hermes76 0 Report post Posted January 18 Hi, need some opinions of wifi setup of a landed property consisting of 3 storey + a mezzanine on the ground floor. L1 - ground floor L2 - mezzanine L3 - bedrooms L4 - attic After much consideration, I'll be using Netgear Orbi RBK853(1 router, 2 satellites) wifi6 mesh system + a 24-ports PoE switch. The fiber ONT will likely to be at the DB box on L1 with 2x cat6 UTP cables connecting to the mezzanine platform floor. Pls refer to blue box on photo for an idea where the router will be mounted. This router will serve the ground floor + mezzanine. With 1 satellite each on level 3 n L4. So the link will be modem@DB - router(blue box on L2) - switch@DB, thus need 2x data point at the router for Ethernet back haul. The other 2 satellites will be centrally mounted/placed on L3 n L4. Is the above setup OK? Or should the router be at L3(central level of the house) n the satellites on L1 n L4? Welcome all comments n advices, thanks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
snoozee 96 Report post Posted January 18 I was trying to reconcile your floor plan to your photo and couldn't. Realised that you just took the photo off the web and it's not your house. Anyway, what ISP are you getting? Singtel nowadays give ONR which is a router itself. are you planning to use wired backhaul for your Level 2 and attic? If you are not using, then you will have performance issue. Any mesh or wifi extending systems will require line of sight to work properly. Without line of sight, the wifi signal will have a big loss when passing through walls/concrete floor slabs and your mesh system will fail. It is best to use wired backhaul for all your wifi access points. Also where you are planning to place the router on the mezzanine will not work well. Wifi signals usually are cast is a certain optimal direction and not 360 degrees. So you will end up with dead spots/zones if you choose to mount the wifi there. It would be better to mount the access point on the ceiling of the mezzanine so that the signal will cast downwards and provide coverage for both mezzanine and level 1 at the same time. For best coverage, always place your wifi access points on the ceiling and facing downwards. This will enable the wifi signal to cast radially down and outwards to increase the coverage area. Looking at how much the netgear set costs online (about 1500), I think it will be cheaper that you buy 3 or 4 wireless access points from ubiquiti and another router if needed. This should give you better performance at a lower cost as well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hermes76 0 Report post Posted January 19 @snoozee Sorry, forgot to state that the pic was from the Internet as the house is still under-construction and that's closest pic i could get to illustrate my intention of the router's position. We are currently on StarHub's 1Gbps fiber broadband so should likely to carry on with it at the new house. But even with SingTel which u mentioned they provide a ONR that's a router, can we use this router as part of the intended mesh system? Yes, I am planning to have wired backhaul to all levels, that's why i'm catering a 24-ports switch for the house. Now that you suggested the router's location is better off on the ceiling, should i switch to enterprise APs instead? But what i heard from the Netgear guy is that networks switching on APs is not as smooth as in a mesh system as AP networks work independently and you have to add all the SSIDs into your device and let your device connects to the strongest available automatically, Whereas for mesh, u only add 1 SSID and the transition is almost seamless? Is this part true? only thing is that enterprise APs are much more aesthetically pleasing than a mesh router. kinda weird to have a router hanging upside down from the ceiling. So you think using APs is better and more economical? Thanks alot for your knowledge sharing, really appreciate it. The Netgear RBK853 mesh retails at $1,399 for a set of 3. Asus XT8 mesh cost about $500 for a set of 2. Ubiquiti U6 AP cost $279 each. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
snoozee 96 Report post Posted January 19 if you sell durians, would you say your durian is lousy or someone else's durians are lousy? technically the sales guy is not wrong, but it all depends on how you configure the APs. if you use the public wireless at SG at shopping malls, do you encounter needing to switch to different SSIDs while walking around? No right? It's all about how the configuration is done and most enterprise APs are configured to have seamless handovers between the APs. To have seamless handover, all the APs must be configured to a single same SSID. There are configuration settings which can be done to provide for seamless handover between the APs once you move out of range. For my own house, I can stream a show on my mobile phone while walking from my 1st level to my attic without losing connection at all. I'm using a HP Enterprise wifi setup