Asus Wired Access Points connected to non-Asus wired firewall/router

[zapperExerciseVid]

Hello,

I have a system that uses 3 Wired APs, without using AI mesh (they are a little old and not AI Mesh capable). I have tuned these APs to hand off under a certain signal strength. It took a little tweaking, but the settings are pretty good and they perform well.

My question is around topology: I currently have two APs connected to the first "main" AP, all with the same config and this works fine.

My question is whether or not I can use different LAN ports on the host router to perform the same function. I have tried plugging multiple APs into different router LAN ports in the past, and had strange results and timeouts. I don't know if this was a config issue, a cable issue, or what.

Ideally I would be able to plug different APs into different firewall router LAN ports without branching off of one AP and have them still able to hand off to each other.

-Zapper

 

[Tech9]

Best - each one connected to the router with own Gigabit connection.

What model Asus routers are used as APs? If they can't reach Gigabit aggregate traffic - then it doesn't matter.

If you rely on Roaming Assistant - it doesn't work most of the time or at all. The client decides where to connect.

 

[ColinTaylor]

In theory that shouldn't be a problem. But as this is (apparently) a problem with your router and nothing to do with the Asus devices it's hard to say. Especially as you haven't given us any information at all about the router.

 

[zapperExerciseVid]

Best - each one connected to the router with own Gigabit connection.

What model Asus routers are used as APs? If they can't reach Gigabit aggregate traffic - then it doesn't matter.

If you rely on Roaming Assistant - it doesn't work most of the time or at all. The client decides where to connect.

Sorry about the delay!

I have a mix of AC87U routers in AP mode running merlin along with one AX58U which I am aware does run AI mesh, but for the purpose of blending in with the AC87Us it's just using roam assist. I find that an aggressive signal tolerance in roam assist gets clients to switch when a user goes from one floor to another, which is the overall intent.

There are about 50 clients total in the house (shared house in the east bay with a few levels and an in-law unit) and I could see some of the wired + wireless connections approaching 1gb total during certain times of the day. The web connection speed is also a full Gb up/down.

In theory that shouldn't be a problem. But as this is (apparently) a problem with your router and nothing to do with the Asus devices it's hard to say. Especially as you haven't given us any information at all about the router.

I didn't specify the router because I recently purchased a TP-Link wired Gb router that can supposedly handle 700 clients that I have yet to install. The router I'm currently using from Sonic would also behave strangely when I had a raspberry Pi cluster running K8S, or multiple wired clients plugged into a given AP; it would gum up the rest of the network. Given that, the problem may very well be CPU overhead in the Sonic router and not anything else.

Hearing that the APs should be able to hand off normally on different router LAN ports helps a lot, and I thank both of you!

I will update this thread in less than a week or so when I get all new cable made for the house (the cable we have now is looking shabby) and get everything plugged in.

Zap

 

[frequenzy]

Just to share, I previously used an Asus main router + TP-link routers configured as gigabit wired APs. There are no issues aside from seemless wireless roaming. I have tried all the wireless settings available on all devices but clients can't just roam properly from Asus to TP-link and vice versa, they will get disconnected then reconnect again.

I gave up and eventually replaced the TP-link with Asus routers, configured them as APs and now no issues with roaming.

 

[zapperExerciseVid]

Hi all, I wanted to bring some closure to this thread.

• Separate LAN ports or switch ports do not affect APs
• The TP link ER7206 can handle all of the clients in the house with no issues so far
• -40 RSSI (best signal threshold setting) does work for roaming without AiMesh - note I am only using 5ghz in the house. I think 2.4 being longer range makes handoffs more difficult
• Redoing/making my own cables allowed me to experience a hard wire connection for the first time in a couple years and nothing beats it!

Zap

 

[heysoundude]

Redoing/making my own cables allowed me to experience a hard wire connection for the first time in a couple years and nothing beats it!

This Is The Way.

 

[drinkingbird]

This Is The Way.

God I can recite the color order in my head it is burned in permanently. Sometimes I just randomly start thinking it. And its been about 20 years since I used to do cabling professionally.

 

[drinkingbird]

What model Asus routers are used as APs? If they can't reach Gigabit aggregate traffic - then it doesn't matter.

If you rely on Roaming Assistant - it doesn't work most of the time or at all. The client decides where to connect.

Even if they can't reach gig, still better to not daisy chain if possible, home runs are going to be better. But for the average home user, probably not a big deal.

I use roaming assistant on the asus and MinRSSI on my Unifi APs and after a bit of tweaking, they work excellently together.

Nothing is going to force every stubborn client to obey but I haven't run into one of those clients in a long time. When one AP boots my laptops, phones, etc they always reconnect to the now stronger AP. The only time it doesn't work all that predictably is when there are two fairly strong APs, but then, in my case, I don't care which gets used. In reality if you have things set up correctly there shouldn't be many places where you see two strong signals.

Band steering is more of a crapshoot, but as long as it isn't implemented wrong, usually doesn't hurt anything either.