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Comment by bronco21016 | Hacker News Reader

... and to make matters even worse the solutions being marketed for fixing a lot of these problems are... MORE ACCESS POINTS!

Every time a friend tells me about getting a mesh system to cover dead zones in their place I cringe at the thought of more 2.4 GHz blasting everywhere. 99% of the time the problem can be solved by better placing their current access point, whether that means moving their ISP provided router/AP, or installing a standalone AP and disabling whatever they're currently using for WiFi.

I don't really know the answer to fixing the issues but it seems to me it's not technical, it's better information about placing the devices. End users just want it to work but don't have the time to learn how to best do that. ISP installers are not incentivized to care either, install as cheap and quickly as possible and get out.

Mesh definitely isn't the answer though. It's the anti-answer.

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But it’s part of the answer isn’t it? As I understand it the answer in general is more, smaller access points each with less tx power. My wish would be that those mesh extensions wouldn’t then rebroadcast the signal at max 2.4ghz power but then you’d be pilloried by ignorant YouTube reviewers who rank solely on “how many bars at max distance”

In most cases I feel your best position is in the ceiling at the center point of the house. I did that myself but at significant cost - fishing cat5 thru walls and ceilings and repositioning the incoming wires to the basement. 99.9% of users will never take that approach.

That could be true. However, it's better to use wired backhaul than more WiFi for the backhaul. Commercial locations do many access points with smaller broadcast area but use copper to bridge everything together.

You're right about the location aspect though. 99% of people will not be bothered. How do we change that? The ISPs could be incentivized to do higher quality install work perhaps? I'm not sure what the answer is.

The eruption in popularity of pro-sumer installs using gear like Ubiquiti gives me some hope that slowly people will see the way. I've installed UAPs at 5 homes now over the last 6-7 years. Zero support calls.

Wired is an option if you own a house. For everyone else it's a no-go for ethernet unless you're ok routing it outside the walls. There's ethernet over power lines, but whether that works depends on your electric installation.

Back in my last apartment we did powerline ethernet and it worked ok so long as the pcs weren't on the same electrical circuit as the ethernet adapters. I think the huge power draw from the gaming pcs was causing interference with the adapter

Ah, interference is an issue too. I was actually thinking of wiring that makes half of the house completely separate. (Seen it in practice, not sure how that works on the wiring level)

That split comes from US residential electricity being 240V split-phase AC. Adjacent circuit breakers are on different phases that each provide 120V, and double-wide circuit breakers allow appliances like dryers and ovens to use the full 240V difference between phases. If your house (like mine) puts all the lighting circuits on one phase and all the 120V outlets on the other phase, then you'll probably have relatively little trouble with powerline networking going beyond a single circuit breaker. But if you're trying to get powerline networking to work between outlets on different phases, you'll have more trouble (but I've seen it suggested that it might work better while the dryer is running and providing more coupling between phases).

Side note: the transformer on our street once had one of its phases fail. All the outlets in our house dropped to some useless voltage like ~30V AC, but the lights worked fine. Next door, the lights went out but the outlets worked fine. The light in the clothes dryer came on at half brightness. This was very puzzling, not the least because we were all used to issues with that transformer knocking out power entirely when it was hit by another teenage driver. Most of us didn't understand until then how a transformer could fail half-way.

After a windstorm my outlets weren't working but the lights were. Took me a while to figure out what was going on, but one of the hot wires had come loose at the weatherhead. The other hot and neutral were still connected. PG&E came out to fix it within an hour.

Maybe try MoCa as the backhaul, if you already have cable tv lines run?

I gave some thought years ago about “leasing” a ubnt setup to wean people off renting modems from their isp. Couldn’t make the math work tho.

I have ubiquiti equipment and wired back haul too. But even among my tech nerd buddies it’s hard to convince people that its worth spending the time and money to run cable and multiple aps.

For their part isp provided equipment has improved dramatically. They must make a killing on the rental fees. Plus they have a vested interest in reducing WiFi service calls as well.

> But it’s part of the answer isn’t it?

Before: One flaky wifi connection between AP and client.

After: Two wifi connections, both of which must work. Using a combination of operating conditions, AP and client that have proved unreliable in the past.

Now with no visible status for the middle link, and a second DHCP server on the repeater, handing out conflicting addresses when the middle link is down.

The typical home setup guide tells you to disable DHCP on your repeater and delegate to the original box. I was told to do that when I set up something similar due to living in a U-shaped apartment with no nice central position for the router.

Naturally DHCP is handled by the original network when the original network can be seen, yes!

But if the original network is unavailable - perhaps the SSID has changed for example - you need to be able to get to the repeater's configuration page somehow. And the user can't google their problems or download any configuration tools while their connection is down, so you'd better make it simple. So many devices like this will be transparent under normal operation, but if there's a network problem will start their own DHCP server.

And depending on how they detect “down” they may also start the DHCP server under normal conditions.

But mesh means a few plugged in small devices. Your soluton means calling yours ISP to have the fiber come to a different place in your house and/or buying another router, having to pull cables (=drilling, cables,...) which is not allowed in some cases (when renting), pulling power cords (if there are no outlets at the optimal position), and having a blinking box in the middle of your dining room.

And mesh... it "just works"

> 99% of the time the problem can be solved by better placing their current access point, whether that means moving their ISP provided router/AP, or installing a standalone AP and disabling whatever they're currently using for WiFi.

This argument is specious and unrealistic. 99% of the time you cannot move the current access point. Everyone tries that first, and it didn't worked. You're stuck with the fiber AP in a corner of your home, and you're not going to place your WiFi AP as your dinner table's center piece. And reinstalling APs is far more expensive than adding a repeater.

I mean, are you aware that a WiFi repeater nowadays goes for less than 20$? You order it, get it immediately delivered to your home, plug it in, press a button. Bam. Problem solved. No recabling, no technician, no appointment, no wasted afternoon. nothing. And you don't have to go through the WiFi seance session whenever you move your laptop. Just plug in the repeater and you're done.

I agree. Cabling homes is not easy as it seems when you're settled in. Also not every home is built the same way so, you may need to drill a lot of concrete walls.

Repeaters are no use with thick walls (I have quite a few). Powerline + access point combo takes a lot of place and is not cheap. Rewiring home is not always possible. Also, not all APs have power settings so you can't optimize power the way you want (also, thick walls). So it's a hard problem.

Throwing "just re-wire it, eh?" into the middle is not helping.

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