at home. Since you are planning for wired backhaul for your wifi, then there's no need to buy mesh equipment and then use as a AP. why pay for functionalities which you are not going to use? Mesh wifi is more for big apartments where line of sight can be obtained for each node and the owners does not want the inconvenience of drilling and laying cables for wired backhaul. But for landed houses, it don't work well since each node may not see each other and the bandwidth will suffer as a result. The Singtel ONR is more convenient for basic users who don't have complex setups. It also results in a double NAT issue when user has his own router put in place. I will be jumping ship elsewhere once my contract is up with ST. ST used to configure bridge mode for their ONR so that advanced users can use the ONR as a ONT, but they have stopped doing this already. Technically their ONR can be used for a mesh setup (they provided a mesh AP when I signed up previously) and I believe should work with APs as well. But the problem is their ONR is locked down so there's no way for end users to reconfigure certain settings and in the event of the need to do troubleshooting, it's almost impossible. That's why a ONT which simply passes the internet WAN IP over to the router is better since we can configure our own router to how we want to use it within our network rather than being forced to follow what ST feels is the best configuration. Anyway if your SH contract has not expired when you move to the new place, you may or may not need to pay a relocation charge to bring the connection over to the new place. I believe officially there is a relocation charge when moving homes but SH waived it for me previously when I did my relocation of the services. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
petetherock 13 Report post Posted January 20 I’m using a basic Google mesh with wired back haul, and it’s been fine.. in case you want something simple… but mount them higher if possible… I use one per floor, located near the stair landing Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
snoozee 96 Report post Posted January 21 2 hours ago, petetherock said: I’m using a basic Google mesh with wired back haul, and it’s been fine.. in case you want something simple… but mount them higher if possible… I use one per floor, located near the stair landing When u have wired back haul, the mesh nodes will be more like a normal access point already Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bahlonglong 0 Report post Posted January 31 On 1/19/2023 at 9:29 AM, hermes76 said: @snoozee Sorry, forgot to state that the pic was from the Internet as the house is still under-construction and that's closest pic i could get to illustrate my intention of the router's position. We are currently on StarHub's 1Gbps fiber broadband so should likely to carry on with it at the new house. But even with SingTel which u mentioned they provide a ONR that's a router, can we use this router as part of the intended mesh system? Yes, I am planning to have wired backhaul to all levels, that's why i'm catering a 24-ports switch for the house. Now that you suggested the router's location is better off on the ceiling, should i switch to enterprise APs instead? But what i heard from the Netgear guy is that networks switching on APs is not as smooth as in a mesh system as AP networks work independently and you have to add all the SSIDs into your device and let your device connects to the strongest available automatically, Whereas for mesh, u only add 1 SSID and the transition is almost seamless? Is this part true? only thing is that enterprise APs are much more aesthetically pleasing than a mesh router. kinda weird to have a router hanging upside down from the ceiling. So you think using APs is better and more economical? Thanks alot for your knowledge sharing, really appreciate it. The Netgear RBK853 mesh retails at $1,399 for a set of 3. Asus XT8 mesh cost about $500 for a set of 2. Ubiquiti U6 AP cost $279 each. Why don't you just get the CCTV / Intercom / Gate guys to quote an enterprise grade Wifi system for you and work with the main con? That way you can (1) have an optimal and secure location for all your CCTV recorder, NAS, switches, etc, (2) ensure all the concealed cabling is run properly (these things take up space) so it should be planned and budgeted now, and (3) they can advise where is the best place to put the APs, how many and why, what kind of switches, etc. you can even have everything terminate in a server rack. You have a clean slate and it makes sense to focus on the backbone of the system - the APs themselves will likely change with time due to tech becoming obsolete etc but that can always be changed later. Frankly, mesh or no mesh is a minor consideration in the long run. and the AP won't look very different than say a smoke detector but the coverage would be better Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
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