Advice request for wireless design on complex house

[dohvak]

The house is long, skinny, and very tall. 4000 sq ft including sub-basement. It is built on massive slope, so the build is fairly tall at 4 floors. Interfering with connections are:

1. Central elevator (convenient for wiring but might as well be a giant antenna)
2. An engineered support wall nearly splitting the house that has about an 70-80% block on WiFi signal strength, anything stronger might as well be a Faraday cage
3. Garage is in middle floor of house, concrete floor, gets a better signal through it than the engineering wall but still bad.
4. I run clubs and gatherings fairly regularly at my house and have detected up to 34 devices simultaneously registered on the WiFi segment of my network.

My original setup was a C7 Archer, worked fairly good but didn't support multiple gaming consoles very well, and the wireless signal was horrible anything past one floor or through the engineering wall.

I have replaced the router with a DIY Qotom mini-PC running pfSense, all the routing/ACL and everything even has 4 xboxes working great... it only misses WiFi, so I am having troubles that I just can't seem to resolve on my own. I am using wired connections for all TVs, PCs, and consoles.

I have tried an AmpliFi HD setup in my house and am unhappy to date with it for WiFi. It works well for most rooms except doesn't link well through the engineering wall or through the garage floor. Also, running the HD in bridge mode makes the extenders very non-responsive (mobile devices that aren't using vpn or other constant connections seem to renegotiate every 15-20 seconds of idle usage giving a very lagging response). Using a sniffer shows the responses from the router as soon as it is relayed, so the problem would seem to be using phones/tablets/laptops (only when vpn shut down) and the AmpliFi HD. There may be something I am missing but between my renter and myself both being network professionals working on the bleeding edge it is either so obvious we missed it or there is something so corner-case we haven't asked the right questions.

I built this house, there are 36 CAT-6a drops to a central wiring block with no single drop travelling more than 80'. The connectivity is all to a 48-port layer 2 switch so I have plenty of room to futz with things. I am fairly sure my answer to my blocked mesh is to use the physical drops to support AP WiFi access.

I want something that will give excellent access anywhere in my house, using a single SSID, and work efficiently. I don't care how many APs I need to make this work but I get the feeling I will need 3-4 for perfect coverage.

 

[pete y testing]

I am using wired connections for all TVs, PCs, and consoles.

um this may be to obvious but why not just run wireless access points in those locations as well

I am fairly sure my answer to my blocked mesh is to use the physical drops to support AP WiFi access.

correct

I want something that will give excellent access anywhere in my house, using a single SSID, and work efficiently. I don't care how many APs I need to make this work but I get the feeling I will need 3-4 for perfect coverage

get something like the ubiquiti unifi ap's and ceiling mount them

or

any router that has a specific ap mode

you can give them all the same ssid and password just use different channels

 

[dohvak]

um this may be to obvious but why not just run wireless access points in those locations as well

Cause I am a wired ethernet kind of guy... and I tend to not think in WiFi terms when I obviously should

get something like the ubiquiti unifi ap's and ceiling mount them

Ubiquiti... was leaning that way. Should I get shorter range and more points for the problematic areas and an LR for the better access areas?

 

[pete y testing]

Ubiquiti... was leaning that way. Should I get shorter range and more points for the problematic areas and an LR for the better access areas?

the standard ones are better indoors , you can get away with the unifi ac lite its 867M on 5 gig and 300M on 2,4 a 3 pack should be more that enough , once setup they are pretty much set and forget

 

[KenZ71]

Assuming the support wall has living space on both sides that will give at least 4 zones with the concrete garage floor factored in.

Using ubiquity APs or similar poe units allows for centralized power management.

 

[sfx2000]

Site survey is the first thing that comes to mind - see what you go with a single AP where people generally use wireless in the daytime - then repeat on the off-hours.

Then backfill the WiFi from there - backhaul can be many ways - ethernet if you can get there, or MOCA/PLC as needed for additional AP's

 

[Samir]

Seems like you already know quite a bit of what you're doing. The challenge is to find a solution that will do what you want. Just from gauging the challenges and requirements, you'll need an enterprise solution. Ubiquiti, Ruckus, and Aruba are the names I've heard of. I'd as over on arstechnica forum as well. Those guys work on projects like this regularly.