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Linksys Velop Roaming Garbage

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Kaleb12

Occasional Visitor
Hey guys looking for some advice in switching from my 3 node Velop system I currently have. I have had this system for over a year and have tried every configuration known to man. Have used wired backhaul and wireless mesh and tried every location possible in my house. The roaming features are terrible and my clients struggle to connect to the closest node.

Looking at either the Ubiquiti NanoHD or the EAP 245 by TP-Link. Anyone have experience with either on a gig line? What were your speed tests and overall experience with them?


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No experience with either. But you may want to look at the Eero line as well (many happy users here).
 
No experience with either. But you may want to look at the Eero line as well (many happy users here).

I have experience with all consumer grade products as I deal with them daily....Velop, Orbi, eero, google WiFi and none of these peak my interest anymore as the tech just isn’t there yet.


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From what I have read, the Eero is a very stable bit of kit. Is it the performance it offers that you don't like?
 
From what I have read, the Eero is a very stable bit of kit. Is it the performance it offers that you don't like?

Yes, I would agree it’s stable, but it’s not going to give me the throughput I desire. I need something that handles roaming well and also has high ratings for speed.


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I have good luck with Cisco small business wireless APs. They have single point setup so they can cluster multiple units. I have 3 Cisco WAP371 wireless units at my house. The roaming works good for me and our Apple devices as well our Windows 10 devices and I like the way they work. I get around 880 connection speed on my old Windows 10 laptop with an Intel AC7260 card using 5 GHz. I have 2.4 GHz turned off as I only use 5 GHz. Cisco has newer units which are better. They are POE+ devices. You place them where you need them.
 
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I have good luck with Cisco small business wireless APs. They have single point setup so they can cluster multiple units. I have 3 Cisco WAP371 wireless units at my house. The roaming works good for me and our Apple devices as well our Windows 10 devices and I like the way they work. I get around 880 connection speed on my old Windows 10 laptop with an Intel AC7260 card using 5 GHz. I have 2.4 GHz turned off as I only use 5 GHz. Cisco has newer units which are better. They are POE+ devices. You place them where you need them.

Just looked at these and for whatever reason they have awful reviews...


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Just looked at these and for whatever reason they have awful reviews...


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My wireless devices run 24/7 with no reboots. What reviews are you looking at?

PS
I even had a power outage. Where my master controller was connected to my entertainment center where I have 2000 watt power conditioner. The power conditioner requires a manual restart when it loses power. The other Cisco wireless WAP371 units promoted automatically a new master controller when the power came back because the master controller was still offline. I have since changed it around.
 
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Roaming is determined by the client device. APs and routers have a limited # of tricks they can do to influence roaming decisions. But, in the end, if the client doesn't want to roam, there is not much an AP can do.

Newer devices can roam better than old ones because they may support 802.11k/v or r roaming standards. Sometimes 11kvr support is added via driver upgrade.

https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33195-wi-fi-roaming-secrets-revealed

I realize that but when nearly all my devices aren’t connected to the correct node, this tells me it’s more of a node issue than specific device.


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Just looked at amazon reviews and they were horrible.


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I just looked on Amazon and there are 2 reviews. One review the user can't configure it and the other is "Configured and running flawlessly for 3 years now".

No way is this horrible reviews. I can't account for peoples' incompetence.

These Cisco wireless devices are pretty easy to configure. You configure one device and the others are just joined and they are configured automatically in the cluster.
 
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I just looked on Amazon and there are 2 reviews. One review the user can't configure it and the other is "Configured and running flawlessly for 3 years now".

No way is this horrible reviews. I can't account for peoples' incompetence.

These Cisco wireless devices a pretty easy to configure. You configure one device and the others are just joined and they are configured automatically in the cluster.

The unit I looked at had 52 reviews. I’m in no way worried about configuration.


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I realize that but when nearly all my devices aren’t connected to the correct node, this tells me it’s more of a node issue than specific device.
Another possibility is that you have too many nodes or they are too close together.
Devices typically need to drop to an RSSI below -70dBm before they initiate roaming.

What band do your devices connect to?
 
Another possibility is that you have too many nodes or they are too close together.
Devices typically need to drop to an RSSI below -70dBm before they initiate roaming.

What band do your devices connect to?

