stadium in their house. Might as well use a megaphone talking to someone in the same room. Nothing is throwaway in a system where those parts are designed to be forward and compatible, there's landfills worth of Wireless networking equipment that AREN'T designed to do this.

Yeah again, I'd rather solve a problem in 30 minutes with $200-300 instead of throwing good money after bad, along with your time which you don't seem to value very much.

As for preaching to the wrong congregation lol, no I think folks here find solutions to be worthwhile when the gains justify the level of effort. Following a roadmap that leads nowhere or to frustration isn't fun for anyone and that's the major difference between a well-supported solution and a poorly supported solution. Do you think people would bother with custom loops if it took 5x as long to set-up, had no impact on overclockability and offered little or even worse performance than an AIO or air cooler? Probably not. ;)
Yep, it pretty much is. I think the reason you ran into that is because you were trying to do things in a non-standard way.

1. This is false because any AP by any manufacturer will have to hop around if it's in a heavily congested environment. A single family home is not going to have the massive congestion a mtu (multi-tenant unit) building has, so it's not going to be as much of an issue, but the same system in an mtu will hop around as much as my TP-Link c5 had to.
2. Going around the design parameters by introducing an external 'necessary' device is pretty much cheating. There's not much manual fine tuning aside from signal strength and proper overlap. Which any professional will do when installing any real APs.
3. Ahh, good old vendor lock-in. Pretty much unavoidable at the isp level. But feels the same at any level. ;)
4. So you have even more APs on the airwaves. If it works, great--but it's not a good network design since the airwaves are shared by all the APs, no matter what they are.
5. The domain name is for my web site so that's a business expense that I've had for over a decade now. And sub-domains on a domain are free. Like I said, my IPs only change every few years so I update them manually when they change. No biggie for me. Ah, all those security protocols that work so well that there's compromises on them every day. I wouldn't run with those alone and think you're safe.
6. No, I don't like people touting something has being technically superior to something when it is not. I will stand up and say the truth in the face of what is not the truth. Hmmm...killer features--ease of set-up--yep; ease of use--yep; speed--god yes; centralized management--yep; flexibility--hell yes; cost--massive hell yes. I think you and others bang your heads because you were trying to put a square peg in a round hole versus understanding why you have pegs and holes to begin with, lol. As I mentioned previously, I worked with the very first mesh system made by Meraki, and I still have it in fact. In many ways, that system is superior to even the ones made today because it had things like multi-wan as well as monitoring that has now become standard in the enterprise. But it was still a hack as the ethernet ports could be used for a wired backhaul only if they were the only thing on the wire and other limitations. It worked for what I needed it to (hotel installation), but it was 100% proprietary, no doubt about it. After Cisco bought out Meraki, Meraki has become a different company and the rest of the industry has leaned into 'cloud management'. Ahh, you are spouting the same techno snobbery that my wife does--'old is bad', 'wired is bad', 'new shiny good'. Well, you can be as snobby as you want, but you said it best yourself, switches have been doing gigabit since the 2000s--twenty years ago--and you're getting excited about it finally making it to wireless when wired is on the cusp of the next revolution. It sounds to me like you're behind the times versus me since I've been enjoying speeds that you just now are happy to have. And all the apartment complexes I've mentioned have been built between 2013 and 2018 where we were the first tenant in the unit. All these came with wired ethernet sans one. So I'd say not having wired ports is actually backwards, not having them--but feel free to argue with whole industries if you want. Wow, paid driver went over your head too? That explains a lot, lol.

