Creating Mesh with ISP router

[Filingo]

Is it possible to create mesh with the same Wi-Fi that the ISP router makes?

 

There's a spot in the house with bad Wi-Fi, so I wanted to add an AP that transmits Wi-Fi (There are some Ethernet sockets close there where I can connect them)

 

But I want it to be seen as the same Wi-Fi as the main router and switch between the AP and the router seamlessly

 

Is it possible or I need another solution? (Either a strong AP like Ubiquiti or change the entire Wi-Fi to less powerful APs that Ubiquiti, but use maybe pair - one connected to the router and replacing its Wi-Fi and second in the other spot)

[Rysters Tech]

Ok, let me get this out of the way, from my experience, and others experiences, isp routers are always the cheapest piece of crap routers on the planet, they typically do not support much if any customization at all and typicaly do not play nicely with wifi repeaters.

[steelo]

6 minutes ago, SiliconMagician said:

Ok, let me get this out of the way, from my experience, and others experiences, isp routers are always the cheapest piece of crap routers on the planet, they typically do not support much if any customization at all and typicaly do not play nicely with wifi repeaters.

This. I usually throw our isp router in a closet only to be touched again if my router somehow craps out.

[Rysters Tech]

6 hours ago, steelo said:

This. I usually throw our isp router in a closet only to be touched again if my router somehow craps out.

ok, from my experince, tp link routers are the most long lives and get the best coverage, and even if you do need a repeater, such as if you have a large house or a very old one with concrete walls, tp link makes their own repeaters that are designed to work their best with tplink routers, and from what ive heard are quite easy to setup.

[Falcon1986]

9 minutes ago, Filingo said:

Is it possible to create mesh with the same Wi-Fi that the ISP router makes?

Without knowing what make/model of ISP device you use, that will be difficult to say.

 

Some ISPs will provide mesh solutions or WiFi extenders, but you'll have to pay extra for the service every month.

 

12 minutes ago, Filingo said:

There's a spot in the house with bad Wi-Fi, so I wanted to add an AP that transmits Wi-Fi (There are some Ethernet sockets close there where I can connect them)

Then you just need a simple AP. This can be a dedicated AP or a router that can be converted to AP mode. The benefit of the latter is that you can also use the ethernet ports like a switch for wired client connectivity.

 

13 minutes ago, Filingo said:

But I want it to be seen as the same Wi-Fi as the main router and switch between the AP and the router seamlessly

Full mesh systems or SD-WAN-based solutions are best for this. That's because the hardware and software work together.

 

But you can mimic the seamless roaming with your own AP; it might not be a perfect execution. In the area with poor coverage, install the AP and adjust the antenna power output so that it just barely covers the space. You'll need to give it the same SSID, encryption/security, password, etc. as the primary router. Then test with a mobile device moving from one area to the other. The client device should transition to the stronger signal.

[Filingo]

14 minutes ago, SiliconMagician said:

Ok, let me get this out of the way, from my experience, and others experiences, isp routers are always the cheapest piece of crap routers on the planet, they typically do not support much if any customization at all and typicaly do not play nicely with wifi repeaters.

 

8 minutes ago, steelo said:

This. I usually throw our isp router in a closet only to be touched again if my router somehow craps out.

 

5 minutes ago, SiliconMagician said:

ok, from my experince, tp link routers are the most long lives and get the best coverage, and even if you do need a repeater, such as if you have a large house or a very old one with concrete walls, tp link makes their own repeaters that are designed to work their best with tplink routers, and from what ive heard are quite easy to setup.

Thank you all

It is indeed an old house with thick walls

What would be the most budget option then? I do prefer to leave the ISP router for LAN and not completely ditch it. What is the most "budget" solution in this case? (1 TP-link router + 1 AP, 2 APs only without router, 1 powerful AP?)

 

  

1 minute ago, Falcon1986 said:

Without knowing what make/model of ISP device you use, that will be difficult to say.

 

Some ISPs will provide mesh solutions or WiFi extenders, but you'll have to pay extra for the service every month.

 

Then you just need a simple AP. This can be a dedicated AP or a router that can be converted to AP mode. The benefit of the latter is that you can also use the ethernet ports like a switch for wired client connectivity.

 

Full mesh systems or SD-WAN-based solutions are best for this. That's because the hardware and software work together.

 

But you can mimic the seamless roaming with your own AP; it might not be a perfect execution. In the area with poor coverage, install the AP and adjust the antenna power output so that it just barely covers the space. You'll need to give it the same SSID, encryption/security, password, etc. as the primary router. Then test with a mobile device moving from one area to the other. The client device should transition to the stronger signal.

 Ty, what is a budget solution from what you mentioned?

