Wifi AP Placement Suggestions

LeoWyatt

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone here had some advice to help maximise the wifi performance at home. The house is a 1930s semi so brick walls etc. Internet is provided by virgin media but currently I'm running a pair of Ubiquiti APs, 1 Pro (connected to the superhub 3 which is the green box) and 1 Lite which is connected wirelessly to the PRO.

This is what the setup looks like at the moment.

                                                                               

Generally the lounge, sitting room and bedrooms all have a decent signal, majority of the devices, TV etc are in the sitting room. The dinning room is ok but once you get to the back end of the kitchen the signal drops off.  The main device I'm struggling is the ring 2 doorbell which is located on the outside wall of the hallway. It often reports poor signal so I was wondering if relocating the downstairs AP would help. The layout I was wondering was this:

                                                                               
Though I'm not sure if I would really need the 3rd AP in the dining room, is this overkill?

Should I ditch the APs and try a different mesh setup? I have done the RF scan to try and find quiet channels to change the APs to and reduce the transmit power.

Thanks for any advice.

Kristian

My suggestion would be to get a long patch lead and test it properly.

The wifi signal from the APs will usually be a toroidal shape (donut) so a ground floor ceiling mounted AP should propagate upstairs.  I think three APs will be overkill, yes, and cause more problems.

Don't forget that if the AP-Lite is acting as a repeater then it will have have the bandwidth because traffic has two wifi hops to make.  It will also need a decent connection back to AP-Pro in order to provide a decent link from itself.

HTH

mickevh

There's nothing "magic" about the AP's in mesh systems - they are AP's just like any other. "Mesh" systems and probably not the silver bullet you seek.

Indeed, some of us might argue you already have a "mesh" system in that the link between your two incumbent AP's is a radio link which in olden days (before Marketing have hyped the term "mesh" to bits) such radio links between AP's were sometimes called "mesh" links by some vendors.

A third AP does seem like overkill, however looking at the placement you suggest, it looks like it would get the job done - though I wouldn't move the upstairs AP, that already looks like it's in about the best place. You could even try turning on your router Wi-fi for the lounge and move the Pro to the dining room (if you can either string a cable or the Pro will bind to your router over Wi-Fi - though two Wi-Fi repeater could seriously hammer the throughput.)

I agree with Kristian - it would be worthwhile using your existing kit to test and see how it works in alternate positions before spending any money.

LeoWyatt

If it is a donut shape then doesn't having the 2 APs on top of each other mean they'd be competing or is it because I've gone for separate channels I'm not having this problem?

I've just had a google and I can't use the ubiquiti APs as repeaters for the wifi from the VM superhub so it is all or nothing.  I am wondering if the downstairs AP would be better suited in the hallway instead so the other side of the door where it is now. I'm not a DIY person so drilling holes in walls and ceilings is a bit daunting haha. Though maybe there would put it too far away from the sitting room.

The 3rd AP in the dinning room would solve the wifi in the garden because there is a patio the otherside of the double doors.

mickevh

You can test it: Place a AP where in your intended location and turn it on - it doesn't need to be "connected" to anything - it will almost certainly advertise itself, but of course you connect to it, there won't be any onward connection to the rest of the network. Then take a client and have a wander around whilst looking at the reception quality - don't obsess over the absolute values of the numbers, it's trend we're looking for - what's "better" what's "worse" etc.

Beware that a lot of the little "bar" meters in client devices report "quality" (which could mean pretty much anything) and not necessarily "signal strength" (called RSSI in the jargon) - to be sure youd want to check the spec of th survey client you are using.

mikeysthoughts

You might benefit from Powerline networking, which would free you from the constraints of a wireless repeater (ie. Not dependent on being within range of the primary hub, and halving of throughput).

This would give you more placement opportunities, and I would then put one of the two towards the rear, giving better kitchen and garden coverage?

I'm in a 1930s build as I write this, and vertical transmission (ground floor to first) is stronger than horizontal (living room to kitchen). I'd suggest putting the upstairs repeater in the kitchen or dining room as an alternative. You may find that the current placement where one is above the other is causing interference which is diminishing the signal rather than increasing range/strength.

LeoWyatt

Thanks will try moving it, though there is a fridge below where I was thinking of ceiling mounting it which I'm guessing would cause some interference.

mickevh

Wi-Fi doesn't like anything metal or wet.

To truely know the transmission/reception pattern of your AP's you'd need to either find a datasheet that shows it (some publish azimuth and elevation plots) and/or find out how the antenna are designed and orientated within the unit.

By way of some examples - the transmissions pattern from a simple di-pole antenna (a "stick") is the torroidal (ring, not jam) doughnut shape already described: Radiation propagates (and is received) better perpendicular to the stick than along the axis.

However, most modern AP's have multiple antenna and sometimes (if they lack external positional antenna,) the antenna placement in the device is designed to achieve a more omni-directional pattern - for example by positioning antenna at 90 degrees to each other around the edge of the casing.

Some AP's don't even have separate "antenna" components at all and use solder tracks/blobs on the PCB as their antenna.

To really know, one needs to research otherwise we're just guessing.

LeoWyatt

You mean like these AP-Lite and AP-Pro

Regarding metal I suspect the is an RSJ between the kitchen and dining room which is going to cause problems.

mickevh

Yep, that's the sort of thing. It tends to  be the enterprise and pro-sumer vendors that provide it, but some of the SOHO cheapies do so too.

You may notice the elevation plots have something of a cardoid (heart shaped) pattern; this isn't unusual for devices designed to be ceiling mounted. The idea is that they "shoot" down from the ceiling towards the floor more so that upwards. Sometimes it's simply because there's a wacking great aluminium mounting plate on the back, but a few vendors claim it to be "by design" to help with coverage planning.