Complex environment. Need stable and powerful setup. Advice?

[UnixWizard]

Home is large, 3 floors with typical interior walls, max distance from center of house to exterior wall is 50':

Upstairs: Bedrooms, bathrooms, and playroom. PS3, laptops, and phones are common clients.
Main: Office, a bedroom, living room, kitchen, etc. one HDTV with streaming apps, laptops and phone are common clients.
Basement: Office, bedroom, family room, workout room, home theater. Plex server, File server, Database server, laptops, streaming large screen HDTV, and a HDTV projector, a PS4, and phones are common clients.

Home is pre-wired for ethernet so I have placement choices for router.

I need the router that will provide the best coverage and throughput in a multi-device setting where streaming video occurs all the time, whether to phones or laptops, or from netflix, etc. At least 3 simultaneous HD streams should be supported. Devices are mixed, some can support only 2.4Ghz, and many arent even AC capable, but some are.

I am technical enough that I'm not scared of using OpenWRT or needing to fiddle with things if I need to, but I'd rather not spend my time doing such things if ready made solutions are at hand.

I plan to get the things that are fixed off of the wireless, like the servers, projector, etc. but the clients still connect to the servers for their data (Plex, file share, domain controller, etc.) over wireless.

Things to note: I am not against a multi-AP setup, but then which one(s) should I use, etc.?
I hate having disconnects. It disrupts streaming, breaks game connections, and is just a pain. I usually end up setting radios manually to avoid channel hopping just to stop this.
I am open to getting high gain antennas. Or amplifiers.
I don't care about absolute thoughput, but Stability of the network is paramount. We use VPN connections all day long for work. We should be able to roam throughout the house without having a single connection drop. Ever.
I need to prioritize traffic by type and device. Video feeds are great, but the VPN and other 'work' traffic must get priority.

Cost isnt critical, but I'm not Bill Gates. The whole setup should stay under $1000. Preferably much under.

I am considering the ASUS 3200 or going with Edimax WAP1750 & CAP1200 for a multi-AP setup, but I have no issues using something different.

Thank you!

 

[System Error Message]

There are a few ways to do this but do you plan on using more features on routing such as QoS, firewall, etc? Your internet speed is important too. If you could place a wifi router right in the middle of the house it might cover everything although 5Ghz has a much lower range.

Do you need wifi performance? VPN performance? Routing performance?
If you need wifi performance when using multiple APs connect them using ethernet or MoCa or similar if not you can just get an AC3200 and use it as a central AP in which other wifi APs will connect to them. Im not an expert on wifi range but getting a wifi router and testing it would help in building it. If you need multiple you can get inexpensive wifi routers/APs from any good model and just have them running with minimal configuration. MU-MIMO like the asus AC87U is good for multiple devices if all clients have MU-MIMO otherwise you will need to use either multiple 2 or 3 stream AC wifi routers or something like the AC3200. In general even a 2 stream AC wifi router can handle many devices on wifi but it really depends on how much wifi performance you need.

If you need routing performance theres software routing and hardware routing. Hardware routing is limited by features such as no configurable firewall or QoS. If you need more than 500Mb/s of software routing than there isnt a consumer router that can help whereas if you have a 1Gb/s symetric connection than there isnt a consumer router with hardware NAT that can support the full 2Gb/s of total bandwidth that it provides. Some inexpensive non-consumer brands you can consider are mikrotik and ubiquiti. Take a look at WAN and LAN simultaneous throughput charts on this website.

If you use your computer to connect to VPN than theres no worry except for enabling passthrough but if you intend to use your router for VPN than avoid any MIPS based router and ARM based routers if you want really fast VPN but this limits your choice to PPC, TileGX and x86 type routers. ARM based routers are faster than MIPS for VPN but their performance is still limiting well below 100Mb/s.

If you want absolute stability than mikrotik routerboards have a reputation of running for years without a restart but how expansive depends on the performance of the hardware you want and they do more things than any consumer router can. As for wifi any model or brand that has stable hardware will work best and stock firmware is usually the best when it comes to wifi compared to openwrt. Asus-wrt or merlin firmware compatible routers do well in terms if firmware stability but you can also use tp-link as an inexpensive basic AP. If you need something that a consumer wifi AP cant provide than theres brands like mikrotik, Ubiquiti, Xclaim and Zyxel that cater to businesses and enterprises requirements while giving better stability.

