Single AP for 3500 sq/ft house with good performance.... pipe dream?

[Tommyudo]

Hello All,

First post to the forum. I've got a 3500 square foot stick-built (2 story center-hall colonial) house with an un-finished basement. We have an attached deck and also use the yard a lot for entertaining. Internet service is FiOS 50/50 with their 802.11/n Actiontec router in the basement with the wireless turned off. We have approximately 10 hard-wired devices connected through an older managed gigabit switch to the Actiontec. They are a mixture of PCs, PS3, Roku3, HT Receiver, smart-TVs, etc.

For wireless, I have a current generation Apple Airport Extreme and 2 Airport Expresses as WAPs, hard wired to the switch. The AP Extreme is in one end of the house in a downstairs office, one of the Expresses is at the other end of our downstairs, and the other Express is more centrally located upstairs. All three Airports are using the same SSID for 2.4 GHz, with a separate joint SSID for the 5 GHz band. The APs are configured as Apple recommends. The wireless clients are a few PC laptops (all 2-3 years old) and about 6 iOS devices from iPhone 3GS to current.

The problem is that hand off between APs is not very smooth. We wind up having to turn the wireless off on the iOS devices and turn back on as we move from the house. What I would ultimately like to have is a single rock-solid Wireless AP to handle the whole house with good performance everywhere, but that seems unrealistic. Can a single AP do it all, or any other suggestions to optimize?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[System Error Message]

No because client tranasmitters arent good enough. Even with a very powerful AP the clients wont be powerful enough to transmit from all over the place.
A simple example would be distributing the wifi using a ubiquiti AP that has 3 Antennas for that single AP and using directional/sector antennas to cover the whole house. You will find that you get wifi signal but cant connect.

IOS devices have always had these problems and even more so on non-genuine ones.

 

[Tommyudo]

OK, that's good to know. Are there any APs out there that do an intelligent hand-off of the clients to another AP? Seems like relying on the same SSID name for hand-off is not optimal.

Tom

 

[stevech]

3500 ft.
Drywall not plaster or wood walls.
Two story, plywood floors.

I'd guess 1 WiFi router, 2 APs.
Excluding outdoor spaces.

 

[stevech]

OK, that's good to know. Are there any APs out there that do an intelligent hand-off of the clients to another AP? Seems like relying on the same SSID name for hand-off is not optimal.

Tom

I've not seen any such APs in the consumer world of unmanaged WiFi. It's hit and miss.

 

[sfx2000]

general WIFI "Rule of thumb" - 1500 sq ft for 2.4GHz, 750 sq ft for 5GHz. - this is in a 2D space...

and/or - and generally it's the OR in large footprint

25 clients per node in normal usage

exceed these limits, and service will not be good.

So with a 3500 sq ft coverage area - gonna need three AP's minimum to light up everything, then it's figuring out where to place them - I suggest common areas first, and then bedrooms perhaps, as folks want their streaming media boxen attached to the TV to get their dose of Netflix/Hulu/etc...

 

[Tommyudo]

general WIFI "Rule of thumb" - 1500 sq ft for 2.4GHz, 750 sq ft for 5GHz. - this is in a 2D space...

and/or - and generally it's the OR in large footprint

25 clients per node in normal usage

exceed these limits, and service will not be good.

So with a 3500 sq ft coverage area - gonna need three AP's minimum to light up everything, then it's figuring out where to place them - I suggest common areas first, and then bedrooms perhaps, as folks want their streaming media boxen attached to the TV to get their dose of Netflix/Hulu/etc...

OK, with that being said.... I'd love a recommendation for a solid AP that would works well in the above scenario (3 units deployed).

Thanks,

Tom

 

[stevech]

I don't need 802.11AC speeds for my wifi clients.Nor do I need 5GHz for those clients.
I have two ASUS routers than have an explicit AP mode. Both have been 100% reliable.
http://www.craigonsite.com/blog/2014/12/21/asus-rt-n12-d1-creating-multiple-ssids

 

[Trip]

Given everything above, a single AP is most likely a pipe dream. That said, a proper setup of overlapping unmanaged APs should work fine. Otherwise, intro-level mesh like Ubiquiti UniFi would assure seamless hand-off. The 3-pack for <$200 on Amazon is a pretty good deal.

