Home WiFi Networking Options - WDS and Mesh
In an earlier post I discussed the explosion in connected devices in your home and that the number of connected devices will continue to grow in the coming years.
Between all of those new devices and the modern approach of streaming audio and video content along with 1Gbps cable networking becoming more and more common - your WiFi network starts to become a much more critical component to any overall home solution.
The challenge has been is that while overall bandwidth for WiFi has been growing - with 802.11ac, 2.4 & 5Ghz bands, 40, 80 and 160 channel widths - one of the biggest challenges is consistent coverage in your home. While 5 Ghz provides great bandwidth it's challenge is often range. Signal strength tends to degrade quickly.
This is especially true as your home size increases. The average home size in the US is now some 2500 Sq Feet and depending on the overall layout and location of your WiFi Router and Cable/DSL Modem - you can end up with a lot of dead spots.
Add to that wanting to do things like place some WiFi end-points inside cabinets or closets or have backyard access and you can begin to see the challenges.
Finally - you may be in a constant battle with your neighbors and their WiFi networks overlapping yours and so your devices are having to deal with all the available SSID, channels, etc.
On the enterprise side of things - this challenge has been around for many years. The industry approached this challenge by using multiple "access points" that contained WiFi Radios that were then hardwired back to a central "controller" that supported functions like SSID, Authentication and overall management. But these solutions are very expensive and not very practical for home applications.
But how do you cover your home correctly.
You can start to address WiFi issues by getting a good WiFi analytics app. I used one called InSSIDer from MetaGeek. This will give you the opportunity to tune your WiFi to use the proper channels and address location to help with coverage. While this can often help - you may still have coverage issues.
One the home side of things, the industries first approach to dealing with dead spots was "range extenders". I've tried several and like many of you have experienced - most extenders are horrible. Then products like dedicated media bridges, etc started to appear. Again - results were often mixed.
The problem with most of these solutions is they really didn't address the key problems which was A) providing a consistent wireless connection to all devices in a home and B) supporting seemlees AP handoff as mobile devices moved about.
More recently many routers running the dd-wrt or tomato based router OS have supported something know as Wireless Distribution System (WDS).
WDS - also called Repeater-Bridge mode allows you install multiple WiFi routers in your home. You configure a "primary" router like you would normally and then 2 or more routers as WDS Bridge routers. This approach allows both wired and wireless clients to connected to the Bridge routers and then the Bridge Router communicates to the Primary over wireless.
WDS is the approach I use today to cover my 4000 sq ft home using 2 Asus RT-AC68P routers. And for the most part it works. But I still have areas in my home where WiFi coverage is not optimal. That is mostly driven by the location of my 2nd router as it supports both wired and wireless clients.
But there are some considerations with WDS.
First it can get expensive. While you can re-purpose older routers by installing open source router software like dd-wrt and use them as the bridge routers - a best practice is to buy multiple routers of the same model to insure compatibility. With many high speed WiFI routers in the $200 - $300 range - you can suddenly be looking at several hundred to cover a good sized home.
Second is scalability - WDS uses a "hop" approach, so for example in a 3 router configuration with AP1 being the Primary and AP2 and AP3 being secondaries - AP1 speaks to AP2 only and AP2 speaks to both AP1 and AP3. Each subsequent bridge router effectively get's half the bandwidth. WDS configuration can also get complex as the number of bridge routers increase as well as fragile. So for example is something happens to AP2 - both AP2 and AP3 lose connectivity.
The newest approach to WiFI is Mesh.
With Mesh networking all the APs act as peers. This provide two benefits, network resiliency and improved overall throughput shared bandwidth and channels.
Today however Mesh implementations vary across several different approaches from 802.11s to OSLR or Optimized Link State Routing protocol and BATMAN.
Today the V24 of dd-wrt supports OLSR Mesh networking and one new company called Eero actually sells a 3 pack mesh networking kit for $499.
I have not yet tried the dd-wrt configuration yet as I am still performing due diligence on the varying mesh protocols and which may provide the best combination of reliability and performance.
So you still have to perform your due diligence on location with mesh - but if your struggling looking for a home WiFi solution mesh networking may be the trick to properly covering your home with high quality and performance WiFi networking.