Interesting how you think enterprise gear ends up in dumpsters when actually that's where consumer gear ends up. Enterprise gear goes to recyclers who actually resell them since they still have a lot of value left when the recyclers are getting them for peanuts. And it's easy enough to find your precious mesh crap used--there's a classifieds forum right here. But even when used it's still not the best bang for the buck compared to used enterprise imo.
7. 6e is coming down in price because it was a rip off to begin with and is going to keep coming down until the market can stomach the price--that's how all products are introduced so no magic there. It's hillarious that you think that companies like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Juniper, Fortgate have 'demand and volume is so low' that they can only sell their product with high prices to make up for lost revenue. I meant Cisco is traded on the Nasdaq for crying out loud. I don't see Netgear, Dlink, Linksys or those companies so huge that they can do this. They're consumer companies peddling consumer crap for the home market (and typically just a division of a larger company). And this home market full of idiots didn't exist until Packard Bell came up with this whole concept of 'home' vs 'business' as if they were different animals. And then the 'home' computer morons were born with their infinite knowledge through bad marketing that gives them just enough knowledge to be dangerous and laughed at.

I never said I had AC enterprise gear. I know people that do and have seen what they do with it, which is far more than most anyone in a home will typically do and probably even a small business. I can match your speedtest all day long because I have a wired connection and can use iperf to test my lan--but as you mentioned gigabit has been ubiquitous since the 2000s on switches so what's the comparison again? Your however many x $200 mesh systems can do gigabit over wireless? Well so can a used Ruckus AP that costs far less than that since it's a one and done purchase.
8. Ah, so you do know a bit about enterprise gear and networks, and it sounds like a lot of that would work perfectly fine in a home environment to totally control a home network. But yes if you're working with networks every day, the last thing a networking professional will want to do is set up a good network at home because it is just like being at work. Same as auto mechanics who never work on their own cars since that is work. But that leaves most mechanics with the worst car on the block and for networking pros, leaves their home networks sub-par. But that's a choice anyone can make based on their feeling, not facts. Touting this as the 'way to go' for everyone is misleading, even if it works best for you.

Again, consumer crap to me isn't the right tool for the job when you want your network to have more than consumer crappy performance. Get the professional tools made to do far more and you'll always be good. Or you can continue to 'play keep up with the joneses' that is dictated by your consumer vendor of choice. Anyone that's thrown away wireless equipment because it was 'incompatible' needs to understand the basics of ethernet since even gear on the original 802.11 standard will still work today--WRT54G ftw lol.

You go on and on about your time being valuable and yet you're wanting to argue that your opinion on consumer gear is correct even though it is opposed to the facts.

Yep, that's the same technosnobbery that throws money versus sense into designing a network, even when you have at least part of the know-how. Oh well, there is ignorance by choice--and let's loop in The Matrix again--'mmmm...ignorance is bliss'.

Ummm...I think others can chime in here--the main reason to have a custom loop today is part of a completely custom build as AIO coolers have come a long way in terms of performance, and hence their popularity. But this is another area of discussion.
 
No, that's like asking why I don't have a gas pump installed in my garage when my car is a plug-in EV. Again, what good is a wired connection to every room when there's 1-2 devices upstairs that even have a LAN port and neither of them actually needs it?

I can fight that fact or.....I can never live in an apartment complex, use a mesh WiFi system that directs signal where its needed and continue to use the overwhelming majority of devices I own that are only WiFi capable? I mean you keep speaking as if I'm dealing with absolute inevitabilities but I have to ask again, have you ever personally used a WiFi mesh system?

Did you even read the article you linked? Talk about knowing ZERO about the state of security these days LOL. Its a vulnerable Android app that side-loads into the Ring management app using a local vulnerability on the host management device and gaining access to your Ring credentials/info. The devices themselves on the same network don't have access to anything else on your network and they're as vulnerable as anything else that uses https encryption to the internet.....

As for the rest lol, really not worried about it, the convenience of IoT and smart home far outweighs the potential risks for me anyways. That's part of what you pay those companies for, to worry about the security aspect knowing its their reputation on the line. At this point, trusting only companies that haven't been hacked is akin to Rainman refusing to board a plane unless its Qantas. There's things I'll take precautions about, but there's things that are least concern that could happen...like getting targeted for cyber attack and hacked, getting struck by lightning, getting eaten by a shark (my biggest fear tbh but I still go in the ocean), etc.
I personally think it is a bit presumptuous to think I know more than a manufacturer who designed, tested, and put and ethernet port on their product. But if you want to throw all your traffic in the airwaves, that's on you.