 

[sfx2000]

Given everything above, a single AP is most likely a pipe dream. That said, a proper setup of overlapping unmanaged APs should work fine. Otherwise, intro-level mesh like Ubiquiti UniFi would assure seamless hand-off. The 3-pack for <$200 on Amazon is a pretty good deal.

I would not recommend going down the rat-hole of problems that MESH can provide - seriously, most folks don't need that level of pain...

OP is just looking for a solution that can be solved via a couple of AP's on a common DS...

 

[sfx2000]

I have a current generation Apple Airport Extreme and 2 Airport Expresses as WAPs, hard wired to the switch. The AP Extreme is in one end of the house in a downstairs office, one of the Expresses is at the other end of our downstairs, and the other Express is more centrally located upstairs. All three Airports are using the same SSID for 2.4 GHz, with a separate joint SSID for the 5 GHz band. The APs are configured as Apple recommends. The wireless clients are a few PC laptops (all 2-3 years old) and about 6 iOS devices from iPhone 3GS to current.

The problem is that hand off between APs is not very smooth. We wind up having to turn the wireless off on the iOS devices and turn back on as we move from the house.

On your Airports - one thing to try... and this might greatly simplify things without having to buy new hardware...

Use a common SSID and WPA2 password across all AP's - the primary Airport Extreme, and the extended Airport Expresses (you did not mention which models, BTW), and Apple does suggest that all bands use the same SSID, FWIW...

There's an Apple Technote to that end with Airports and Roaming Networks...

 

[sfx2000]

So for what it is worth - you likely have all the gear you need - just need to use it better...

Review the following link...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202056

sfx

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

My input...it is not a pipe dream.
I have a 3,600 sq ft home. Finished basement. 2 of the walls in the home are brick. My network rack is down in the basement by my bar. So my router..and wireless...is in the basement. But granted I've used wireless products that are stronger than the average residential grade.

I've played with various routers and wireless setup in my homes. ..and since SMB networks is what I do for a living, I love playing with different products, and my expectations are higher than 99.9% of other users out there.

My current home is a rather large 2 story....guess 3 story if you count finished basement. But either way..2 stories above ground, large colonial, 2 full width brick walls from front to back in the first floor.

For a while I've just run my Cisco e3000 router with Tomato firmware. Granted that product is known for having one of the strongest radios built for residential grade.

From the basement.

Wifes office is on top floor, in corner room..she has a couple of wireless computers and an HP MFP that is wireless. They run great.
We can both run our laptops upstairs in the master bedroom fine...just fine. Watching online porn videos stream just fine! Opposite end of the upstairs...in my office....I can still get 3 out of 5 bars...very usable bandwidth.

I can take my laptop out in the back yard, side of the property (1.5 acres)...by the pool cabana...and wireless even reaches out there fine.

Not long ago got my free DEMO package from Ubiquiti of their new Unifi AC products...I have the AC LR model at home, turned off the wireless of the e3000 and running that...works even a bit better than the e3000.

That said....my neighborhood is fairly spread out. Nobody behind me, and my neighbors to my left are a couple of hundred feet away, neighbors to my right are about 100 feet away, and nobody across the street from me but an elementary school set way back . In other words...not wifi crowded...so I don't have to worry about neighbors wifi causing performance issues.

If I had to increase for better coverage....I'd pick up another Unifi unit...and place it up on the top floor. Opposite end of the house of the other Unifi unit.

Also on the wireless...ChromeCast for TV, my laptop, my tablet, my phone, daughters laptop, daughters iPhone, daughters iPad, wifes 2x computers, wifes iPad, wifes iPhone.

 

[teksmith]

I have similarly sized, 2 story house (no basement). I have located an R7000 centrally downstairs and I get good coverage all over the house and even out in the yard to some extent.
The kids are using Mac computers wirelessly with pretty good performance.