Best solution for wired, large home

[anniemoose98]

Hi all.

Alright, currently our house is served by a 2011 Airport Extreme and an Airport Express in "extend" mode. We have massive drop-outs and issues with our current network, and are looking for a long-term solution.

The house is timberframe that is about 3500 sq. feet over 3 floors (basement, main, upstairs.) The original owners wired the house with Cat-5e in every room (some with 2 ports) that all terminate in a central spot in the basement where our Airport Extreme is.

We do a lot of streaming (audio and video) over many devices and I game. The two desktops in the house and a Smart TV are wired, but all of the other ports are disconnected and our other devices are wireless (iPads, phones, laptops, etc.)

The two solutions that I see to this problem are:

* Router (Looking at WRT1900AC and the R7000) in the basement as a direct replacement to the Airport Extreme with an Ethernet switch to bring all of the ports online and a repeater on the main floor where the current Airport Express is. Essentially a direct replacement of current network parts.
* Some sort of router downstairs connected to one of the ethernet ports upstairs that has an access point connected to it for wireless and also connected to a switch to bring all of the ethernet ports online. This plan needs some help with what parts would be best if I went with it.

What one of these would be best for lots of devices and using high speed internet most effectively while still covering the whole house?

Thanks in advance!

Anniemoose98

 

[sfx2000]

Replacing the AP's is likely not a solution without doing some homework as to why the problem is occurring in the first place...

Airports, while not the most feature rich, are one of the most stable and robust Router/AP's in consumer space - so either you've got issues on the WAN side (which is entirely possible), or you have some sort of WLAN interference affecting your wireless clients.

Do the homework first... debug and sort things out, and with three router/AP's already in use, perhaps you just have more than you need...

A couple of tips however...

1) IPv6 with some ISP's is a bit troublesome on the Airports - it's an ISP issue, but the ISP (in my case, CoxHSI) is reluctant to fix it as their carrier provided equipment does not have the fault.

The workaround here is to set the WAN connected AP to link-local only for IPv6

2) Ensure your AP's are up to date - a couple of months back, Apple did push updates to all the 802.11n/802.11ac based gear to fix some issues - this release was back in June 2016 - 7.6.7 for the 11n devices, and 7.7.7 for the 11ac devices.

 

[anniemoose98]

Replacing the AP's is likely not a solution without doing some homework as to why the problem is occurring in the first place...

Airports, while not the most feature rich, are one of the most stable and robust Router/AP's in consumer space - so either you've got issues on the WAN side (which is entirely possible), or you have some sort of WLAN interference affecting your wireless clients.

Do the homework first... debug and sort things out, and with three router/AP's already in use, perhaps you just have more than you need...

A couple of tips however...

1) IPv6 with some ISP's is a bit troublesome on the Airports - it's an ISP issue, but the ISP (in my case, CoxHSI) is reluctant to fix it as their carrier provided equipment does not have the fault.

The workaround here is to set the WAN connected AP to link-local only for IPv6

2) Ensure your AP's are up to date - a couple of months back, Apple did push updates to all the 802.11n/802.11ac based gear to fix some issues - this release was back in June 2016 - 7.6.7 for the 11n devices, and 7.7.7 for the 11ac devices.

It's up to date and there's no network interference. I think there is a hardware issue because the router itself shuts off and locks up randomly, so I think a replacement is in order.

 

[sfx2000]

It's up to date and there's no network interference. I think there is a hardware issue because the router itself shuts off and locks up randomly, so I think a replacement is in order.

Sounds reasonable - since you have Airports already, just replace it with another Airport - it's something that you already know, and it's been working in the past... I would suspect the WAN connected router first...

Check Apple's refurb store - I see Airport Extreme AC's all the time over there at $129USD.

(another tip - the airport utils are not backwards compatable - e.g. either manage them with 5.6, or 6.x - mixing things there can lead to some problems - and the Extreme AC's are pretty much 6.x only, same with the Express concurrent dual-band (the one that looks like Apple TV))

 

[alphamatter]

Hi all.

Alright, currently our house is served by a 2011 Airport Extreme and an Airport Express in "extend" mode. We have massive drop-outs and issues with our current network, and are looking for a long-term solution.

The house is timberframe that is about 3500 sq. feet over 3 floors (basement, main, upstairs.) The original owners wired the house with Cat-5e in every room (some with 2 ports) that all terminate in a central spot in the basement where our Airport Extreme is.

We do a lot of streaming (audio and video) over many devices and I game. The two desktops in the house and a Smart TV are wired, but all of the other ports are disconnected and our other devices are wireless (iPads, phones, laptops, etc.)

The two solutions that I see to this problem are:

* Router (Looking at WRT1900AC and the R7000) in the basement as a direct replacement to the Airport Extreme with an Ethernet switch to bring all of the ports online and a repeater on the main floor where the current Airport Express is. Essentially a direct replacement of current network parts.
* Some sort of router downstairs connected to one of the ethernet ports upstairs that has an access point connected to it for wireless and also connected to a switch to bring all of the ethernet ports online. This plan needs some help with what parts would be best if I went with it.

What one of these would be best for lots of devices and using high speed internet most effectively while still covering the whole house?

Thanks in advance!

Anniemoose98

So, as a direct Replacement, the Netgear R7000 would be my recommendation IF you're 'High Speed Internet' speeds are over 900 Mbps, then, the Gigabit port WAN to LAN would handle this easily, squeezing the most out of those Internet Speeds.

You could use another of these Netgear R7000 routers as an AP or a couple of Tenda Routers(about for the Price of (1) R7000) as AP's on different Floors.

For the Switches, I would suggest the Netgear Switches, such as a 16 port switch. 16 Port Netgear Switch, really depending on how many connections are needed.

Here is the Tenda Router review on this site:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/router-chooser/detail/2277/tenda-ac15

I love setting up these kind of networks! Plenty of different ways to skin a cat.

Alphamatter

 

[System Error Message]

airport extremes are consumer grade hardware. As an all in one router you may have an issue there. as an AP they would be stable. Try another router to localise the problem.

Problem could be various, could be modem, could be ISP, could be the line.

 

[sfx2000]

airport extremes are consumer grade hardware.

As a router - I would agree - they're stable and robust compared to most of the others, and generally good enough for most home networks - I wouldn't run a small/medium business on one as the primary router, but that would go for all in the AC1900 class all-in-one solutions...

As AP's however - they're pretty cool... take the routing out of the picture, and all of a sudden, they're very, very good... and one of the few "consumer" grade devices that can actually bind SSID's to a VLAN tag, which can be incredibly useful in some cases - Apple doesn't talk big about it, but it's there... (FWIW - the VLAN tagging is how they can extend Guest networks across extended AP's (e.g. WDS/Repeating).

Wireless range on them is not better or worse than anyone else - everyone is pretty much the same there because of the physics involved...