You are working with inevitabilities that are the nature of the medium. You can shoot me, but I'm just the messenger. ;)

Thinking that an exploit just doesn't affect you're scenerio so your safe, isn't understanding security nor preparing for it. It's like not updating because a particular exploit doesn't affect you, which isn't part of the MFA best practices you were touting as being secure.

If the ostrich approach works for you, then I guess I won't matter until your ass is bitten (by a shark?), and by that time your head underground will probably be the only thing safe. Preaching this as 'the way to go' is what I have a problem with because this is inherently dangerous path, akin to running with scissors--I've ran with them before without hurting anyone as I'm sure many others have, but I wouldn't be preaching it as the 'way to go'.
 
That's what cellular tether is for. My users are not that picky. :) Plus - I don't want to go down that path. I am lucky enough to have two fiber providers in my neighborhood but yet I am still sticking with cable, for now (just the right overall option for us where we are at - kids under 3 so TV is essential for us as an escape). :)
It's all about the user base! :D For my work, an outage will come just when something is desperately needed or I have to jump on a plane to get it, so a second connection can pay for itself. But then once you get used to it, just never having to worry about an outage even when the power is off feels like some sort of miracle, lol.

I would absolutely kill to have 3 isps available! Because while rare, I have had 2x isps out at the same time--luckily not when anything was critically needed, but I did literally go fly a kite once because the outage was so long, lol.
 
I think its great that people share their experiences, WiFi and especially mesh networks in particular have come a long way in a short amount of time and they certainly aren't as cost prohibitive as they once were. Or at least they don't feel as relatively expensive but I think a lot of that is like you said, dependence on wireless and smart-connected wireless devices. People just find WiFi/internet to be an increasingly necessary utility and will spend more to make sure it works well.

Even the Linksys Atlas 6E system I use has dropped in price from $1200 last year to $900 this year. I think the costs are up on this system because it was first to market for 6E Mesh, but they also have 4 network ports and a 5G WAN port driving up costs on each node. I'm sure the price will continue to drop and certaily wouldn't recommend this system for most users unless they actually had some 6E devices which are relatively few and far between.

But yeah, the performance is awesome with wired backhauls and it only gets better over time. The one thing I noticed with the Linksys system is that it really benefits from a "traditional" router with the powerful antennas as the primary node since the range and signal seem to be slightly better than the traditional Mesh tower nodes. Each node connects back to the primary node in a hub and spoke topology, they don't daisy-chain from distant nodes so the extra range for wireless backhaul nodes really helps extend the network. For wired backhauls there's no impact since its still gigabit.
The problem is all this mesh stuff is that it is just evolving into just the same router+AP set up that has been classically done. The only magic is probably some automatic signal management and controller based handoff. Asus has done a good job of implementing these type of features into their aimesh firmware which pretty much allows any of their current products to simply use these newer features--all at the same price point as before. And I think if consumers ever get the idea that they're pretty much getting duped by the word 'mesh' for 2x-3x the price of what they should be paying, every manufacturer will simply follow Asus's lead.
 
The problem is all this mesh stuff is that it is just evolving into just the same router+AP set up that has been classically done. The only magic is probably some automatic signal management and controller based handoff. Asus has done a good job of implementing these type of features into their aimesh firmware which pretty much allows any of their current products to simply use these newer features--all at the same price point as before. And I think if consumers ever get the idea that they're pretty much getting duped by the word 'mesh' for 2x-3x the price of what they should be paying, every manufacturer will simply follow Asus's lead.
Isn’t that all that’s needed? I remember trying to add APs to an existing wireless network year ago. You can’t ask normal users to join 2-3 wireless networks so they can have full coverage in the building.

Maybe I could get by with one super powerful wireless router or AP - but I’d rather guarantee coverage from my front yard, basement, and to my garage 24x7.

I see a lot of technical Wi-Fi guys rail against mesh but I’ve yet to see any argument outside of it’s a rip off to consumers. Like other overpriced things - if it just works it’ll get the sales.
 