Between all of those new devices and the modern approach of streaming audio and video content along with 1Gbps cable networking becoming more and more common - your WiFi network starts to become a much more critical component to any overall home solution.
The challenge has been is that while overall bandwidth for WiFi has been growing - with 802.11ac, 2.4 & 5Ghz bands, 40, 80 and 160 channel widths - one of the biggest challenges is consistent coverage in your home. While 5 Ghz provides great bandwidth it's challenge is often range. Signal strength tends to degrade quickly.
This is especially true as your home size increases. The average home size in the US is now some 2500 Sq Feet and depending on the overall layout and location of your WiFi Router and Cable/DSL Modem - you can end up with a lot of dead spots.
Add to that wanting to do things like place some WiFi end-points inside cabinets or closets or have backyard access and you can begin to see the challenges.
Finally - you may be in a constant battle with your neighbors and their WiFi networks overlapping yours and so your devices are having to deal with all the available SSID, channels, etc.
On the enterprise side of things - this challenge has been around for many years. The industry approached this challenge by using multiple "access points" that contained WiFi Radios that were then hardwired back to a central "controller" that supported functions like SSID, Authentication and overall management. But these solutions are very expensive and not very practical for home applications.
But how do you cover your home correctly.
You can start to address WiFi issues by getting a good WiFi analytics app. I used one called InSSIDer from MetaGeek. This will give you the opportunity to tune your WiFi to use the proper channels and address location to help with coverage. While this can often help - you may still have coverage issues.
One the home side of things, the industries first approach to dealing with dead spots was "range extenders". I've tried several and like many of you have experienced - most extenders are horrible. Then products like dedicated media bridges, etc started to appear. Again - results were often mixed.
The problem with most of these solutions is they really didn't address the key problems which was A) providing a consistent wireless connection to all devices in a home and B) supporting seemlees AP handoff as mobile devices moved about.
More recently many routers running the dd-wrt or tomato based router OS have supported something know as Wireless Distribution System (WDS).
WDS - also called Repeater-Bridge mode allows you install multiple WiFi routers in your home. You configure a "primary" router like you would normally and then 2 or more routers as WDS Bridge routers. This approach allows both wired and wireless clients to connected to the Bridge routers and then the Bridge Router communicates to the Primary over wireless.
WDS is the approach I use today to cover my 4000 sq ft home using 2 Asus RT-AC68P routers. And for the most part it works. But I still have areas in my home where WiFi coverage is not optimal. That is mostly driven by the location of my 2nd router as it supports both wired and wireless clients.
But there are some considerations with WDS.
First it can get expensive. While you can re-purpose older routers by installing open source router software like dd-wrt and use them as the bridge routers - a best practice is to buy multiple routers of the same model to insure compatibility. With many high speed WiFI routers in the $200 - $300 range - you can suddenly be looking at several hundred to cover a good sized home.
Second is scalability - WDS uses a "hop" approach, so for example in a 3 router configuration with AP1 being the Primary and AP2 and AP3 being secondaries - AP1 speaks to AP2 only and AP2 speaks to both AP1 and AP3. Each subsequent bridge router effectively get's half the bandwidth. WDS configuration can also get complex as the number of bridge routers increase as well as fragile. So for example is something happens to AP2 - both AP2 and AP3 lose connectivity.
The newest approach to WiFI is Mesh.
With Mesh networking all the APs act as peers. This provide two benefits, network resiliency and improved overall throughput shared bandwidth and channels.
Today however Mesh implementations vary across several different approaches from 802.11s to OSLR or Optimized Link State Routing protocol and BATMAN.
Today the V24 of dd-wrt supports OLSR Mesh networking and one new company called Eero actually sells a 3 pack mesh networking kit for $499.
I have not yet tried the dd-wrt configuration yet as I am still performing due diligence on the varying mesh protocols and which may provide the best combination of reliability and performance.
So you still have to perform your due diligence on location with mesh - but if your struggling looking for a home WiFi solution mesh networking may be the trick to properly covering your home with high quality and performance WiFi networking.
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