[SOLVED] Home Networking Topology

[Guinea]

I am looking for advice or suggestions on how to improve/correct our home networking topology. We have a larger home and have been utilizing a mesh network for our wireless internet. We utilize hardwired ethernet in every room to ensure as many of our devices are hardwired as possible. We had been experiencing poor speeds over the last few weeks and decided to branch out and upgrade a few units and now are struggling to get our wireless network back up and running. We have had a ton of issues with this mesh network in terms of management, configuration and overall stability. It is extremely temperamental....a firmware update can cause ripple effects that take us days to work out with satellites coming out of sync, dropped speeds, or phantom connections for hours. It has been a major headache and I am hoping someone can help us point in the right direction. I feel like maybe our configuration is a bit more convoluted and possibly causing issues with an inefficient configuration. So here is what we have:

We have 400 Mbps connection from Spectrum coming into the house connecting to a Motorola MB7420 Modem (Brand new). That connects (all through Cat6e) to a router (TP-Link SafeStream TL-R600VPN). This connects to a switch (TP-Link TL-SG1016DE). From here, our entire home network plugs in...every room has ethernet ports and this all connects to this switch to ensure we can hardwire as much as possible. In our bedroom, we have an Orbi RBK50. We set that up as an access point only because we only wanted it for WiFi. We have 3 additional satellites (Orbi RBS50s)... 2 in opposite corners of the house and 1 upstairs. Some of those can be (and usually are) connected to ethernet from the switch to provide an ethernet backhaul, but I am never sure if it is working as intended. We also have a separate switch (TP Link TL SG1024 - being replaced with a POE based one soon) that provides networking to a 42U server rack upstairs that houses the equipment for our home theater setup. This has a ton of equipment (PS4s, HTPC, AVR, Shield, Media Server, etc.) Those all plug into this switch, which then connects directly to the switch downstairs (TL-SG1016DE).

Right now, hardwired components seem to work consistently. We only get about 250-300 Mbps on speedtests, which is the original problem we were trying to diagnose. We replaced the switches and routers and modems recently to try and provide a technology boost in those areas. In doing so, we tried to check on our Wifi and immediately saw issues with it. Once we started logging into the Orbi system and checking the status, we noticed that a firmware patch was forced into them and essentially broke the connection. Now we are spending days trying to get this system configured and setup correctly/reliably. As an example of behavior we see....we will factory reset the Orbi Router. When it comes up, it will try to sync with one of the satellites and fail. We have tried rebooting and resetting them in all sorts of different orders and configurations. Sometimes they connect fine, sometimes they connect and the old satellite still says it is connected. Sometimes the equipment like our phones and laptops connects to a satellite that isn't on the Orbi UI at all....so we have no idea what it is even connected to. For being the "best of the best" according to the internet, these things are a maintenance and configuration nightmare. Nothing seems to be consistent, nothing seems to be accurate. The UI says it is connected to something, and when we go over to that satellite, it is unplugged or has a pink glow on it, meaning that it failed. But the UI will say it is connected and the status is "Good." MAC addresses matching and everything.

We have to be doing something wrong...overcomplicating our setup or doing something that is causing other things to break. Looking for any and all advice in this area so we can try and clean this up. At this point, I don't care about price...I just want it to work and be less of a headache to manage. I have been dying to go to Wifi 6 for months because we like using Wifi for our christmas lights and often tap our Wifi out with the plugs and dongles...but the best wifi 6 recommendation is another Orbi system....so I am extremely hesitant in dropping another $700 on a system when we can't even get the older, more recommended one to function right.

 

[bill001g]

Most mesh stuff is marketing hype. The orbi units are really desigened for people that want to plug a magic box in without having to know anything. It makes people happy who do not know how to actually test and see what they get for performance.

You running them as AP is the optimum design. They are actually meant to be used as wireless repeaters so they may favor that configuration. I have never even considered them because they are so expensive.

You can get quality AP that have many enterprise level features for very cheap from ubiquiti. They have a control system to let you centrally admin them if you want and it is included for free.

Wifi6 does not really give you more ability to run more devices. If all the devices are wifi6 it has some better methods to share but it is not clear if this is marketing or if it really works better. The key feature wifi6 has is it has a higher data rate because it uses more bandwidth. The problem with using more bandwidth is there is a limited amount and now it is attempting to use all of it rather than 1/2 like most 802.11ac.

I would wait on wifi6. wifi6e is coming "soon" that uses all the same wifi6 stuff but the huge advantage is it will use the massive amount of bandwidth the FCC authorized on the 6G radio band. This extra bandwidth more than anything else should make wifi usable again.....at least for a while until someone comes up with wifi7 where a single device tries to use all the radio bandwidth again ignoring that your neighbors also are using wifi.

 

[kanewolf]

The best budgeting you can do is budget to have ethernet cable professionally installed so that all stationary devices are on a wired network.
Then get multiple WIFI access points on that wired network.

 

[Guinea]

This is essentially what I have. We had Cat6 run to every room in the house as it was a new construction. That is what I referred to when I said that every room was tied into a central switch coming from a router coming from the modem. That is in the central hub of the house and feeds ethernet to every room. It also feeds another switch upstairs that feeds a server rack separately.

The problem I am having is this mesh network that I have plugged in as well. We only use it for WiFi, but it is really difficult to manage, unreliable and extremely temperamental. Half the time when we change a setting or reboot it, it reverts IPs even if they are static or reverts settings or removes signals. We had to manually hack the Orbi to separate out the 2GHz channel for example because it does not let you do it through the UI. We need a separated 2GHz channel for some of our home automation items.

If I went with something like a Ubiquiti set up (first time hearing about them to be honest), would it be better and easier to manage if I just replaced all of my networking with their equipment? Is that overkill? Looking at the options on their website, it is hard to determine what the best options are for my home setup and what I should be investing in.

 

[kanewolf]

This is essentially what I have. We had Cat6 run to every room in the house as it was a new construction. That is what I referred to when I said that every room was tied into a central switch coming from a router coming from the modem. That is in the central hub of the house and feeds ethernet to every room. It also feeds another switch upstairs that feeds a server rack separately.

The problem I am having is this mesh network that I have plugged in as well. We only use it for WiFi, but it is really difficult to manage, unreliable and extremely temperamental. Half the time when we change a setting or reboot it, it reverts IPs even if they are static or reverts settings or removes signals. We had to manually hack the Orbi to separate out the 2GHz channel for example because it does not let you do it through the UI. We need a separated 2GHz channel for some of our home automation items.

If I went with something like a Ubiquiti set up (first time hearing about them to be honest), would it be better and easier to manage if I just replaced all of my networking with their equipment? Is that overkill? Looking at the options on their website, it is hard to determine what the best options are for my home setup and what I should be investing in.

I have Ubiquiti hardware at my house. It is very configurable, but that also means you need to be an informed user. Ubiquiti is geared toward small business environments and assumes a fairly savvy user.
If you want just WIFI, then Ubiquiti is a good choice when you have a wired infrastructure available.
You would purchase one or more access points. If you have wall mounted ethernet connections, I would recommend the flexHD model. It has a similar form factor to the Orbi. Ubiquiti is POE powered. You can use POE room switches if you already have switches to tie in wired devices where the Orbi devices are.
Ubiquiti UniFI is configured using their "controller" software. You can use an Android or iPhone, but I recommend using the full software.
Each UniFI AP can have up to 4 SSIDs and the 2.4 and 5Ghz don't have to have the same SSID. I had to create a 2.4Ghz ONLY SSID to allow my IoT devices to connect.
If you use the Orbi base as your primary router, you would need to find an alternative.