Mesh Wifi Recommendation

[vibranze]

Hello, I am planning to buy a mesh wifi for my 4 room HDB flat (94 Sqm), my current setup is I have a data points in living room, and all bedrooms. I am using M1 Fibre 500Mbps.

Beside main entrance, there's a cabinet with Huawei ONT and patch panel for data and telephone points, 6 points each and I linked it to TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v1 wireless router flashed with OpenWRT, this router is used mainly to provide the connectivity to data point in all rooms and I turned on the AP mode as well but hardly used due to it's behind the cabinet and far away from the rooms.

MBR data point is connected to Ruckus R500 to provide a Wifi for the room.

I have 3 access points, namely TPL, RUCKUS-2.4G, RUCKUS-5G.

The issue here is the living room and bedroom 2 signal are quite weak so I am thinking to place a mesh wifi router on living room and bedroom 2, and maybe MBR as well to replace the old Ruckus.

Floorplan

My questions are:
1. Based on my current setup, can I retain my TP-Link Wifi Router, if the wifi radio needs to be shutdown I am okay with it.
2. If it needs to be replaced, what is your suggestion on the brands, types, etc. Does mesh wifi routers came with 1 node and 2 satellites, how do I tell if they have the main node or all units are just equally the same?
3. My requirement is tri-band, Wifi 6 (6E is a bonus), got ethernet port for wired backhaul, easy installation and drop in for main router. Budget is around $300-500.

Ideally, if I can just buy 2 units, connect it to my living room and bedroom 2 data points and provide the unify AP name that would be great. Thank you.

 

[sadboy]

01. If you focus is on WIFI, you can just retain your current TP has Gigabit WAN/LAN.

02. Depends on brand. Some brand. their main and satellites are the same. While some brands the satellites has lesser LAN or no LAN PORT.

03. If you are running Wire backhaul than no point going for Try-band mesh. BTW if you do not have a lot WIFI6 device, you can just stick with your RackUS AP.

 

[vibranze]

01. If you focus is on WIFI, you can just retain your current TP has Gigabit WAN/LAN.

02. Depends on brand. Some brand. their main and satellites are the same. While some brands the satellites has lesser LAN or no LAN PORT.

03. If you are running Wire backhaul than no point going for Try-band mesh. BTW if you do not have a lot WIFI6 device, you can just stick with your RackUS AP.

Do you know and can recommend which brands (series) that has same ports regardless of main nodes or satellites? And dual band since there's no need for tri band. Most of my devices are wifi5 capable so prefer to have it. Thanks.

 

[asdsker90]

Can consider Linksys or Asus. Though pricey, their units have similar ports.

 

[TanKianW]

Hello, I am planning to buy a mesh wifi for my 4 room HDB flat (94 Sqm), my current setup is I have a data points in living room, and all bedrooms. I am using M1 Fibre 500Mbps.

Beside main entrance, there's a cabinet with Huawei ONT and patch panel for data and telephone points, 6 points each and I linked it to TP-Link TL-WR1043N/ND v1 wireless router flashed with OpenWRT, this router is used mainly to provide the connectivity to data point in all rooms and I turned on the AP mode as well but hardly used due to it's behind the cabinet and far away from the rooms.

MBR data point is connected to Ruckus R500 to provide a Wifi for the room.

I have 3 access points, namely TPL, RUCKUS-2.4G, RUCKUS-5G.

The issue here is the living room and bedroom 2 signal are quite weak so I am thinking to place a mesh wifi router on living room and bedroom 2, and maybe MBR as well to replace the old Ruckus.

Floorplan

My questions are:
1. Based on my current setup, can I retain my TP-Link Wifi Router, if the wifi radio needs to be shutdown I am okay with it.
2. If it needs to be replaced, what is your suggestion on the brands, types, etc. Does mesh wifi routers came with 1 node and 2 satellites, how do I tell if they have the main node or all units are just equally the same?
3. My requirement is tri-band, Wifi 6 (6E is a bonus), got ethernet port for wired backhaul, easy installation and drop in for main router. Budget is around $300-500.

Ideally, if I can just buy 2 units, connect it to my living room and bedroom 2 data points and provide the unify AP name that would be great. Thank you.

If you only have 1x R500 AP, I will just get another (used) R500 from Taobao or Ebay (<$80-100).

Flash both APs to Ruckus Unleashed, configure both APs (group) using the controller itself. Use the TPL as a wired router, if you are not running heavy internet load. One AP in MBR, one in LR. Full coverage for whole house at around 200-400Mbps which is sufficient for most home users. Make sure they are both on wired backhaul. Since these (Ruckus) are enterprise APs, it already comes with seamless wifi roaming capability.

Turn off the TPL AP SSID, so you only have (unified) 2x SSIDs from your AP, one 2.4G, another 5G. If you having lots of IOTs, do go for compatibility mode instead of performance.

Unless you chasing fast wifi speed (wifi6 or Wave2 wifi5), your current enterprise AP will be more stable than most consumer router/AP out there.

I am using a pair of R500 for 7+ years. Will only have intention to change when wifi6E or wifi7 is ready. If you want a more powerful wired router (with advanced functions) in your cabinet, just get a mini pc to run pfSense.​