I've been on this same journey recently. <grumpy mode>I feel like one
well positioned router will cover 95% of houses, but people want the
router hidden a basement closet while everybody's using wifi in the 2nd
floor family room. If they'd rather spend $300 to solve that problem
than run a wire upstairs I suppose I'll try to oblige them.</grumpy mode>
For the features that'll make it work as an ISP service, it's going to
be spendy. I'm also fuzzy on what a person is going to be willing to
pay for managed WiFi. I know they'll pay $5. I imagine the market
would bear $7 or $8. If people are willing to pay $12-15/month then we
could do Calix all day long. In the $5-10 range I think it's not even
worth it and maybe let them buy their own $300 "whole house" system.
-Adam
On 6/30/2019 10:36 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
My brain is kind of full and so I’ve avoided learning how to do WiFi
mesh systems. But with everybody and their brother selling home WiFi
systems, and customers wanting WiFi everywhere and too lazy to use a
cable even 1 foot away, mesh WiFi now seems impossible to avoid. But
many of these systems have limited configuration options, want to be
controlled via the cloud from an app on your phone, and don’t seem to
play nice with a 5 GHz connection from a WISP. Adding in things like
FireSticks that use WiFi for the remote seems to aggravate this whole
situation.
So looking at roll-your-own-mesh using Mikrotik, I’m reluctant to use
WDS. Reading threads on the Mikrotik forums tends to confirm my
unease with this approach. My clear preference is a wired mesh, but
customers just flat out refuse to have any cables. Everything must be
wireless and work automagically, which I assume is why they will pay
$300 for a 3-pack of Google WiFi hockey pucks.
So here’s my question: what’s wrong with a main router that uses both
2.4 and 5 GHz, and then satellites with a 2.4 GHz AP bridged to a 5
GHz client that connects to the main router. Is the problem that now
you have a hub-and-spoke design not a true mesh? Do people need a
system that can hopscotch from A to B to C to D in order to get to the
far reaches of their house? Is there a way to run a backbone between
nodes that none of the customer devices connect to? I thought I read
that Netgear’s Orbi worked that way.
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