I have an Asus mesh system with a router and 2 nodes for a 3 floor 6k sqft house. But after buying the system, I did some work on my house and ended up runing wires so that I have one cat6 jack on each floor in the center of my house. Currenlty I am using the nodes as wired backhauls.

The problem is that devices on my wifi network will randomly disconnect, or sometimes produce slow speeds. I will measure 950+ MB from my modem, but sometimes less than 20 MB over wifi. And when the wifi is that slow, it acts even slower, devices are very l****. I have done everything the internet has told me to do to reduce interference, assign channels, etc. But the problems persist.

From the research I have done it seems that mesh systems arent great at wired connections and I would be better off with a modem and AP's. Is that true?

I am ready to scrap the mesh system I have in favor of modem and AP's but I dont know what to get. Can anyone recomend a router and AP's? Only requirement I have is that the router needs to be able to have seperate 2.4 and 5 ghz channels.

Ubiquiti equipment is tailor made for this type of application, but it's not exactly pushbutton driving and certainly not the cheapest option. However it's rock solid. You'll need to figure out what kind of budget you want for this exercise and how comfortable you are with configuration management.

I am not as tech savy as I was 10-20 years ago. I would prefer something on the easier side to set up and maintain.

I've had good luck with Orbi at home with 3 units across the house, two down and one up. I have the farthest one wired.

But unifi would be a big upgrade and considered it myself. It's bit over kill at home but works. I've installed 3 systems in churches over the years and they're awesome. Even easier with the new dream machines.

Have you used anything to measure your wifi signal to see what is happening around the poor coverage areas? If you have an android phone there is an app called wifi analyzer that is free and very handy. These apps will show you the various wifi signals in range and the signal strength of each.

The first thing I would check is how crowded the channel your wifi network is. It could be that you are competing with all your neighbors on the default channel and a simple change to a quieter channel will help you. This is a simple change in the settings of your mesh devices.

You also noted that you ran the mesh per floor. I wonder if stacking these mesh access points vertically may be the issue, as they are ending up only a few feet from each other. It may work better if they were all on the middle floor, but spanning more distance horizontally. You can again use the signal strength for your network using wifi analyzer to see if your signal is good near the mesh unit on each floor but falls off as you move away on each floor.

92_Ag said:

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Ubiquiti equipment is tailor made for this type of application, but it's not exactly pushbutton driving and certainly not the cheapest option. However it's rock solid. You'll need to figure out what kind of budget you want for this exercise and how comfortable you are with configuration management.

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It's definitely not pushbutton, but i don't think it's that difficult to set up. There are a ton of resources out there for Ubiquiti stuff.

The most difficult part is figuring out which equipment you actually need for your specific setup. Ubiquiti's equipment catalog is a little overwhelming..

Once you're off and running though, it's fantastic.

Mesh systems can be a pain. Many have "features" that limit the bandwidth to devices. And, often software/firmware updates will turn these on. We had issues with our Deco system and Sonos audio devices dropping until we took the time to figure out all the mesh system problems/"features".

I installed Ubiquiti 8 years ago and it was a pain in the butt to get going. I eventually left their ecosystem.


I just moved into my new house, and gave Ubiquiti another shot. It is incredibly easy and intuitive now. Wifi is blazing fast with no dead zones. The system also manages all of my home security as well.

AggieChem,
What Ubiquiti model # did you buy?

4 years ago I bought one and for the life of me I could not get it set up, it was a UNIFI AP AC PRODUAL B.
... embarrassing because I am a 35 yr IT career dude. Always on the business/ERP apps side, so that's my excuse! Still have it stuck up on my ceiling if anyone wants it.

I have AT&T 1 gig fiber and am thinking about looking at Ubiquiti again for one or two APs. Something simple, don't need all the fancy mgmt/control, etc.

I have the Dream Machine with 3 wifi7 access points

I would be interested in purchasing, dm or email in profile. Still use ac in places with minimal internet

Cargo Shorts FTW said:

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Have you used anything to measure your wifi signal to see what is happening around the poor coverage areas? If you have an android phone there is an app called wifi analyzer that is free and very handy. These apps will show you the various wifi signals in range and the signal strength of each.

The first thing I would check is how crowded the channel your wifi network is. It could be that you are competing with all your neighbors on the default channel and a simple change to a quieter channel will help you. This is a simple change in the settings of your mesh devices.

You also noted that you ran the mesh per floor. I wonder if stacking these mesh access points vertically may be the issue, as they are ending up only a few feet from each other. It may work better if they were all on the middle floor, but spanning more distance horizontally. You can again use the signal strength for your network using wifi analyzer to see if your signal is good near the mesh unit on each floor but falls off as you move away on each floor.

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Not the best but iOS has the AirPort Utility app that you can use to look at signal strength by AP. You may have to look at the MAC address to see the different APs, but it's better than nothing.