Wireless Mesh Systems

Crowley said:
That I can understand but hard wiring all your mesh nodes doesn't make sense.
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It also depends on which mesh option one goes for.

I went for the Deco X55's which is dual-band, and a budget option (by first world standards) at R1800 per node, so one actually should do wired backhaul with this option though I suppose it's potentially a moot point if one's fibre connection is not north of 100mbps.

Based on my limited knowledge it seems that wired backhaul is less necessary if spending more on the mesh system in question by going tri-band, but then one is going to spend perhaps R5k or more per node for the BE range and higher.
 
a good mesh system should handle the handovers no problem.
in my experiences mesh networks and great, and even the lower end getting better at handovers.

Speedster said:
APs also wait for the connection to the AP to drop before reconnecting to a better AP, while mesh handover should ensure you are always connected to the strongest node.
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I managed to pick up an X55 from TAL for R1250 using that Easter code R250 off R1000

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Adding it to my M4 system as the main router to get wireguard setup as seamlessly as possible
 
PatchTuesday said:
I managed to pick up an X55 from TAL for R1250 using that Easter code R250 off R1000

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Adding it to my M4 system as the main router to get wireguard setup as seamlessly as possible
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Very good price. I paid R8k for a 3 pack of X20s in 2021...
 
To me, the best practice is Ethernet backbone mesh.
Wireless backbone is just adding interference and using bandwidth.

I would go a step further and say if you doing ethernet backbone then might as well make them PoE.
Single wire power and data easy to manage.
 
I was silly and tried to use the replace main router function before adding the X55 to the network (this was the recommended way according to the Deco App)

That ended up in the main M4 just being unresponsive and I had to reconfigure everything. What a bloody chore TBA. Factory reset all deco units and started from scratch.

In the end I set up my main network with a new SSID thats hidden, enabled guest mode and made that my old SSID so devices still have internet access and created a new IoT SSID that I plan on moving all IoT devices to at some point. Once all devices have migrated from guest I'll turn that off again. I felt it was a better compromise and gives me some time to restructure the network with some device isolation.

Oh and wireguard VPN server is running on the X55 so that's nice.
I guess that was the reason for all the pain but gets added as a footnote lol
 
I noticed intermittent drops now after the introduction of the x55.

Certain devices lose connectivity even though I have fast roaming and beamforming disabled.

I wonder if I can have a look at the logs. I know the Deco App doesnt have a way of showing that but it would be really helpful.

The other thing I've noticed is that the internet seems to drop as well.
Not sure if its just my bad luck, but im going to try factory resetting everything again and connecting on ipv6 to see if it makes a difference. If not, im going to assume it's a faulty unit and ask TAL for a replacement

For context these issues im mentioning now didnt happen when the M4 was the main router.
The physical layout of routers haven't changed either, so the only difference is the addition of the X55, since the old M4 was boxed up after the new one took its place
 
PatchTuesday said:
I noticed intermittent drops now after the introduction of the x55.

Certain devices lose connectivity even though I have fast roaming and beamforming disabled.

I wonder if I can have a look at the logs. I know the Deco App doesnt have a way of showing that but it would be really helpful.

The other thing I've noticed is that the internet seems to drop as well.
Not sure if its just my bad luck, but im going to try factory resetting everything again and connecting on ipv6 to see if it makes a difference. If not, im going to assume it's a faulty unit and ask TAL for a replacement

For context these issues im mentioning now didnt happen when the M4 was the main router.
The physical layout of routers haven't changed either, so the only difference is the addition of the X55, since the old M4 was boxed up after the new one took its place
Click to expand...
I also wish there was more troubleshooting info in the Deco app.

Try going back to the M4 as main and seeing if the problem resolves.
 
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