Alternative to BT Homehub5.

Great to hear the same tweak works on the HH5 too. Thanks both

None of the Mesh wifi access points are available in the UK./Europe. I believe theres issues with regulations thats the issues not technologies

Thanks for the info. Ah, so that’s the reason they are not out in the UK. I do hope the manufactures manage to get the units through the red tape as Mesh Networking looks like it could be a promising solution for expanding Wi-Fi coverage.

The Netgear Orbi is available in the UK though - does this work differently to the Eero and Luma?

My  HH5 was fine; never a problem.  The HH6 is even better

mazsex posted:

None of the Mesh wifi access points are available in the UK./Europe. I believe theres issues with regulations thats the issues not technologies

Wifi mesh technology access points (WMN) are prevalent in the U.K. in commercial environments such as large offices, football stadiums, universities, concert halls etc. and can be suited for larger homes. WMN uses standard wifi power and frequency allocations and so has no regulatory impact.

Simon

Simon, 

Being a networking newbie as it were, and new to these terms, I’d only recently heard of Mesh Wi-Fi; courtesy of an Apple Mac podcast (US centric) where the presenter tested the Eero system and gushed at the difference it made to their Wi-Fi coverage, where prior, they had dead zones and drop outs, all cured with the Eero. Their observations piqued my interest as the Wi-Fi problems they described echoed my own. As per the original post, they referenced the Netgear Orbi, Luma and Eero.

As a minor update, I’m probably going to try BT’s Smart Hub (Home Hub 6), as my contract is up for renegotiation at the end of next week, so I'm wondering if BT will supply a new hub as part of the contract. Will see.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

mazsex posted:

None of the Mesh wifi access points are available in the UK./Europe. I believe theres issues with regulations thats the issues not technologies

Wifi mesh technology access points (WMN) are prevalent in the U.K. in commercial environments such as large offices, football stadiums, universities, concert halls etc. and can be suited for larger homes. WMN uses standard wifi power and frequency allocations and so has no regulatory impact.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Be aware that at the moment we're seeing some "interesting" issues being reported with a number of the consumer-targeted mesh networking solutions in general as far as multicast / broadcast traffic is concerned ... I would presume they'll be ironed out with firmware updates from the manufacturers over time.

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

mazsex posted:

None of the Mesh wifi access points are available in the UK./Europe. I believe theres issues with regulations thats the issues not technologies

Wifi mesh technology access points (WMN) are prevalent in the U.K. in commercial environments such as large offices, football stadiums, universities, concert halls etc. and can be suited for larger homes. WMN uses standard wifi power and frequency allocations and so has no regulatory impact.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Be aware that at the moment we're seeing some "interesting" issues being reported with a number of the consumer-targeted mesh networking solutions in general as far as multicast / broadcast traffic is concerned ... I would presume they'll be ironed out with firmware updates from the manufacturers over time.

Phil

None of the Eero, Unifi, Netgear etc consumer focussed stuff is available outside of the USA. Every time I ask them they say regulatory stuff is stopping them going to other countries.

I don't know if it's the same as "mesh". I was looking at Ubiquiti Unifi for extending WiFi range seamlessly through the house. The old-hub-as-a-booster option was quicker to do and obviously cheaper. It worked so well I stuck with it. Maybe one day I'll revisit Ubiquiti Unifi.

Harry posted:

I don't know if it's the same as "mesh". I was looking at Ubiquiti Unifi for extending WiFi range seamlessly through the house. The old-hub-as-a-booster option was quicker to do and obviously cheaper. It worked so well I stuck with it. Maybe one day I'll revisit Ubiquiti Unifi.

The Unifi kit isn't a mesh topology, it uses multiple wireless access points with wired "backhaul" to the main network.

Phil

And it's work very well thank you Phil

Paul Stephenson posted:

And it's work very well thank you Phil

Not out fishing today then Paul?

Some of us are working hard you know...

Phil

Thanks Phil.

I got the idea from my dealer. Wonder if they got it off Naim?

Harry posted:

Thanks Phil.

I got the idea from my dealer. Wonder if they got it off Naim?

Possibly - I have spoken with a number of dealers about the Ubiquiti kit alternatively you can always use a more basic solution and set up a cable router 'inside' of your existing ISPs router - I did a little how-to document for that using a Linksys EA series router as an example.

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

mazsex posted:

None of the Mesh wifi access points are available in the UK./Europe. I believe theres issues with regulations thats the issues not technologies

Wifi mesh technology access points (WMN) are prevalent in the U.K. in commercial environments such as large offices, football stadiums, universities, concert halls etc. and can be suited for larger homes. WMN uses standard wifi power and frequency allocations and so has no regulatory impact.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Be aware that at the moment we're seeing some "interesting" issues being reported with a number of the consumer-targeted mesh networking solutions in general as far as multicast / broadcast traffic is concerned ... I would presume they'll be ironed out with firmware updates from the manufacturers over time.

Phil

Phil - which manufacturers - I assume this is all consumer land again? - no issues in corporate environments with Multicast using Huawei and Cisco as far as I am aware.. and certainly some very large public sector high profile customers using this  as well... and of course one sometimes needs to configure how you handle multicast/UDP traffic on wifi access points (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/s...lticast-wlc-lap.html) .... again in the corporate managed device space... and that has nothing todo with WMN   - as we know WMN works effectively below the IP level 

Hi Simon,

Yes, I did carefully state "consumer targeted" - I have no doubt that corporate solutions would be more reliable but less available to people likely to be reading these forums and simply seeing the word "mesh".

