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> It's a much better answer to hook up everything on Ethernet that you possibly can than it is to follow the more traveled route of more channels and more conge
by rbranson 1y ago
> It's a much better answer to hook up everything on Ethernet that you possibly can than it is to follow the more traveled route of more channels and more congestion with mesh Wi-Fi.
Certainly this is the brute-force way to do it and can work if you can run enough UTP everywhere. As a counterexample, I went all-in on WiFi and have 5 access points with dedicated backhauls. This is in SF too, so neighbors are right up against us. I have ~60 devices on the WiFi and have no issues, with fast roaming handoff, low jitter, and ~500Mbit up/down. I built this on UniFi, but I suspect Eero PoE gear could get you pretty close too, given how well even their mesh backhaul gear performs.
- xmprt 1y agoI'm not super familiar with SF construction materials but I wonder if that plays a part in it too? If your neighbors are separated by concrete walls then you're probably getting less interference from them than you'd think and your mesh might actually work better(?)... but what do I know since I'm no networking engineer.
- rbranson 1y agoIt's all wood construction, originally stick victorians with 2x4 exterior walls. My "loudest" neighbor is being picked up on 80MHz at -47 dBm.
- hansvm 1y agoMan, at times in my life I would've killed to get a -47 dBm or better signal.
- varenc 1y agoOld Victorians in SF will sometimes have lathe and plaster walls (the 'wet wall' that drywall replaced). Lathe and plaster walls often have chicken wire in them that degrade wifi more than regular drywall will.
- sidewndr46 1y agoyou have five access points and 60 devices? How many square feet are you trying to cover?
- chrneu 1y agoHe said SF with neighbors so I'm assuming condo/apartment. Probably less than 2000sq feet would be my guess. 5 aps for 60 devices is hilarious. I have over 120 devices running off 2 APs without issue. lol
- Tenemo 1y agoYou have 120 wifi-connected devices at home?? What kind of devices? 100 smart light bulbs or something like that? I'm just curious – I'm a relatively techy person and I have maybe 15 devices on my whole home network.
- sahruum9 1y agoA smart home will definitely run those numbers up. I have about 60 WiFi devices and another 45 Zigbee devices and I'm only about halfway done with the house.
- phil21 1y agoIt's way less about device count, and more about AP density - especially in RF challenging environments. I pretty much just deploy WiFi as a "line of sight" technology these days in a major city. Wherever you use the wifi you need to be able to visually see the AP. Run them in low power mode so they become effectively single-room access points. Obviously for IoT 2.4ghz stuff sitting in closets or whatever it's still fine, but with 6ghz becoming standard the "AP in every room" model is becoming more and more relevant.
- sidewndr46 1y agowouldn't that imply you need to run ethernet to every room? couldn't you just plug everything in?
- chrneu 1y agolol 5 APs for ~60 devices is so wasteful and just throwing money at the problem. I'm glad it works but lol that's just hilarious.
- Marsymars 1y agoFWIW you don't need POE Eero devices for a wired backhaul, all of their devices has support it.