mlcarsonB
You’ll get a much better result if you use a wired backhaul and then you don’t need any of those mesh systems. You could then use standard AP’s.
You need 4 pair and you also need to know where the other end of the connection is. If it goes straight outside to a telephone demark, it doesn’t do you a lot of good. If it goes to a patch panel somewhere else in the house then it can probably be repurposed.
She obviously was since it was $1000/hr.
Since WiFi 7 is coming, you aren’t going to find longevity. The best thing you could do for yourself is to separate the WiFi function from the router by using AP’s.
Unless you’re doing something very unusual (multiple ISP’s or a home lab), a home only needs one router – this is where you went wrong. You add WiFi with AP’s – not routers. A normal router should be able to handle as many networks/VLANs/DHCP scopes as necessary and will have a single default route out to the Internet.
You’ve made your network needlessly complicated. In order to fix things, you should setup all but one router in AP bridge mode. This does not completely fix things because wireless routers aren’t going to act as a single controller for your wireless devices. If you can return all of these routers, I’d recommend it because AP’s would provide a better solution. Do you even have a need for more than one network? Do you even have a managed switch? Does everything go back to a central switch?
I pay $50/mo for 1Gbs here in TN. How low can you actually go on the price? Typically you don’t see anything less than $50/mo for Internet that not exceptionally bad. I’d keep the 1Gbs. Most routers these days are capable of 1Gbs unless QoS is needed at that speed too.
For switches, it’s pretty much a commodity item. I prefer Trendnet at home because they actually had a simulator on their website showing the GUI. For more professional gear, I’d use FS switches. For AP’s, I use Grandstream.
There’s no issue with using MoCA. There’s also G.hn which achieves the same thing via unused coax. The advantage of G.hn is that it doesn’t require special splitters to accomodate the frequency range; the disadvantage is that it conflicts with the TV frequency range which is why it needs to be unused coax.
Your house is too large for adequate coverage by a single device unless it has no interior walls and you don’t care about the speeds as you get further from the wireless router.
You should be looking for a router without WiFi but with proper QoS. Your WiFi can then be done with multiple AP’s to provide better coverage throughout the house. You just need cables from your switch to the locations where you’d want to put the AP’s. The solution to bad WiFi is not a more powerful transmitter. You need to reduce the distance to each WiFi source which you do by adding more AP’s. In a case where you can absolute not run cables and nothing currently exists for MoCA then you would use mesh but it’ll never be as good as a cabled solution.
If you want coverage to the detached workshop, run a cable there and add an AP. If you can’t run the cable then use a wireless bridge designed for point to point and then add an AP to that.
You could actually expect less than 20Mbs because of congestion issues assuming no QoS and you’re right that any port might get more at any particular moment of time. This is mean to be an illustration of bottlenecks and not an implication of layer-2 load balancing. The traffic just can’t be more than what the bottleneck will allow.