Yep, it pretty much is. I think the reason you ran into that is because you were trying to do things in a non-standard way.

1. This is false because any AP by any manufacturer will have to hop around if it's in a heavily congested environment. A single family home is not going to have the massive congestion a mtu (multi-tenant unit) building has, so it's not going to be as much of an issue, but the same system in an mtu will hop around as much as my TP-Link c5 had to.
2. Going around the design parameters by introducing an external 'necessary' device is pretty much cheating. There's not much manual fine tuning aside from signal strength and proper overlap. Which any professional will do when installing any real APs.
3. Ahh, good old vendor lock-in. Pretty much unavoidable at the isp level. But feels the same at any level. ;)
4. So you have even more APs on the airwaves. If it works, great--but it's not a good network design since the airwaves are shared by all the APs, no matter what they are.
5. The domain name is for my web site so that's a business expense that I've had for over a decade now. And sub-domains on a domain are free. Like I said, my IPs only change every few years so I update them manually when they change. No biggie for me. Ah, all those security protocols that work so well that there's compromises on them every day. I wouldn't run with those alone and think you're safe.
6. No, I don't like people touting something has being technically superior to something when it is not. I will stand up and say the truth in the face of what is not the truth. Hmmm...killer features--ease of set-up--yep; ease of use--yep; speed--god yes; centralized management--yep; flexibility--hell yes; cost--massive hell yes. I think you and others bang your heads because you were trying to put a square peg in a round hole versus understanding why you have pegs and holes to begin with, lol. As I mentioned previously, I worked with the very first mesh system made by Meraki, and I still have it in fact. In many ways, that system is superior to even the ones made today because it had things like multi-wan as well as monitoring that has now become standard in the enterprise. But it was still a hack as the ethernet ports could be used for a wired backhaul only if they were the only thing on the wire and other limitations. It worked for what I needed it to (hotel installation), but it was 100% proprietary, no doubt about it. After Cisco bought out Meraki, Meraki has become a different company and the rest of the industry has leaned into 'cloud management'. Ahh, you are spouting the same techno snobbery that my wife does--'old is bad', 'wired is bad', 'new shiny good'. Well, you can be as snobby as you want, but you said it best yourself, switches have been doing gigabit since the 2000s--twenty years ago--and you're getting excited about it finally making it to wireless when wired is on the cusp of the next revolution. It sounds to me like you're behind the times versus me since I've been enjoying speeds that you just now are happy to have. And all the apartment complexes I've mentioned have been built between 2013 and 2018 where we were the first tenant in the unit. All these came with wired ethernet sans one. So I'd say not having wired ports is actually backwards, not having them--but feel free to argue with whole industries if you want. Wow, paid driver went over your head too? That explains a lot, lol.

Interesting how you think enterprise gear ends up in dumpsters when actually that's where consumer gear ends up. Enterprise gear goes to recyclers who actually resell them since they still have a lot of value left when the recyclers are getting them for peanuts. And it's easy enough to find your precious mesh crap used--there's a classifieds forum right here. But even when used it's still not the best bang for the buck compared to used enterprise imo.
7. 6e is coming down in price because it was a rip off to begin with and is going to keep coming down until the market can stomach the price--that's how all products are introduced so no magic there. It's hillarious that you think that companies like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Juniper, Fortgate have 'demand and volume is so low' that they can only sell their product with high prices to make up for lost revenue. I meant Cisco is traded on the Nasdaq for crying out loud. I don't see Netgear, Dlink, Linksys or those companies so huge that they can do this. They're consumer companies peddling consumer crap for the home market (and typically just a division of a larger company). And this home market full of idiots didn't exist until Packard Bell came up with this whole concept of 'home' vs 'business' as if they were different animals. And then the 'home' computer morons were born with their infinite knowledge through bad marketing that gives them just enough knowledge to be dangerous and laughed at.