[steelo]

17 minutes ago, Filingo said:

 

 

Thank you all

It is indeed an old house with thick walls

What would be the most budget option then? I do prefer to leave the ISP router for LAN and not completely ditch it. What is the most "budget" solution in this case? (1 TP-link router + 1 AP, 2 APs only without router, 1 powerful AP?)

 

  

 Ty, what is a budget solution from what you mentioned?

I'm really enjoying our tp-link archer ax1800...it's a budget router that seems to work very well, has wifi 6 and can connect to a usb drive for network storage. I believe it has an option for wifi mesh (if you buy the adapters) but I've never tried it 

[Filingo]

5 minutes ago, steelo said:

I'm really enjoying our tp-link archer ax1800...it's a budget router that seems to work very well, has wifi 6 and can connect to a usb drive for network storage. I believe it has an option for wifi mesh (if you buy the adapters) but I've never tried it 

That's good, I also saw TP-LInk's OneMesh.

But I completely forgot - TP Link also have range extenders, could that work? (Don't extenders use the same Wi-Fi?)

[brwainer]

A few things to keep in mind, of varying technical detail:

1. Wireless really works best when all the AP (Access Points) are the same brand/series, regardless of mesh or not. Or, at the very least, when you are troubleshooting something not working you want to be dealing with just one system. An Access Point is anything that provides a wireless network (SSID), they can be separate units or built in to a “router” (router has two meanings, the original is a device that sits between two subnets, like your LAN and the internet, and passes traffic between them, what most people call a router is a combination of a router, switch, access point, and sometimes a modem/ONT, and is better referred to as a SOHO router - Small Office / Home Office)
2. Multiple access points / routers can broadcast the same SSID, and client devices will roam between them, without things being a “mesh”. As long as the name, password, and encryption settings are the same, the clients won’t care.
3. For true mesh, where the additional access points you add are uplinked via wireless instead of ethernet/powerline/MoCA, the upstream device needs to be capable of sending and receiving packets with 4 MAC addresses instead of 3. Regular wifi packets contain the source MAC (e.g. computer), true destination MAC (e.g. LAN interface of the router’s CPU), and wireless destination MAC (e.g. the wireless radio of the AP or router). A mesh wifi packet needs to add the wireless source mac, meaning the mesh node that the computer is connected to. Because of this, nearly all “ISP routers” cannot be used as an upstream for true mesh, and it is even more important to use equipment from the same manufacturer.
4. An alternative to true mesh is a wireless repeater, also called a range extender. A repeater connects to the upstream network as a client, and then repeats that network itself. It has to act as a router and hide all the clients that connect to it, because there isn’t an industry standard way to tell the main router about the clients behind the repeater. Repeaters can use any network as their upstream, and from other manufacturers. But if you have something connected to the repeater, like a printer, you won’t be able to access it from the main network.
5. For both mesh and repeaters, a major distinguishing factor is whether the device has one 5GHz radio that is shared for both uplink and clients, or two radios that are each dedicated to a single purpose. Dedicated radios are better if that isn’t obvious. While a single radio isn’t terrible, and a lot of the popular mesh systems only have one, dual radios systems aren’t significantly more expensive.

[steelo]

3 minutes ago, brwainer said:

A few things to keep in mind, of varying technical detail:

1. Wireless really works best when all the AP (Access Points) are the same brand/series, regardless of mesh or not. Or, at the very least, when you are troubleshooting something not working you want to be dealing with just one system. An Access Point is anything that provides a wireless network (SSID), they can be separate units or built in to a “router” (router has two meanings, the original is a device that sits between two subnets, like your LAN and the internet, and passes traffic between them, what most people call a router is a combination of a router, switch, access point, and sometimes a modem/ONT, and is better referred to as a SOHO router - Small Office / Home Office)
2. Multiple access points / routers can broadcast the same SSID, and client devices will roam between them, without things being a “mesh”. As long as the name, password, and encryption settings are the same, the clients won’t care.
3. For true mesh, where the additional access points you add are uplinked via wireless instead of ethernet/powerline/MoCA, the upstream device needs to be capable of sending and receiving packets with 4 MAC addresses instead of 3. Regular wifi packets contain the source MAC (e.g. computer), true destination MAC (e.g. LAN interface of the router’s CPU), and wireless destination MAC (e.g. the wireless radio of the AP or router). A mesh wifi packet needs to add the wireless source mac, meaning the mesh node that the computer is connected to. Because of this, nearly all “ISP routers” cannot be used as an upstream for true mesh, and it is even more important to use equipment from the same manufacturer.
4. An alternative to true mesh is a wireless repeater, also called a range extender. A repeater connects to the upstream network as a client, and then repeats that network itself. It has to act as a router and hide all the clients that connect to it, because there isn’t an industry standard way to tell the main router about the clients behind the repeater. Repeaters can use any network as their upstream, and from other manufacturers. But if you have something connected to the repeater, like a printer, you won’t be able to access it from the main network.
5. For both mesh and repeaters, a major distinguishing factor is whether the device has one 5GHz radio that is shared for both uplink and clients, or two radios that are each dedicated to a single purpose. Dedicated radios are better if that isn’t obvious. While a single radio isn’t terrible, and a lot of the popular mesh systems only have one, dual radios systems aren’t significantly more expensive.