We've had issues reported with Google WiFi and the NetGear mesh solutions (both US products) as well as with Sky Q (which I realize isn't mesh but is touted as the solution to all your networking woes and many people perceive as a mesh solution).

I believe that our R&D guys have been trying to get some of the Google WiFi and Ubiquiti Amplfi kit in to look at.

Cheers

Phil

Hi Phil - I am aware of a few Unifi Ubiquiti commercial deployments in the UK - haven't heard of any issues - but I haven't specifically asked about multicast... but these days even in consumer land Multicast is used more and more  - even in  its simplest form - such as for for basic UPnP host discovery. What issues you seeing?

Yes like many things in consumer, terms appear sometimes to be used incorrectly/inappropriately by marketing / product depts  - mesh wifi means RFC 802.11s, a wifi meshing protocol specifically supporting  broadcast/multicast and unicast

S

Netgear Orbi and the new Linksys Velop are now both available in the UK...  The latter very new, but supports wired backhaul which could be interesting... 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi Phil - I am aware of a few Unifi Ubiquiti commercial deployments in the UK - haven't heard of any issues - but I haven't specifically asked about multicast... but these days even in consumer land Multicast is used more and more  - even in  its simplest form - such as for for basic UPnP host discovery. What issues you seeing?

Yes like many things in consumer, terms appear sometimes to be used incorrectly/inappropriately by marketing / product depts  - mesh wifi means RFC 802.11s, a wifi meshing protocol specifically supporting  broadcast/multicast and unicast

S

Hi Simon,

But the Unifi isn't a mesh and we don't have any reported issues with those units so I'm not sure why you are raising those in a discussion about mesh networking? I use Ubiquiti Unifi (and Edgerouter Lite) at home for my own internal network and it has been utterly reliable for about four years (since it was first put in) - similarly the Ubiquiti kit that I installed at "old God's" house has also been solid for the last couple of years too.

Getting back to mesh kit though, a typical report from a customer in the US with Google WiFi would typically arrive with us as problems with UPnP autodiscovery and hunting around it's affecting multiple platforms such as PS/4s and generic UPnP servers not just our kit.

We've had a number of network stability and discovery issues reported with SkyQs WiFi networking too - especially since it seems they have enabled their Ethernet Over Mains in a recent firmware update and that seems to have made things rather less stable.

Phil

You are right, I didn't mean to imply it was - and it was too late to edit my message. I looked at the Unifi support pages and they acknowledge they are not 802.11s mesh compliant and don't give a date to when they will be... the best I can gather is they use some sort of propriety WDS type technology to achieve a mesh. Normally WDS is not usually seen as a good solution for true wifi distribution or meshing - I am sure however they have got it working ok .. 

Anyway back to the point - so are you seeing multicast addressed packets dropped or unreliable on your consumer devices - or are they actually using IGMP pruning but are not snooping the IGMP correctly? or don't you know yet?

I would be very surprised that the Google Wifi is anything to do with 802.11s - as that protocol has worked for many years providing meshing for unicast and multicast in industrial devices - I suspect its more to do with the product implementation as I suggest above that will get debugged in time.

BTW you sure Netgear Obi is 802.11s? I thought that was another proprietary WDS type affair - could be wrong though

S

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

You are right, I didn't mean to imply it was - and it was too late to edit my message. I looked at the Unifi support pages and they acknowledge they are not 802.11s mesh compliant and don't give a date to when they will be... the best I can gather is they use some sort of propriety WDS type technology to achieve a mesh. Normally WDS is not usually seen as a good solution for true wifi distribution or meshing - I am sure however they have got it working ok .. but perhaps you suggest they haven't in certain scenarios

We've had absolutely NO problems reported so far with Unifi stuff that I am aware of...

So far from the "mesh" camp we've had issues reported with "Google WiFi" and the NetGear Orbi" kit but I presume they'll eventually resolve that with firmware updates...

Phil  

According to the web - Netgear Obi does not use true 802.11s meshing either - its uses some  sort of proprietary variant to achieve a mesh.. but by the same token I really don't think it is likely that that has anything to do with the dropping broadcast/multicast packets

Unfortunately when something goes on sale at Circuit City or BestBuy (or Currys / PC World / Maplin) the purchasers rarely investigate exactly how it works or what protocols it implements - they just get told that it will be better than what they were told was the best thing the day before it came out.

We get to mop up the "I've bought this and now it doesn't work..." reports.

Just saying that at this point consumer targeted mesh networking kit that we're getting flagged up to us does seem to leave a bit to be desired at this point in time - I have no doubt that enterprise level stuff is fine.

Phil

From Phil’s detailed info (thanks!) and discussion with Simon it looks like the first iteration of the domestic market orientated Mesh systems have a little way to go before they are fully stable - and of course readily available. So, decision made. As a known quality that works with Naim and UPnP, tomorrow I'll order the new Homehub 6 and then follow Harry’s instructions to repurpose the old HH5 for use in my office to extend the network.