If you want a core router with lots of control you can use a mikrotik CCR with hundreds of QoS and firewall rules. Because of the TileGX platform they are fast if you use many simple rules. They also come with at least 8 gigabit ethernet ports and have SFP which is particularly useful if you have fibre optics internet. The other option from mikrotik with fast VPN speed is the RB1100AHx2 and the RB850gx2. They are much easier to configure than openwrt but require more advance networking knowledge because it easy to lock yourself out of the router from the network and have to do a hardware reset. Even not configuring the firewall properly can also expose your router to the internet but non consumer routers need skill to configure though they will can be more secure if configured right.

if you dont want to go with embedded than you can use a PC with multiple NICs with an OS such as pfsense. you can also use a full linux distro or even windows server but they are much harder to configure. They can also act as APs using a Wifi card. Aside from a full PC router mikrotik has a lot more QoS options than other brands such as parent queues, different que types, firewall able to perform some types of QoS, L2 firewall that allows LAN control (both security and QoS) if going through CPU.

 

[jlake]

Home is large, 3 floors with typical interior walls, max distance from center of house to exterior wall is 50':

Upstairs: Bedrooms, bathrooms, and playroom. PS3, laptops, and phones are common clients.
Main: Office, a bedroom, living room, kitchen, etc. one HDTV with streaming apps, laptops and phone are common clients.
Basement: Office, bedroom, family room, workout room, home theater. Plex server, File server, Database server, laptops, streaming large screen HDTV, and a HDTV projector, a PS4, and phones are common clients.

Home is pre-wired for ethernet so I have placement choices for router.

I need the router that will provide the best coverage and throughput in a multi-device setting where streaming video occurs all the time, whether to phones or laptops, or from netflix, etc. At least 3 simultaneous HD streams should be supported. Devices are mixed, some can support only 2.4Ghz, and many arent even AC capable, but some are.

I am technical enough that I'm not scared of using OpenWRT or needing to fiddle with things if I need to, but I'd rather not spend my time doing such things if ready made solutions are at hand.

I plan to get the things that are fixed off of the wireless, like the servers, projector, etc. but the clients still connect to the servers for their data (Plex, file share, domain controller, etc.) over wireless.

Things to note: I am not against a multi-AP setup, but then which one(s) should I use, etc.?
I hate having disconnects. It disrupts streaming, breaks game connections, and is just a pain. I usually end up setting radios manually to avoid channel hopping just to stop this.
I am open to getting high gain antennas. Or amplifiers.
I don't care about absolute thoughput, but Stability of the network is paramount. We use VPN connections all day long for work. We should be able to roam throughout the house without having a single connection drop. Ever.
I need to prioritize traffic by type and device. Video feeds are great, but the VPN and other 'work' traffic must get priority.

Cost isnt critical, but I'm not Bill Gates. The whole setup should stay under $1000. Preferably much under.

I am considering the ASUS 3200 or going with Edimax WAP1750 & CAP1200 for a multi-AP setup, but I have no issues using something different.

Thank you!

"Seamless" Roaming can be pretty tricky if you have the bar set at zero drops. I've never been able to achieve zero drops or freezes with multiple consumer AP's and mobile devices. Mobile devices are getting much better at roaming than they were 5-7 years ago. I do have two APs but they have unique SSIDs and use different channels. I gave up on trying to synchronize wireless settings a long time ago. It just wasn't worth the time and money to fiddle with anymore. Of course, it would never have been truly "seamless" unless I was willing to spend some money. ASUS has a feature on their routers that help with roaming.

There's quite of few threads and posts on this forum that discuss seamless/roaming...with advice, tweaks and what not.

I would suggest that you buy your stuff all at the same time from a place that has a good, liberal return policy. Then you'll have time to evaluate how it's going to work out....and I guess return it if it doesn't.

 

[UnixWizard]

I would like to thank both of you for taking the time to reply.

I have already used the charts and read every router/AP review for last two years(yeah, I'm like that), so I am familiar with some of the challenges. The heart of the matter is that I need to reach numerous locations which are not just horizontally spread, but vertically as well. The radiative pattern of routers is more like a donut than a sphere and I've always had trouble getting 5Ghz coverage in every area. Its frustrating to be in 2015 and still not have enough coverage for a single house and yet I have a cell phone which is serviced by towers spread very far apart and it works everywhere through all walls and floors. To top it off I can drive around from tower to tower and not drop a call, yet I cant move from one AP to the next without interruption. Why havent AP's figured out how to adopt some of the cell protocols for handoffs?