I never said I had AC enterprise gear. I know people that do and have seen what they do with it, which is far more than most anyone in a home will typically do and probably even a small business. I can match your speedtest all day long because I have a wired connection and can use iperf to test my lan--but as you mentioned gigabit has been ubiquitous since the 2000s on switches so what's the comparison again? Your however many x $200 mesh systems can do gigabit over wireless? Well so can a used Ruckus AP that costs far less than that since it's a one and done purchase.
8. Ah, so you do know a bit about enterprise gear and networks, and it sounds like a lot of that would work perfectly fine in a home environment to totally control a home network. But yes if you're working with networks every day, the last thing a networking professional will want to do is set up a good network at home because it is just like being at work. Same as auto mechanics who never work on their own cars since that is work. But that leaves most mechanics with the worst car on the block and for networking pros, leaves their home networks sub-par. But that's a choice anyone can make based on their feeling, not facts. Touting this as the 'way to go' for everyone is misleading, even if it works best for you.

Again, consumer crap to me isn't the right tool for the job when you want your network to have more than consumer crappy performance. Get the professional tools made to do far more and you'll always be good. Or you can continue to 'play keep up with the joneses' that is dictated by your consumer vendor of choice. Anyone that's thrown away wireless equipment because it was 'incompatible' needs to understand the basics of ethernet since even gear on the original 802.11 standard will still work today--WRT54G ftw lol.

You go on and on about your time being valuable and yet you're wanting to argue that your opinion on consumer gear is correct even though it is opposed to the facts.

Yep, that's the same technosnobbery that throws money versus sense into designing a network, even when you have at least part of the know-how. Oh well, there is ignorance by choice--and let's loop in The Matrix again--'mmmm...ignorance is bliss'.

Ummm...I think others can chime in here--the main reason to have a custom loop today is part of a completely custom build as AIO coolers have come a long way in terms of performance, and hence their popularity. But this is another area of discussion.
I think you have a very different definition of "standard" or just don't know what the word means. There is literally no spec listed for expanding single Wi-Fi networks across multiple APs in the 802.11 standard. That's the biggest part of the problem. So, what happens? Literally EVERY mfg has their own instructions and limitations on how you can expand your Wi-Fi network. As I mentioned previously, most if not all mfgs recommend bridging additional routers/APs to extend Wi-Fi to multiple APs, but in reality this is counter productive since you are limited to what the primary/mfg locked router is capable of. So again, what's standard when the mfg is telling you their standard set-up and its different than your definition?

