Home network design ASUS mesh in large house

[andrew.korson]

I’ve got a three level house with the cable hookup entering the basement in a utility room. From there I have Ethernet wires running to rooms on the first floor at the front and back of the house and another that goes to a ceiling receptacle without power (for POE access port).

Current setup
ASUS RT-n66u primary router in utility room,
ASUS RT-n66u access point in front room
ASUS RT-n12 access point in rear
Nothing in ceiling AP recepticle
Using ddwrt with latest firmware


Problem:
Good Wi-Fi signal throughout the house including second floor but phone apps (gmail, chrome etc) take too long to load results. Switching to cell signal overcomes this right away.


I’m not sure exactly the problem but am looking to either put in POE access point on second floor vs upgrade the utility room router. Problem is that there is no ASUS router that does POE, there is a switch with POE.

Considering:
ASUS rt-ac86u vs rt-ac86u
Or
ASUS gp-105 POE switch and the some POE access point.

Leaning more towards getting the router but feel lame putting my best router in the basement. That said, best router needs to be the master and not an AP and basement is where the internet comes in.

Also I need pppoe so I can’t use the switch alone in the basement.

 

[andrew.korson]

Problem is not limited to the phone, just where it’s most noticible

 

[das_stig]

For your house, I would have a router that supports link aggregation to link to POE switch, that then feeds to AP's.

Using routers as AP's is not optimal, saying this, it 's not cheap.

 

[andrew.korson]

Any router suggestions?

 

[failboat]

what's your internet speed?
Have you tested while connected to each AP when no traffic is going?
I wouldn't recommend using wireless inside a utility room. is this covering the basement or something?

In multi AP setups you want to avoid congestion.
You can measure the congestion with phone apps or maybe from the APs.
The wireless channels they use should be different for ones close to each other. you can find charts of the best numbers to use.
Depending on how far apart they are you want to reduce antenna power to prevent overlap.
Some have features to drop clients if the connection strength is X amount. This allows roaming and reconnecting.
some have features for fast reconnect so you don't have to do another public key exchange.
Use different SSID's if you aren't sure what AP you're on.

unifi aps are very good. I think you should try and optimize what you have. It's most likely in your wireless config/placement if quality is low. the router is doing the easiest job.