In any case, I'm stuck between having to deal with dropouts(multi AP) or not have enough coverage. I really hate the buy/try/return cycle as its so wasteful on my time. I was hoping for some experience with the actual products being recommended as to their ability to deal with coverage, and for multi-AP, some real experience with the ability of specific products to handle mixed environments of 2.4 and 5Ghz devices using a combination of g/n/ac.

I'm thinking that a single AC3200 router has all the functionality and throughput I need, but its just not going to cover the area. If I could increase the output power and/or use higher gain antennas, I might be able to reach the extra 20' with enough signal to make it viable. I need at least 50Mbps in the trouble areas on 5Ghz, which isnt asking a lot. Through two floors and 3 walls, even that is very unlikely.

Anyone have experience with replacing the antennas on the ASUS 3200?(or any recent AC router with 4+ antennas) What did you use? What would you recommend? Can you replace the antennas with directional ones(like the corner antennas that radiate 90 degrees) to better target the spaces that need it? Are all the antennas 2.4/5Ghz or are some of them dedicated to a specific band? (with antennas it matters). Are there any powered inline antennas that would do any good here?

Your help is most appreciated!

 

[htismaqe]

Why havent AP's figured out how to adopt some of the cell protocols for handoffs?

They actually have. You're just looking in the wrong place. You're looked for an enterprise-class device(s).

If seamless handoff is an absolute requirement, you're going to want to look at something with multiple access points and central controller. Aerohive comes to mind.

 

[UnixWizard]

They actually have. You're just looking in the wrong place. You're looked for an enterprise-class device(s).

If seamless handoff is an absolute requirement, you're going to want to look at something with multiple access points and central controller. Aerohive comes to mind.

I don't have anything against enterprise devices. Ruckus used to be a favorite of mine for 2.4Ghz. Aerohive looks pretty solid, but I still have two issues. 1) No one has had, or said they have, personal experience with them that they can share and 2) just two of their most base AP's are over $1k. Upping the budget might be worth it, but until I get someone that has real experience and can quantify the performance, all I have left to make a decision on is a marketing page. I don't buy expensive products that I can't find data on and testimony by people with real experience with multiple products including the one they recommend.

 

[htismaqe]

Unfortunately, you're not going to find a lot of that here. By and large, this forum is dedicated to consumer/SOHO gear and users.

I have customers that are using both Aerohive and Meraki with great success but they're multi-million dollar enterprises with much different use cases than yours.

 

[System Error Message]

You can never expect wireless to work without issues but if i were in your position i would get multiple inexpensive APs to put around the house and wire them to a switch or router. Whether or not it is tp-link, ASUS, mikrotik routerboards or even ubiquiti i would get a main router, switch (if necessary) and at most 4 2 stream AC wireless access points that are $80 or less. Without using any advanced features on the AP i can expect that even a tp-link wifi router will not require a restart. Alternatively you can use an AC3200 with 2 inexpensive APs to cover the house but the AC3200 gets placed where there is the highest density of wifi devices.

If $1000 is your budget and you want the best i guess you could go with a mikrotik CCR1009 passively cooled as your main router (actively cooled may be cheaper but noisy), semi managed/dumb network switch if more than 7 wired devices, AC3200 and 2 or 3 routerboard APs (or tp-link archers if you arent that technical). Not only can the CCR1009 be handling internet, VPN and firewall but it can also be used to control your LAN at wirespeed for things you cannot do with a switch. The advantage of using mikrotik or ubiquiti is that you can use POE for both the router and APs.

routerboard APs while they are inexpensive are in their exposed board form for use indoors or with some casing. The wireless software in routerOS can also be complicated to use but they can be used with really good antennas to provide good coverage and have much better transmit power and receivers than consumer routers do. Ubiquiti might have similar for their wireless products but their OS is much easier to configure for wireless. Although not mentioned on routerboard AP specs page their wireless AC APs support 2.4Ghz too. All routers when dealing with a mixed environment (g+n for 2.4, a+ac for 5) will slow the faster one down but there isnt any way around it other than designating APs for seperate wireless protocols. The wireless miniPCIe cards that can be used with mikrotik routerboards however do not have multiple radios so if you did buy the wireless AC miniPCIe card for a mikrotik routerboard AP with miniPCIe it will only handle wireless AC. Customisation option might come in handy for you if you need to speed in a mixed environment.