1. Actually you're right, the mesh network would probably jump around more the difference is its not doing it blindly bc its getting an intelligent handoff between APs.
2. Nah, that's oldschool way of thinking, doing all that is an inefficient waste of time, not to mention it won't resolve the fundamental issue with APs that don't have the ability to work in tandem....the ability to hand clients off to the AP best suited to serve them. Let the mesh APs negotiate signal strength, channel and decide which signal to use. Not to mention if someone didn't do the "manual fine tuning aside from signal strength and proper overlap" are they supposed to hire a professional to do this for them? lol. WiFi isn't a tech nerd right of passage, its a common utility and should be as easy as setting up a smart device. Oh wait, it is, with Mesh networking. ;)
3. Yes if you subscribe to exclusive proprietary services you are going to be faced with vendor lock-in. Welcome to life lol. Its a reality at any level ;) However, if given the opportunity to get a better product and experience and the trade-off is dealing with vendor lock-in, its typically worth it. Again, welcome to life. :D If that changes you move on, its all about the right tool for the job and in most cases that evolves over time. Also, enterprise gear is literally the worst when it comes to vendor lock-in lol, I mean FortiGate for example requires a subscription for all of their security services and service plans for firmware updates and security patches and they go EOL every what? 2-3 years? No wonder so much of it ends up in landfills, grey markets, or your home network. We've had to replace our FortiGates 2-3x already over 6 years? Started on E and now we're on G? Talk about forced obsolescence.
4. Its not an issue, the Verizon router is garbage with lousy signal strength which is why I needed to expand my WiFi network to begin with. Certainly less interference from multiple bands than living in a MTU. If their boxes still used coax/MoCa I'd disable the wireless completely. Maybe one day I'll be able to disable the 2.4GHz as well but as already mentioned, many IoT/Smart devices still use 2.4G for cost, range and compatibility with older networking equipment and I'm probably going to drop Verizon TV soon anyways.
5. Yeah again, you can bake your costs into your situation but the reality is, most people are not going to host their own domain, filter their traffic or anything else because they simply don't have a public endpoint other than a dynamic IP address that they don't control or in most cases, even know about. So yeah, you can spend your day worrying, just as much as you can worry about a serial killer picking you off randomly on the street or you can just go about your business.
6. LOL, man you really don't get it. Most people aren't going to do half of what you have to do to even get multiple routers set up as APs with the same SSID. Connecting the second router and using a PC, you assume they even have a PC, with a ethernet port on it to boot! Then remoting in, you could literally print the credentials on the side of the router with a localhost alias instead of an IP and most people still couldn't figure it out. Then disable DHCP and configure the SSID with the same credentials and security protocol. Oh, then hope that those settings didn't revert or reset during a firmware update or power outage and have to do it all over again, except this time your router is in a different part of the house maybe in a hard to access area and you get to live this fun experience all over again lol. Oh and you get to try and remember the password you set 3 years ago on each router (I know, I know, $6/mo for a password manager solves this, no biggy) <----- This experience sucked, and that's not even scratching the surface of what you recommend. Maybe your wife is constantly complaining about old vs new because all of your hacked together legacy workarounds are constantly failing and she's relying on you to get them back working again in a timely manner? LOL. That's probably my biggest motivation to make sure everything works well and is easy to fix. Because you know what's even less fun than doing work when you get home from work? Working as free tech support for friends and family and constantly having to fix the hacky solution you put in place bc you chose to save a few bucks over a more robust, better supported solution. As for the paid driver comment, yeah I think you missed the point. You're comparing having a paid driver to a $200-300 expense as if it is some luxury or exorbitant amount of money :D Let me guess, you're the guy who would rather inconvenience a friend or relative to pick you up or drop you off at the airport instead of just paying the $50 for an Uber. Because time isn't money, gas is free, its fun driving round trip to the airport but none of that matters its all about how much you didn't have to pay to be inefficient and not inconvenience those around you with a solution that simply works better for everyone.....
7. Where do you come up with this stuff? LOL. Did you think B, G, N, AC and AX were a rip-off when they first came out and cost 2-3x more than their predecessor spec parts? I guess they lose that rip-off tag whenever that performance level trickles down to a price point you deem is worthwhile, it has nothing to do with market adoption, ramp up volume, decreases in cost of production, etc. that drive these companies to bring new tech to the masses, like everything else right? I mean this is literally how ALL new tech is rolled out, it costs a lot more as "early adopters tax" or "bleeding edge" or "cost an arm and a leg or maybe even a kidney" I'm sure you've heard of these terms right? lol. Fast, new, shiny costs more, its that simple, people willing to pay more for that sooner are certainly going to be fewer than the masses, so prices will go down with time and adoption, its already happening, I know you'll keep fighting the inevitable because it means you might actually have to upgrade your old enterprise tech to some newer old enterprise tech 4-5 years after the consumer market gets to upgrade, but that's what happens when you rely on extremely marked up enterprise level gear with tons of hardware and firmware features most end-users simply don't want or need. Also, Netgear is traded on Nasd and Linksys was at one point owned by Cisco, they're now owned by Foxconn/Belkin so yeah, they're not exactly nobodies. They use what's needed for consumer level products and they strip out the rest, which obviously saves both physical/production costs, R&D/IP costs, but most importantly, support costs.... there shouldn't be any need in explaining the difference in costs that drive enterprise gear vs. consumer grade gear. But let me guess anyone who isn't running enterprise level server hardware, racks, UPS, NAS racks with 10G interconnects is using crap hardware and doing it wrong too right? lol.