Very good points. Also, you need to keep in mind mesh sytems do extend coverage but the repeaters only relay the same speed they receive, so there is a bit of bandwidth lost.

[steelo]

7 minutes ago, Filingo said:

That's good, I also saw TP-LInk's OneMesh.

But I completely forgot - TP Link also have range extenders, could that work? (Don't extenders use the same Wi-Fi?)

Edit: It would work using the same wifi network ssid, but I'm not sure devices on the repeater can access devices on the main wifi network.

[steelo]

16 minutes ago, Filingo said:

That's good, I also saw TP-LInk's OneMesh.

But I completely forgot - TP Link also have range extenders, could that work? (Don't extenders use the same Wi-Fi?)

Another option are powerline wifi adapters. They are a bit slower but I've found them to provide very reliable connections assuming the wiring in your home is relatively modern. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can use the same ssid.

[Filingo]

thank you all for the help!

 

1 hour ago, steelo said:

Another option are powerline wifi adapters. They are a bit slower but I've found them to provide very reliable connections assuming the wiring in your home is relatively modern. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you can use the same ssid.

I do have wired powerline and it's great, but also wired the house with ethernet so wanted to use that

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

A few things to keep in mind, of varying technical detail:

1. Multiple access points / routers can broadcast the same SSID, and client devices will roam between them, without things being a “mesh”. As long as the name, password, and encryption settings are the same, the clients won’t care.

1 hour ago, Falcon1986 said:

Then you just need a simple AP. This can be a dedicated AP or a router that can be converted to AP mode. The benefit of the latter is that you can also use the ethernet ports like a switch for wired client connectivity.

Then if I go for the AP solution, and connect it in the low signal area with same SSID, it should work and switch to the better signal automatically? (one of the ISP, and one of TP-Link for example, and if it is causing issues then buy another TP-Link AP?)

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, steelo said:

Very good points. Also, you need to keep in mind mesh sytems do extend coverage but the repeaters only relay the same speed they receive, so there is a bit of bandwidth lost.

A mesh system using a single radio shared for upstream and downstream will also by definition cut speeds in half or worse. Speed wise, there isn’t a theoretical difference between a single radio mesh and a single radio repeater.

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, steelo said:

Edit: It would work using the same wifi network ssid, but I'm not sure devices on the repeater can access devices on the main wifi network.

Devices on the repeater can access the main wifi network, but not vice versa.

[brwainer]

42 minutes ago, Filingo said:

thank you all for the help!

 

I do have wired powerline and it's great, but also wired the house with ethernet so wanted to use that

Then if I go for the AP solution, and connect it in the low signal area with same SSID, it should work and switch to the better signal automatically? (one of the ISP, and one of TP-Link for example, and if it is causing issues then buy another TP-Link AP?)

If you match up the SSID, password, as well as the encryption settings (WPA vs WPA2) then clients should not have an issue moving between the ISP router and AP. Yes, later on you can add another AP and just disable the ISP router’s builtin wireless (or change it to some other SSID, if there are no clients on it there won’t be any meaningful interference)

[Filingo]

3 hours ago, SiliconMagician said:

Ok, let me get this out of the way, from my experience, and others experiences, isp routers are always the cheapest piece of crap routers on the planet, they typically do not support much if any customization at all and typicaly do not play nicely with wifi repeaters.

I forgot to ask: 

Could my problem be solved with simply buying a good router instead? Like powerful TP Link such as the AX21? and I won't need to worry about dead zones any more?

 

It's a 1100 square foot place

[Falcon1986]

1 hour ago, Filingo said:

Then if I go for the AP solution, and connect it in the low signal area with same SSID, it should work and switch to the better signal automatically? (one of the ISP, and one of TP-Link for example, and if it is causing issues then buy another TP-Link AP?)

Client devices should switch automatically if the newly-detected signal is stronger than the previous, whether they share the same or different SSIDs. But some devices don't like to "let go" unless the signal strength falls to a certain threshold. For this reason, you have to tune the power output of your APs so that, as the signal from the AP behind you falls off, the device starts to detect the signal from the AP ahead and switches over.

 

Doing all of this is not much of a concern with SOHO/enterprise WiFi systems because the network hardware/controller does this in the background.

