Catfisch Cinema Home Wifi Upgrade (1 Viewer)

[JohnRice]

That's pretty much what I do. I also assign distinctive SSID's for my 2G and 5G networks for the same reason. My OCD mandates that I know which AP a mobile device is connected to at any time. Crazy? Possibly. This would be only one more in a long list of examples of that for me.

Thanks John. Your post has made it clear the best solution is to use the same SSID everywhere and just let stuff do what it does.



I'm prone to anxiety as well, and the best solution always seems to try to make it go away. Don't feed the monster.

BTW, I realized that the AppleTV Gen 3 and Harmony Elite Hub in the bedroom are the ones which really want to stay with the main AP, rather than the Closer one. However, those two devices I have learned from looking at the stats, have a max data rate of 65 and 72Mb/s. The signal in the bedroom is strong enough from the main AP to provide that speed. So, what difference does it make? When I move the faster devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook) around the house, they switch to the local AP as needed.

 

[DaveF]

Because I'm a nerd and don't want to be productive yet this morning

 

[JohnRice]

OK, for anyone interested, here's the final status of my own WiFi upgrade.

I have a TP-Link AX55 in the main part of the house, in the basement on a high shelf near the ceiling and I added an AX10 on the other end (bedroom side) of the house and finally installed it in a storage room with an exposed ceiling. It is mounted up between the floor joists under the main bedroom.

The result is, I get full power coverage basically anywhere in the house. Looking at the Client info for both units, it shows four bars (maximum) to everything.

I probably should have spent the extra $10-15 for an AX20 as an AP instead of the AX10, which is capable of greater bandwidth, but it's not worth making the change now.

TP-Link has a really nice system and I'm glad I sent back the mesh extender, which I ran in AP mode in favor of a regular router running in AP mode. The mesh extender was extremely weak, and I don't know how much circuitry was wasted using it as an AP instead of for mesh. The bottom line is it would take two mesh extenders instead of a single AP to get similar coverage. I suspect a lot of people could actually run an ethernet cable in order to use wired APs instead of mesh, which has always seemed like a "no other option" kind of solution.

Total cost of this significant upgrade: $160.

I will say that TP-Link is very cryptic about how to switch a mesh extender or WiFi router to AP mode, even though it's quite simple. It took a lot of digging to find it. The best way is with the Tether app. You connect the router, scan the code on the bottom using the app, which logs you into it, after you create a password for the unit itself, then you look at the options (it varies with the unit) find "Operating Mode", change it from "Mesh" or "Standard" to "Access Point" and enable, at which point it will restart. Then you connect the WAN port to the internet side and anything downstream to LAN ports. Finally, you create a network like normal. Using the same name and password as the main router just extends it like a mesh but with greater reliability.

At work I also replaced a single AirPort Extreme with an AX55. That's plenty for our minimal WiFi needs there, not to mention our blazing 35Mb/s internet service. Being that it's a business and nobody is there far more often than they are, I scheduled the WiFi to shut off when we're gone. The WiFi is mostly used to distribute music to four AirPort Express units. I found that when the WiFi turned back on, they might or might not reconnect. On the suspicion that they just aren't programmed to look for a network after it's disappeared, I decided to schedule the AX55 to reboot a few minutes after the WiFi turned back on, and so far, every AirPort has been connected to the network when I got to work.

I can say I am done thinking about WiFi for a long time.

Signing out...

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

My Archer AX55 was a good purchase for me. With an ISP plan with 600 MBS down I'm getting close to 200 MBS down in the kitchen and about 120 MBS down in the far bedroom. Now I can spend time getting my new-used PC up and running to support Win 11 when I get ready for it.

 

[JohnRice]

FWIW, the AX55 alone gave me those kind of stats on the far side of the house. Adding the AX10 boosted the bedrooms to an overkill of 500+ Mb/s.

 

[DaveF]

I found tonight that my TP-Link Deco app got a Scheduled Reboot feature added. Not sure when, I’ve not used the app much in several months. So I turned that on to reboot the system Sunday mornings at 3am.