And here you go again comparing Wired to Wireless lol. You still don't get it. What good is your wired gigabit connection on a device that literally does not have an ethernet port to connect it to? I bet your wife really wants an ipad Pro but instead you insist she uses a 6 year old Dell Inspiron because it has an ethernet port and gets Gigabit speeds! Its better because it works perfectly with your home network! :D Still doesn't change the fact you're not getting wireless Gigabit speeds on your enterprise level gear while I am on my lowly peasant grade mesh network. And who knows how long it will be before you finally get your hands on one of those AXE enterprise APs for the right price of free? :D
8. Sorry I can definitely say people are going to go with cheap, easy, fast, reliable over what you're offering. The market also seems to agree as the ratio of mesh to standalone router/APs has shifted dramatically over the years. The fact you have such little self-awareness and don't seem to understand you're in the extreme minority with regard to level of effort for home WiFi is frankly astonishing. The OP asked about a $200 WiFi AP and you go on about how that's crazy expensive and running a hardwire to every room is the right solution and if you absolutely must go wireless, go find some used Enterprise grade equipment and go FrankenMesh lol. Literally some of the craziest, out-of-scope advice I've seen anywhere lol.

As for the rest again, you sit there and call it technosnobbery and yet how many times have you said consumer grade equipment is trash in the same breath? Because anyone who doesn't want to be 24/7/365 for their own NOC with recycled enterprise gear is doing wrong, right? lol

And WRT54G? Really? I mean sure the gigabit ports still work fine, but the WiFi is absolutely abysmal by today's standards from both a speed and signal perspective. You might as well compare USB2.0 speeds to USB3+ at that point, its not even the same ballpark anymore.

The whole point of making the water cooling comparison is that the end results currently justify the means, if that changed dramatically, that would no longer be the case. Now apply it to our discussion here. Also, you still didn't answer the question about ever using a Mesh network personally, for friends/family etc. so I'm going to assume that's a "No". Mmm.....Ignorance is bliss I guess! :D
 
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I personally think it is a bit presumptuous to think I know more than a manufacturer who designed, tested, and put and ethernet port on their product. But if you want to throw all your traffic in the airwaves, that's on you.

You are working with inevitabilities that are the nature of the medium. You can shoot me, but I'm just the messenger. ;)

Thinking that an exploit just doesn't affect you're scenerio so your safe, isn't understanding security nor preparing for it. It's like not updating because a particular exploit doesn't affect you, which isn't part of the MFA best practices you were touting as being secure.

If the ostrich approach works for you, then I guess I won't matter until your ass is bitten (by a shark?), and by that time your head underground will probably be the only thing safe. Preaching this as 'the way to go' is what I have a problem with because this is inherently dangerous path, akin to running with scissors--I've ran with them before without hurting anyone as I'm sure many others have, but I wouldn't be preaching it as the 'way to go'.
Lol the inevitabilities of the medium seem to disagree with you, as more and more devices are in fact going completely wireless. How many dongles do you need to connect a usb-c/thunderbolt only device to a network drop and how much will those dongles cost you? A good usb-c multi-port with ethernet will cost you $50-100 and its a huge pita to have to use. A good usb-c/thunderbolt docking system with display outputs will cost you $150+ easy. If given the choice, especially with a fast WiFi network to connect to, most people are not going to bother with the wired tether unless they absolutely need to.

As for the Ostrich scenario, its actually the opposite, I'm running around freeballing it commando style while people like you are turtling/ostriching because they're worried about getting hacked. I am wearing shoes though, gotta protect those feet lol. Its nice not worrying about every little thing out there that's out to get ya! :D
 
The problem is all this mesh stuff is that it is just evolving into just the same router+AP set up that has been classically done. The only magic is probably some automatic signal management and controller based handoff. Asus has done a good job of implementing these type of features into their aimesh firmware which pretty much allows any of their current products to simply use these newer features--all at the same price point as before. And I think if consumers ever get the idea that they're pretty much getting duped by the word 'mesh' for 2x-3x the price of what they should be paying, every manufacturer will simply follow Asus's lead.
That's literally what I recommended to the OP, as having a powerful router/AP and a mesh system are not mutually exclusive. I literally said if you are going to buy one of these types of "gaming APs", at least buy one that can later be integrated or expanded into a mesh network so you're not starting all over again in 2-3 years when the next newest single powerful AP comes along.

