Unifi Additional WiFi networks

SAguy

SAguy

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My setup:
Unifi USG 3P
Unify AP Pro
Unifi Cloud key

I currently have 2 wireless networks setup, my normal one and a guest one. My IoT devices are all connected to my guest one, but I'm thinking of adding a third rather for IoT devices specifically.

Question is, would adding another WiFi network cause a degradation in performance at all?
 
Well, depends on how many devices you connect to it and how busy your devices already are

No harm in trying, just set it up and see for yourself, but yes, adding more SSID's could degrade performance
 
SAguy said:
My setup:
Unifi USG 3P
Unify AP Pro
Unifi Cloud key

I currently have 2 wireless networks setup, my normal one and a guest one. My IoT devices are all connected to my guest one, but I'm thinking of adding a third rather for IoT devices specifically.

Question is, would adding another WiFi network cause a degradation in performance at all?
Click to expand...

No. Bandiwdth requirements for beacons is truly minimal, in the bigger scheme of things.
 
Additional SSID's, assuming that's how you are segregating networks, will create more channel utilisation due to overhead.. how much this will affect performance, depends on how much your channels are already utilised..
 
WAslayer said:
Additional SSID's, assuming that's how you are segregating networks, will create more channel utilisation due to overhead.. how much this will affect performance, depends on how much your channels are already utilised..
Click to expand...

Unifi APs don't use separate channels for separate SSIDs. So you're sitting with a couple hundred KB of beaconing traffic, if that, for the additional SSID.
 
Number of devices connecting wouldn't change, just a case of adding another SSID and moving devices across.
Guess I should just try and see what happens.

I may need another AP though, I have a 200mb line and I'm sitting right next to the AP and my speedtest is about 50mbps - even though I have only 10 devices on the network now (2 x laptop, 2 x phones, iot devices).
Not sure if there's an easy way to see the throughput of every device at the same time to see how much wifi bandwidth they are utilising.
 
SAguy said:
Number of devices connecting wouldn't change, just a case of adding another SSID and moving devices across.
Guess I should just try and see what happens.

I may need another AP though, I have a 200mb line and I'm sitting right next to the AP and my speedtest is about 50mbps - even though I have only 10 devices on the network now (2 x laptop, 2 x phones, iot devices).
Not sure if there's an easy way to see the throughput of every device at the same time to see how much wifi bandwidth they are utilising.
Click to expand...
Uhm, do you not use the controller interface at all..? Bandwidth utilisation is available under the clients section.. list of all clients with their current rates up and down..
 
SAguy said:
Number of devices connecting wouldn't change, just a case of adding another SSID and moving devices across.
Guess I should just try and see what happens.

I may need another AP though, I have a 200mb line and I'm sitting right next to the AP and my speedtest is about 50mbps - even though I have only 10 devices on the network now (2 x laptop, 2 x phones, iot devices).
Not sure if there's an easy way to see the throughput of every device at the same time to see how much wifi bandwidth they are utilising.
Click to expand...

Depends on the access point you have, but it's unlikely that only those devices will saturate a modern AP unless they're all pulling data all at once, for some reason, or you have a noisy environment which kills available bandwidth, which another AP wouldn't fix anyway.
I get 50% channel utilization on a single channel, doing 200mbps, on a 5ghz network. My AP in question is idling. It depends where people are in the house, but at time of testing, there were three laptops & two phones connected to it.
 
WAslayer said:
Uhm, do you not use the controller interface at all..? Bandwidth utilisation is available under the clients section.. list of all clients with their current rates up and down..
Click to expand...
Are you referring to the activity columns?
 
WAslayer said:
edit: yes, but just the activity one..
Click to expand...
Cool yeah, those don't seem to be particularly high at all in my case. And channel utilisation is low.
What I do find disturbing is this though - high numbers in dropped and errors for 5G where my 2G wifi has only a few errors here and there.
1587464555533.png
 
SAguy said:
Cool yeah, those don't seem to be particularly high at all in my case. And channel utilisation is low.
What I do find disturbing is this though - high numbers in dropped and errors for 5G where my 2G wifi has only a few errors here and there.
View attachment 826143
Click to expand...
5G is a lot more sensitive to interruption than 2G. I'll check my stats for you shortly.
 
Messugga said:
No, not just you. But I hit 200mbps on Speedtest, on WiFi. Haven't tried to measure performance on the local network but I'm sure it's quick enough.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it feels like there's something funny going on here on my end - speeds just seem too low.
I should try remove everything from the wifi and just do a speedtest with one device. See what that looks like
 
SAguy said:
My setup:
Unifi USG 3P
Unify AP Pro
Unifi Cloud key

I currently have 2 wireless networks setup, my normal one and a guest one. My IoT devices are all connected to my guest one, but I'm thinking of adding a third rather for IoT devices specifically.

Question is, would adding another WiFi network cause a degradation in performance at all?
Click to expand...
Wait, so you do not have any control from apps on your phone/PC over your IoT devices?
 
The_Ogre said:
Wait, so you do not have any control from apps on your phone/PC over your IoT devices?
Click to expand...
It's a bit of a mess right now, hence the cleanup - but cloud based IoT devices are on the guest network and local comms only IoT devices are on my normal network.

I'm trying to think of a way to have all IoT devices on one wifi network, but the only thing they can access is the internet AND the Home Assistant server for specific ports only. But the home assistant server is on my main LAN due to it running other things too.

So I was thinking something along the lines of, not even sure if this is possible:
All IoT devices on IoT wifi and separate IoT vlan
Server is on the main lan
Comms between the IoT vlan and main vlan only possible to the server itself and via specific ports using firewall rules

Would this be possible or practical?
Any better suggestions?
 
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