 

37 minutes ago, brwainer said:

If you match up the SSID, password, as well as the encryption settings (WPA vs WPA2) then clients should not have an issue moving between the ISP router and AP. Yes, later on you can add another AP and just disable the ISP router’s builtin wireless (or change it to some other SSID, if there are no clients on it there won’t be any meaningful interference)

Agreed.

 

I'd just add that the wireless channel should be different and non-overlapping with the other AP to avoid wireless interference. Although, if the signal of one AP is low enough (e.g. say less than -80dBm), that should be fine.

 

18 minutes ago, Filingo said:

I forgot to ask: 

Could my problem be solved with simply buying a good router instead? Like powerful TP Link such as the AX21? and I won't need to worry about dead zones any more?

 

It's a 1100 square foot place

You're hoping that a new wireless router will produce a stronger signal. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

 

Most wireless routers are tuned out of the box to stay within regulatory limits for the country they're in. And this regulatory limit applies to all wireless routers/APs no matter the generation. So you can imagine, that unless you're jumping by maybe 2 generations of WiFi, hoping to see an improvement in coverage by upgrading your single wireless router is less likely to occur. You're more likely to see an improvement if you eliminated all of the internal walls in your home and placed the router/AP at the center of it. That should tell you how much the environment plays on signal quality.

 

Now, some manufacturers employ additional technologies to allow for better reception even with the limited antenna power output. But even with these additional features, it's a 50/50 chance it will be a significant improvement in the large modern homes we live in today and the client devices with so many different wireless chipsets. Using multiple APs at well-planned-out locations will provide better coverage and more reliable speeds.

[steelo]

2 hours ago, brwainer said:

Devices on the repeater can access the main wifi network, but not vice versa.

Gotcha. I wasn't sure.

[steelo]

1 hour ago, Falcon1986 said:

Client devices should switch automatically if the newly-detected signal is stronger than the previous, whether they share the same or different SSIDs. But some devices don't like to "let go" unless the signal strength falls to a certain threshold. For this reason, you have to tune the power output of your APs so that, as the signal from the AP behind you falls off, the device starts to detect the signal from the AP ahead and switches over.

 

Doing all of this is not much of a concern with SOHO/enterprise WiFi systems because the network hardware/controller does this in the background.

 

Agreed.

 

I'd just add that the wireless channel should be different and non-overlapping with the other AP to avoid wireless interference. Although, if the signal of one AP is low enough (e.g. say less than -80dBm), that should be fine.

 

You're hoping that a new wireless router will produce a stronger signal. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

 

Most wireless routers are tuned out of the box to stay within regulatory limits for the country they're in. And this regulatory limit applies to all wireless routers/APs no matter the generation. So you can imagine, that unless you're jumping by maybe 2 generations of WiFi, hoping to see an improvement in coverage by upgrading your single wireless router is less likely to occur. You're more likely to see an improvement if you eliminated all of the internal walls in your home and placed the router/AP at the center of it. That should tell you how much the environment plays on signal quality.

 

Now, some manufacturers employ additional technologies to allow for better reception even with the limited antenna power output. But even with these additional features, it's a 50/50 chance it will be a significant improvement in the large modern homes we live in today and the client devices with so many different wireless chipsets. Using multiple APs at well-planned-out locations will provide better coverage and more reliable speeds.

2.4ghz band works 99% of the time in our 1500 sq ft home....it's 5g that gets flaky, especially between floors. I've had good luck using pl adapters for my work from home office. The speeds are cut down significantly (400 mbps wifi internet connection downstairs while only a 50-60 mbps using pl) but it's plenty for conference calls and work and more importantly, it is stable. The biggest issue I've had is with my employers vpn...I'm lucky to get a 10 mbps connection to their network.

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, Filingo said:

It's a 1100 square foot place

If you can get the router/AP in the middle, and the walls aren’t something horrible for signal strength (like lath and plaster especially with horse hair, or cinderblock), and the floorplan is relative square, then a single good AP/router would likely be all you need. That is a generalized statement and there are a lot of variables. If you have a dozen small rooms instead of a handful of larger ones, that means more walls. If the floorplan is stretched out, like a so-called “shotgun house”, then you likely have the ends too far from the center, and two APs at the 1/4 - 1/3 marks would be needed. The type and placement if furniture and appliances also matters.

[Rysters Tech]

On 2/19/2022 at 1:45 PM, Filingo said:

I forgot to ask: 

Could my problem be solved with simply buying a good router instead? Like powerful TP Link such as the AX21? and I won't need to worry about dead zones any more?

 

It's a 1100 square foot place

It may or may not, i have no context for the square footage of your house, but what i can tell you is to see what radius the AX21 is known to cover, using information FROM INDEPENDENT REVIEWERS!!, in real world environment. Also ensure your walls are not made of thick concrete or any other type of material that does not agree with Wi-Fi

[Filingo]

thanks everyone!