Asus is not the only one to offer these products that started as gaming AWACs that can be retrofitted and integrated into their own proprietary mesh network btw, they at least had the hardware necessary to enable it and backported the feature ONLY after mesh networking took off. Linksys and TP-Link do as well, which was why it was surprising that the one linked in the OPs post doesn't natively support their mesh networking.
 
Isn’t that all that’s needed? I remember trying to add APs to an existing wireless network year ago. You can’t ask normal users to join 2-3 wireless networks so they can have full coverage in the building.

Maybe I could get by with one super powerful wireless router or AP - but I’d rather guarantee coverage from my front yard, basement, and to my garage 24x7.

I see a lot of technical Wi-Fi guys rail against mesh but I’ve yet to see any argument outside of it’s a rip off to consumers. Like other overpriced things - if it just works it’ll get the sales.
Yeah precisely, my experience and view is largely the same. The problem with those single powerful wireless routers or APs was that they tried to just brute-force signal to all corners of the house, they could typically get through wood and drywall OK, but if you added any kind of masonry/brick/concrete into the mix all bets were off, so you were still bound to get some bad dead spots throughout a house.

I don't even really think its a ripoff honestly, with the latest spec there is still a premium but if you look at each node like a high-end router, its not outrageous to expect a near linear multiple of costs. Sure it s a big expense up front, but if you look at it over useful life and it means you don't have to buy a new powerful AP every few years, or you spread those purchases out over the course of 2-4 years and keep adding to the same mesh ecosystem, it doesn't look or feel so bad in terms of what it costs.
 
Isn’t that all that’s needed? I remember trying to add APs to an existing wireless network year ago. You can’t ask normal users to join 2-3 wireless networks so they can have full coverage in the building.

Maybe I could get by with one super powerful wireless router or AP - but I’d rather guarantee coverage from my front yard, basement, and to my garage 24x7.

I see a lot of technical Wi-Fi guys rail against mesh but I’ve yet to see any argument outside of it’s a rip off to consumers. Like other overpriced things - if it just works it’ll get the sales.
If the signal overlap is done right and the wifi clients are totally moronic where they hang on too long, you can have seamless roaming on one ssid pretty easily. Users are some seriously lazy @#$$#% that they can't change the ssid once. Because once is all it takes as their device will roam between the two if it's not as lazy as they are, haha.

It's never best to get that single honking AP--distributed has always been best, but that required a good wired backhaul which most people don't have (or seem to not want to have).

It's just a hack that's why. It's the same with anyone that has inside knowledge about anything rallying against people wasting money/time/resources that causes even more people to do the same. I think real estate agents are a prime example of that. I don't think I've seen a single one earn the money we paid them--a closing attorney can do the work for a fraction of the cost. But you're right, there's a lot of money out there for 'just works--shut up and take my money', and it's one of the reasons why american consumers are targeted by every scammer on the planet--the most money to blow and using the least intelligence to protect it, which is a really sad state of affairs imo. :(
 
TBH, I think a lot of this conversation misses the point entirely.

Lots of people just don't have the time to mess around with networking. I used to go the (one good router) route, but it never worked out. First I had a three story townhome and the cable came in the basement. So bedroom acces was not great. Then I bought a house, same 1800 sq ft but two stories and a basement. SAME issue.

Plus, even expensive consumer routers are crap these days. I was going through Nighthawks every two years.

So, I got a Google Wifi Mesh system when they dropped and after a 10 minute setup, I haven't touched it since. Not a SINGLE problem in years. Two houses (current is 3600 sq ft), 4 service providers, MANY different wifi devices (laptops, desktops, servers, phones, tablets, IoT stuff, you name it) and it's been flawless.

Why would I opt for a "better" solution that takes longer to set up but costs the same?
 
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