I think you're actually talking about yourself. You were trying to configure APs in a non-standard way and then complained about how they were too complicated. There is not an IEEE standard for a single SSID across APs, but there is the engineering for handoff that can be utilized for that purpose if one is to properly set up signal strength. Not sure what you're talking about in terms of what manufacturers are telling for expansion--they all just say buy mesh or repeater.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. 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 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! 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?
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!
1. It might have a bit more insight into what channels are being used if it is the only kid on the block, but in a saturated environment, the main issue is outside the system so it wouldn't be able to gain much insight for channel management. Channel management isn't really an issue for anything anymore as everything can hop around as needed, and the days of setting a fixed channel that is 'in the clear' are long gone.
2. Ah yes the old technosnobbery 'old bad, new shiny good'. There's no need for a pro anymore since everyone has a cell phone that can check signal strength. It's a fairly easy exercise to do once and then be done which is akin to calibrating a home theater. If someone wants to pay $200-$300 every few years just to not do that, then they definitely could just hire a pro to do it for them. In fact, I've seen entire professional strucutred cabling and wifi setups for cheaper than that. But it's all about what you want to optimize, time or money, and most people's time is worth far less than their money as I previously stated.
3. Again, it seems you're doing it wrong. If you need those subscriptions, then yes you do need to keep the hardware on the same level (windows updates do the same thing btw). And fortigate's security subscriptions are in a whole different league compared to the script kiddie stopping power of consumer security. Again, if you don't need that, a non-subscription fortigate will be more than sufficient for a home and will still be above anything consumer.
4. Not much you can do about this as you've mentioned.
5. Like I said there's no real cost to this for me and for most others too as there's free services out there for a domain name. And the hard cost is like what $10/year? $200-$300 every few years to avoid $10/yr is bass ackwards imo.
6. You're the one that doesn't get it. It's summed up in a few words--fools and his money parted. I think more people have a multiple AP set up than you think because the cost of a fancy mesh system is ridiculous compared to taking existing gear (previous router(s) as APs) and just setting it up correctly in a few hours. Most people do think that saving $200-$300 is worth a few hours work.
Jesus, again you made things more complicated. WTF do you need complicated passwords on routers that will be in your LAN on the LAN side? Who's going to attack those from the outside? And what cheap chinese junk were you using that would lose credentials on a firmware or power outage? Nothing I have, consumer or otherwise, has ever behaved like what you've described.
Reliability has never been an issue with my setups; hence why I'm not having to go out and spend money every few years to get some magic mesh system and then proclaim on the Internet that its the best way so I can feel better about myself. So, let's keep the personal attacks to a minimum.
7. And I guess the 'early adopters tax' is something everyone should just pay and follow your lead, right? You even mention that those people (like yourself) will 'be fewer than the masses', and yet you think your solution is right for everyone? It's either one way or the other--you can't claim that both are true.
I mentioned what a Ruckus could do for your wireless comparison. My wife's wireless devices have no issue and ironically she complains more about how her Apple stuff doesn't come with ethernet ports since she's seen the difference between wireless and wired in her global work travels. The next move we're looking at is 5Gb which will leave your mesh system in the dust.
8. You can call $200-300 every few years as cheap, but I think most people would disagree since the crowd on here looks for deals all the time for saving money. The market has shifted because people are paying--that's pretty basic economics--you make what you can profit on that people are buying. Again, no magic involved.
What's crazy to me is that you prescribe buying mesh systems every few years like it's a lifetime subscription model--that's the most stupid thing to do at a time when companies are simply trying to get people hooked like this. I guess once this goes to a fully AAS model, you'll be really giddy.
It's a fact that enterprise gear is better than consumer. No different than how a Ferrari is faster than a Kia Sonata. I'm not using an opinion that 'old bad, new shiny always better' as the basis of my argument.
O.M.G. You really think the WRT54G was the point of that statement? Of course it's an impossibly old piece of tech, but my point is that it will still work for certain purposes (like a low bandwidth IoT connection on 2.4), and that trashing anything older than bleeding edge is a true waste of resources.
The end results do not always justify the means. Otherwise, the whole idea of an orderly society would crumble into a third world mess.
I've studied and used more systems than I can count, your precious mesh crap included. Remember, I'm not the one with my head in the sand not wanting to build a proper network for home because it's just like being at work. I have no problem getting the right tool for the job without getting sucked into some sort of subscription model, et al.