ASUS AiMesh - Have I exceeded max clients for 6 Nodes? Lots of unresponsive clients.

[OzarkEdge]

Given the material construction of the house, the radio blocking masonry mass up the center, and the DIY home automation goal based on WiFi... I would get some proposals from some pros with suitable experience. Once the WiFi is initially solved, you'll still have plenty to do riding herd on the automation and the many WiFi clients.

OE

 

[Tech9]

I'm happy to look into Omada

I still believe professional installation is going to be the better way, but you can get some ideas from another similar thread:

RT-ac86u + 4/5 rt-ac68u AiMesh nodes upgrade advice

Hi all, I currently have at home a RT-AC86U as main router, with 4 RT-AC68U as AiMesh nodes all running latest Asus Merlin's firmware (386.10). 1gb Ethernet is in each room (except in the attic where I use a decent powerline) and I have around 30 devices connected, of which around 12 are...

www.snbforums.com

 

[tgl]

@tgl : I'm happy to answer your request for details on the house. My initial post felt pretty long in my efforts to provide a clear picture and I was concerned about going overboard with a TL;DR for my troubles.

Thanks for the additional details. Bearing in mind that I'm not a network professional (unlike some of the other folk here) ... the impression I have is that your floor plans look pretty sane in isolation, but you've done them as though there's no signal transfer across floors. For instance the ground floor kitchen AP is at serious risk of interference with the second floor master bedroom AP. You mentioned that you've tried to assign non-overlapping channels to avoid that, but there's so few non-overlapping channels available in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands that I doubt that that approach can avoid problems. It seems quite plausible to me that your best solution will involve fewer than six APs.

On the whole though I agree with the other respondents that your big problem is you've got more clients than ASUS gear is built to handle. You need to move into SMB-class gear that is built to deal with hundreds of clients. Omada and Ubiquiti and Aruba are decent names to look at, or you could consider Cisco if money is no object. Somebody here recently recommended Evan McCann as a reliable reviewer of gear in this space, and that definitely looks like a site worth your reading time.

 

[Techlifter]

Thank you for that link, @John Fitzgerald

I looks like you can have more than 5 if you're using Ethernet Backhaul (vs entirely wireless):

[Wireless Router] How many AiMesh nodes are suggested to be set in an AiMesh system? | Official Support | ASUS Global

"If you apply all Ethernet backhaul , the number can be more. However, 5 nodes is suggested for the best performance for the system."

But the group suggested above that our client number is way beyond what AiMesh can handle, regardless of the number of nodes, so we're looking into different hardware (Omada or Ubiquity) in any case.

Again, thank you for responding.

 

[Techlifter]

I still believe professional installation is going to be the better way, but you can get some ideas from another similar thread:

RT-ac86u + 4/5 rt-ac68u AiMesh nodes upgrade advice

Hi all, I currently have at home a RT-AC86U as main router, with 4 RT-AC68U as AiMesh nodes all running latest Asus Merlin's firmware (386.10). 1gb Ethernet is in each room (except in the attic where I use a decent powerline) and I have around 30 devices connected, of which around 12 are...

www.snbforums.com

Agreed! I have no interest in trying to level up to install any of this myself, but it makes sense to read as much as I can to be able to make an informed decision and be aware of applicable trade-offs and future expansion.

 

[Techlifter]

Thanks for the additional details. Bearing in mind that I'm not a network professional (unlike some of the other folk here) ... the impression I have is that your floor plans look pretty sane in isolation, but you've done them as though there's no signal transfer across floors. For instance the ground floor kitchen AP is at serious risk of interference with the second floor master bedroom AP. You mentioned that you've tried to assign non-overlapping channels to avoid that, but there's so few non-overlapping channels available in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands that I doubt that that approach can avoid problems. It seems quite plausible to me that your best solution will involve fewer than six APs.

On the whole though I agree with the other respondents that your big problem is you've got more clients than ASUS gear is built to handle. You need to move into SMB-class gear that is built to deal with hundreds of clients. Omada and Ubiquiti and Aruba are decent names to look at, or you could consider Cisco if money is no object. Somebody here recently recommended Evan McCann as a reliable reviewer of gear in this space, and that definitely looks like a site worth your reading time.

Thank you VERY much for the recommendations. Looks like I have some reading to do!

 

[Tech9]

but it makes sense to read

This is valid for all SNB Forum readers. Without seeing the place - we can give suggestions only. There is no guarantee specific equipment working well for someone else and somewhere else is going to work the same way in your place. When you pay someone to do it though you can call them back to adjust the system and clear the issues. Local people know what works better around the area and where to get the needed equipment at better price.

 

[lishan89]

in case you haven't dump your asus system out yet I have some suggestions.

• set the 2.4ghz channel to 1,6, or 11 ( these channels tend to be most stable)
• disable smart connect ( this function is made to disconnect your devices to push them to another band)
• disable roaming assist or set it to some crazy high number like 90 ( roaming assist is also made to disconnect devices when their wifi signal is too low, and asus does a very bad job of it.)
• for the 2.4hz band disable mu mimo, Airtime Fairness, Explicit Beamforming ( not sure why these cause stability issues)
• enable Bluetooth Coexistence ( makes the connection a little slower but may help with interference)

No offense to Asus, but their firmware is unstable AF. So you want to flash all the nodes and re-add them to the aimesh after you change the settings.
Some times certain nodes, especially ones with old routers will act up. so when your lights act up find out what node they are connected to and maybe just restart that node. Speaking of which though, that is the reason why I found your post in the first place. Devices connected to my ax89x after a while will unable to resolve mDNS properly.

Like many others suggested, it might be better to switch to something like unifi dreammachine. however, i understand the reluctance, since you are basically going to pay all lot of money for stable mediocre speeds. where as with asus you get high speed less stable connections. Then again, I wouldn't know if Unifi is any better with IoT. Store bought IoT devices that use wifi iare just problematic in general.

 

[abstractable]

I was reading this conversation and really wanted to add something. I might very well be too late for TS but I'll add it anyway in case it could be relevant for readers. I have basic knowledge about networks but I am by no means a professional. But the first thing I would've done here is throw out all Wiz lights and replace them with Hue lights. You can add up to 50 bulbs to a bridge and they will all count as 1 network device only. The hue bridge is LAN connected so the entire Hue system stays off your wifi. That's 50 devices less clogging the wifi. Of course there are lots of things to be tried and tested here but changing Wiz to Hue lights is the lowest hanging fruit IMHO.

Don't get me wrong. Wiz is great for most homes. We have about 15 bulbs and LED strips in use. They're all on the 2.4 GHz signal which separates them nicely from all other wifi devices on the 5/6 GHz bands (it's a router with triple band wifi 6E / AX). With well over a 100 lights I'd steer clear from Wiz though and definitely go for a Zigbee based alternative (Hue/Tradfri/etc).