Critique my plan for a mesh wifi network
Critique my plan for a mesh wifi network
I'm analyzing the optimal choice for your home network upgrade. Previously, you used a basic Netgear R6400 router with wireless devices throughout the house. The connection at your wife's office was decent but limited—only 40 Mbps on the 5GHz band, and overall speeds were poor. Your gaming setup was manageable for streaming, but downloading large files was slow. You've started homelabbing with a media server in the basement, which works for basic needs but struggles with bandwidth-intensive tasks like 4K streaming or large file transfers.
Your current router has significant issues on the 2.4GHz band, delivering just 5 Mbps even when close by. This suggests hardware limitations. You're considering a DIY solution using OPNsense and a mesh network system. The challenge lies in your home's layout—a unique, old house with antique woodwork makes running cables difficult without damaging it.
You're weighing a mesh router system over a traditional setup. Ideally, you'd want Wi-Fi 6E with fast Ethernet for hardwired connections to multiple nodes. This could improve speeds between your gaming PC and server, especially if both are connected via 2.5Gb ports. Your concern about Pihole switching in a mesh is valid—transitioning to a mesh might affect performance or configuration complexity.
Overall, the proposed mesh setup seems like a practical path forward, though it requires careful planning for cabling and placement.
It needs to connect via Wi-Fi, which won’t match the performance of a direct Ethernet cable. You might achieve more than 1gb/s, but latency could be unpredictable. Most data will still travel over Wi-Fi, making wireless links busy and potentially slow. This situation is similar to everything being connected directly to Wi-Fi already. I suggest considering powerline networking—its success depends on your home’s wiring. MoCA is a solid alternative if you have coax already installed. Pihole should work fine as long as devices are properly directed.
I thought mesh networks used a separate frequency band distinct from regular wireless signals, allowing data to hop between nodes without interfering with standard Wi-Fi. This means sending files would first travel via Ethernet to a mesh node, then through a dedicated channel to another node, and finally over Ethernet to the server. It shouldn’t compete for bandwidth with typical Wi-Fi devices. Is this view accurate? I’m also considering powerline communication, but it would likely require major changes to my wiring setup, which isn’t practical right now. MoCA could work since there’s an unused coax cable near my PC, though access might be tricky. I’ll explore that further.
I intended to choose a device similar to the TP-Link XE75s: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/tp-link-de...esh-system
The uplink operates independently from standard Wi-Fi but remains accessible to all connected devices, whether wired or wireless, linked to the same node. View the wireless uplink like an Ethernet connection, but using radio waves instead of copper—slower in speed. Data transfer between your PC and a server typically won’t cause issues. The issue arises when another device, also on the same node such as a laptop, sends data simultaneously with the server. This forces both to use the same wireless uplink, whose performance hinges on signal strength and reception quality.
The nodes are positioned roughly 370mbps away from the source on a 6GHz frequency, with no obstacles in the path. MoCA promises superior performance compared to any wireless alternative, reaching up to 2.5gbps. Only two adapters can be linked at once, and coaxial splitters won't allow more than two connections.
It’s roughly 20 feet, though it would have to pass through the floor. Still, it’s significantly quicker than 40 Mbps. If I ran MoCA, I’d likely only need two adapters (assuming my understanding is right).