[SOLVED] Wired or wireless backhaul ?

[jpb116]

I have a netgear orbi setup with a router and two satellites. The satellites can connect to the router with an advertised 5g back-haul or wired through heir LAN ports, which im 99% certain are gigabit ethernet. I've always leaned towards a wired backbone with the opinion that wired is more reliable, however am I throttling my backbone by wiring the satellites to the router? I have one that has a clear line of sight to the router and would likely not suffer signal degradation. I'm just not sure if the connection would theoretically be faster, more stable or better?

thoughts?

 

[bill001g]

It will always be better to use ethernet cables. You have 2gbit of bandwidth reserved for each cable.....I am use the same lies wifi uses here. You have 1gbit up and 1gbit down but unlike wifi ethernet can actually run that fast.

When you run this way you are using industry standard solution for wifi that has been used by enterprise installations since wifi was invented. Orbi and the other "mesh" companies want you to think they invented it so they can charge more for their equipment. It is purely a central router connected to a bunch of remote AP. This is a 20yr old design that is still used today.

This solution will always give you the optimum performance.

Unless the orbi has a extra dedicated radio chip to talk to the remote stations it is going to be shared. OR you are going to have to use only 2.4g to talk to your end devices. This of course ignore the fact that your neighbors likely will stomp on the backhual signal and the signal to the end devices. You now have 2 signals to worry about instead of 1.

Orbi is all marketing with a cutesi name to get people to buy stuff. It is just a slightly improved repeater it suffers all the downside. It is just slightly easier to setup for the people who want to have "magic" network boxes in their house.

 

[jpb116]

Orbi is all marketing with a cutesi name to get people to buy stuff. It is just a slightly improved repeater it suffers all the downside. It is just slightly easier to setup for the people who want to have "magic" network boxes in their house.

Im not seeking a magic network box, just the ability to spread my network around easily. My nearest neighbor is 1500 feet away so there's no issue there. It seems I'll wire the remotes back to the router and take away the potential pitfalls of wireless.

I'm sensing you don't like the mesh systems but there is no denying they are simple and reliable and solve a real world problem in a manner a repeater never will. Repeaters ultimately degrade the signal and or elevate the noise however you want to look at it. where-as the mesh devices source the signals from each of the satellites. You also don't have to deal with multiple network names etc.

 

[bill001g]

Mesh is mostly a scam is why I don't like it. Be very careful to know what you are reading and not get sucked in by the marketing.

Again the technology is not actually new. You have always been able to use a point to point bridge and then connect that to a AP. That is how wireless ISP work.

The problem is there are only a very tiny number of mesh systems that have a dedicated radio to talk to the base unit. The vast majority are have the 2 standard radio chips and either they dedicate one to talk to the base station which greatly cuts the speed since you can't run 802.11ac on 2.4g. or they use one of the radio chips to talk to the base station and the end users which is what the first generation repeaters do.

 

[SamirD]

I too hate the 'mesh' marketing scam. The only true mesh system ever made was made by Meraki, and it is was stellar--APs would talk to each other in a true multi-point manner, self-heal, and could have a wired backbone. I still have about 14 OD2 Outdoor units that worked flawlessly for years--but at 11Mbps max wired backbone and 5Mbps max wifi, they unfortunately have become too slow for today's demands.

Meraki discontinued their Indoor and Outdoor units many years back as they created new products and were being acquired by Cisco. I still miss their system and the excellent management it had (web based) and how robust it was. The system would tell me when it had issues, but would actually self-heal in the meantime--it was absolutely brilliant.

The closest thing to this today is a Ubiquiti setup, but it still isn't as robust as the old Meraki system.

Consumer mesh maybe uses some of the same technology, but it's really just a bunch of repeaters that cost a lot so they work. There's nothing special about them that a proper network configuration couldn't solve. But it has that fancy packaging and a big price tag so people buy it and are happy with it. If they only knew what you could get in real networking equipment for the same money. But hey, that's consumers...

As far as addressing your question, wired > wireless, so if you can wire it, most definitely do. And that includes your devices too. TVs never move so wire them via ethernet, powerline, or moca. Desktop computers don't move either so do the same. Not only do you improve the internet on these devices, your wifi is clear for those devices that need it so their performance is faster too.

 

[Deicidium369]

Mesh is mostly a scam is why I don't like it. Be very careful to know what you are reading and not get sucked in by the marketing.

Again the technology is not actually new. You have always been able to use a point to point bridge and then connect that to a AP. That is how wireless ISP work.

The problem is there are only a very tiny number of mesh systems that have a dedicated radio to talk to the base unit. The vast majority are have the 2 standard radio chips and either they dedicate one to talk to the base station which greatly cuts the speed since you can't run 802.11ac on 2.4g. or they use one of the radio chips to talk to the base station and the end users which is what the first generation repeaters do.

Mesh isn't a scam - just maybe not right for your apartment - I have a Ubiquiti mesh over almost 100acres of my property - I can walk from my front door a mile and a half to my machine shop without losing wifi - gets handed off between 6 different APs - flawlessly and without a single hickup.

Pretty sure you don't understand how mesh works or what it is used for.

 

[Deicidium369]

I too hate the 'mesh' marketing scam. The only true mesh system ever made was made by Meraki, and it is was stellar--APs would talk to each other in a true multi-point manner, self-heal, and could have a wired backbone. I still have about 14 OD2 Outdoor units that worked flawlessly for years--but at 11Mbps max wired backbone and 5Mbps max wifi, they unfortunately have become too slow for today's demands.

Meraki discontinued their Indoor and Outdoor units many years back as they created new products and were being acquired by Cisco. I still miss their system and the excellent management it had (web based) and how robust it was. The system would tell me when it had issues, but would actually self-heal in the meantime--it was absolutely brilliant.

The closest thing to this today is a Ubiquiti setup, but it still isn't as robust as the old Meraki system.

Consumer mesh maybe uses some of the same technology, but it's really just a bunch of repeaters that cost a lot so they work. There's nothing special about them that a proper network configuration couldn't solve. But it has that fancy packaging and a big price tag so people buy it and are happy with it. If they only knew what you could get in real networking equipment for the same money. But hey, that's consumers...

As far as addressing your question, wired > wireless, so if you can wire it, most definitely do. And that includes your devices too. TVs never move so wire them via ethernet, powerline, or moca. Desktop computers don't move either so do the same. Not only do you improve the internet on these devices, your wifi is clear for those devices that need it so their performance is faster too.

Meraki was fin until you had to config it... and Ubiquiti does and works fine, easy to config a deploy and easy to manage... not to mention it works as advertised.

Everything Cisco touches dies - Meraki, Topspin, etc