I have them spread out 80 or so feet apart. Speeds are good but it’s like my devices don’t know which node to connect to or they switch nodes while gaming or streaming causing a slight delay. I’m very experienced in the industry and can’t solve it. There are tons of issues on the Linksys forums explaining my same reasoning.

I have split my 2.4 and 5 and that didn’t solve it either. No QOS or WPS active.


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I bought an ASUS Rt-AC5300 about a year ago. I was upgrading from an older ASUS flagship device—the AC87u. I know the only difference is supposed to be having dual 5ghz 8 antenna WiFi, but the WiFi on it is incredible. I have it in a basement & still get a usable 100mb in places two stories above me or outside on the lawn—places where I had no connection before with previous routers—places where I might not have even been able to see my network SSID broadcast.

I recently bought an ROG-GT5300 & use it as my router & moved the ac5300 to the 2nd story & set it up as a wired Access Point (not using AiMesh until the bugs are removed.)

The Rog’s quad core gives me better blufferboat performance—regardless of if adaptive qos is on or is in sqf—than the dual core AC5300 with fq codel with the fresh mod that fixes it. Additionally it can handle multiple open vpn connections even with the encryption turned up:

I wish I could get merlin’s Firmware on it, but the rog dashboard gives me relevant info on current ping & other gaming related stats.

I know quad core is supposed to be overkill, but sounds like that is the kind of performance you are demanding/

I would put two 5300’s with a wired backbone up against any of these 3mesh ap systems. Plus, AiMesh will work with it once ASUS gets it stable. They have a better history than the competition when it comes to continuous firmware & support.

FYI, I had to turn my WiFi transmit power down on my router to get the desired roaming performance. I also set the roaming cutoff suggestion—it works with some newer hardware. Finally, I had to go Into windows WiFi adapter settings on one notebook & change the roaming aggressiveness.
 
I don't understand how people can't get the simple Cisco WAP371 wireless units to work. They are rock solid once you have them working correctly. If you have a real heavy load with lots of connections then the Cisco WAP581 wireless unit would be the correct unit to buy.

My Cisco wireless units just run in the background and I never mess with them. My trick to setup wireless is to only use 5 GHz radios. If you use 2.4 GHz radios then they will need to be turned down for roaming to work. If you get too much overlap your client devices are not going to roam correctly. If you use 5GHz you will quickly realize that 2.4 GHz is slow. So in my mind why use 2.4 GHz? I don't.
 
I don't understand how people can't get the simple Cisco WAP371 wireless units to work. They are rock solid once you have them working correctly. If you have a real heavy load with lots of connections then the Cisco WAP581 wireless unit would be the correct unit to buy.

My Cisco wireless units just run in the background and I never mess with them. My trick to setup wireless is to only use 5 GHz radios. If you use 2.4 GHz radios then they will need to be turned down for roaming to work. If you get too much overlap your client devices are not going to roam correctly. If you use 5GHz you will quickly realize that 2.4 GHz is slow. So in my mind why use 2.4 GHz? I don't.

Yes which makes perfect sense but the Velops have very limited configuration even in web mode. The lack up firmware updates and support is awful that is why I’m moving on.

Realistically what i want is something that will be rock solid performance wise....meaning 400+ mbps anywhere is my house when I Speedtest and the ability for all my devices to roam properly.

I can pick up the TP-Link Omada 1750s for around 80 bucks each which I may give a try. Anyone have experience with these on a gig line? It’s either the TP-Link or I bite the bullet and pick up a couple NanoHDs. Based on the several reviews I’ve seen the TP Links outperform the Ubiquiti products in throughout which is what I want....especially when running a gig line with current capability to jump to a 2 gig line if I wanted. No I don’t need it, but I’m a complete nerd and want everything to be as fast as humanly possible haha.

I’m always starting to wonder if the amount of sonos I have in my home is hindering wireless performance. I have 10+ sonos devices connected throughout my home.

And to answer the above about the Asus units, I completely agree the performance is amazing, I have seen some serious coverage and performance out of the AiMesh capabilities but I prefer the sleek look of a ceiling or wall unit as my wife won’t want these units sittings all over my home. FYI my house is about 4000 Sq ft.

Still looking for more feedback before I decide, I also don’t want to cheap out and end up replacing again in a year....although I probably will anyways once AC becomes mainstream.


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