Help with multi-device selection for home Wi-Fi network

[Majdan]

I'd like to ask advice about how to design my WiFi network at home and suggestion waht devices to buy:
- It's a 3 story building with total 220sqm~2400sqft.
- Currently I use 4 mesh devices indoors (D-Link covr 1100), all connected with wired ethernet. It's two on the middle story plus one on the bottom and one on top story. Plus there are two two more same mesh devices that are outdoors and are connected to the rest wirelessly using mesh.
- The main issue is with dropping the connection on my iPhone. I did some research and it seems it's a known iPhones issue with some brands routers using 5GHz network. My D-links does not allow to name 2.4Ghz and 5GHz networks differently thus main reason for my project is to have this feature so I can tell iPhone to use only 2.4GHz in case it still have issues with 5Ghz.
- Another issue I am suspeciting is that my devices are too close to each other but due to existing wiring I probably won't change the placement of the devices. Also, removing some of them would create spots with too weak signal.
Thus I would like to turn off 2.4Ghz network on two devices and maybe turn off 5Ghz on one device.
- Probably I'd go with WiFi 6 or 6e as 7 might be too expensive and I don't even have a single reciever with WiFi 7 yet.
- I enclose NetSpot scan from few key places in my house:

https://imgur.com/a/ZKAmMb0

Questions:
1) What devices do you recommend? I do not like D-Link but I've used Asus and it seemed good. I've heard also about Ubiquiti. But there are two many options and I would appreciate some advice.
I would prefer not to spend more than 600usd for all new devices.
2) Do I need mesh system for my setup? Or maybe it will be fine with: 1 regular router, 3 access points and 2 repeaters?
3) Any other tips or workarounds? The biggest issue is iPhone problem with 5Ghz network.

 

[Tech9]

I would like to turn off 2.4Ghz network on two devices and maybe turn off 5Ghz on one device.

Consumer mesh sets won't allow you to do that. You need something like UniFi or Omada networks for this level of control. They offer individual per AP settings for SSID, VLAN, Tx Power, individual radio on/off, wireless mesh option. The budget is too low though for 4x AP system with the needed gateway, controller and PoE switch. You can mix and match consumer router with other routers in AP Mode or SMB APs, but you'll lose network segmentation options since not all the devices will have VLAN support.

 

[Majdan]

To be clear I don't need POE. Currently I have separate power adapters for these devices with already existing switch that can stay I guess. It's a matter of 1 router/gateway with AP, plus 3 APS and 1-2 repeaters.
I've heard these should be the same brand if they will be transmitting the same SSID.

 

[Tech9]

This mix and match may work for flat network design only. You need PoE for most SMB APs if you want the level of control you are after. About SSID - the same SSID can be used on different brand hardware, but the roaming may suffer. Switching to another AP is on the client side and if the client sees one of the APs as better option most of the time - it will stick to it.

 

[tgl]

- The main issue is with dropping the connection on my iPhone. I did some research and it seems it's a known iPhones issue with some brands routers using 5GHz network. My D-links does not allow to name 2.4Ghz and 5GHz networks differently thus main reason for my project is to have this feature so I can tell iPhone to use only 2.4GHz in case it still have issues with 5Ghz.

I think you're going at this the wrong way. That problem description does not say to me "I need separate 2.4 and 5G SSIDs". It says "my wifi setup is badly tuned". Locking a client device to one band is almost never a good solution.

I know little about D-link devices, and it might be that they don't have enough configurability to let you fix your problem correctly. But the things I'd be looking at to fix a problem like this are:

1. Are you using the clearest available wifi channels? I'm guessing from your description of the house that you are not out in the sticks but probably have nearby wifi-using neighbors to contend with. Some makes of AP can tell you what other signals they can see, but if not you need a wifi scanner app to find out what you're contending with. Apple's free Airport Utility will do as a bare-bones scanner on iOS devices (note you have to turn on the scanner function in Settings).
2. Do you have a reasonable density of APs? The rule of thumb is that you don't want more than one wall between any client device and AP, and only if that wall is wood or drywall (concrete or masonry is very wifi-unfriendly). You can't fix this with a higher-power AP, because the client's transmit power is fixed.
3. Do you have appropriate transmit power settings on the APs? Rule of thumb is 2.4G Tx power should be 6 or 7 dB below 5G power, and 5G power should not be cranked up to the legal limit --- 22dBm or so is more reasonable. If you think your APs might be closer than necessary, reducing their Tx power some more is advisable.

Point 3 is the one where consumer wifi APs tend to fail you: you might not be able to set Tx power at all, let alone per-band. If the D-links can't do that, then it's time to discuss replacing them.

 

[Majdan]

@tgl, thanks for reply.
The issue is that iOS seems to have terrible bug with 5Ghz networks. As a workaround I need to use 2.4Ghz only for my phone.

While my setup isn't probably ideal, the key issue is not with it. I just turned off all APs except only one and I still get issues with dropping wifi. When I am in front of the router it's fine, but when I'm in place where 5Ghz network is weak then it drops connection and retries, its super annoing . 2.4Ghz network seems to have reasonable signal but I think it keeps trying the 5Ghz (at that place NetSpot on my laptop says 2.4Ghz has 52% strength and 5Ghz has 35%). That was when I had only floor between router and client but with added some distance (with closer distance and floor in between it was ok). Even when I had all my APs on and I was close to one then it was all good as my phone had a good 5Ghz connection.
This issue happens with two iPhones (13 and 14), two older ones (X and XS) seems slightly better. I've removed the SSID from iPhone multiple times, does not help. I've looked online and it seems it is common problem, some people suggest it applies to some brand routers, but not all. Also, iPhone sometimes starts complaining that SSID password is wrong and won't connect back to the network (password is obviously correct as it connected to it before) - but this can be fixed with iPhone restart - but after sometime problem will go back. I suspect it's an iOS issue from some its version but who knows.
Also, laptops does not have this issue at all. I guess they have stronger antenas and probably are smarter about picking SSID to connect to.

1. My devices does not allow me to pick channels. This is literally all Wi-Fi settings I have there:

Also, it isn't problem with my neighbors as I don't see any of their networks almost anywhere. Barely maybe two with weak signal if I'm on balcony on top story of my house. I already gave NetSpot screenshots from few places in my house:

https://imgur.com/a/ZKAmMb0

2. So if I have all my APs on then it's as you say, no more than one wall between AP and client. Walls are pretty thick concrete walls - it's in Poland (people don't build wooden houses here ).

3. None of that settings are available to me, see screenshot above This is a device that random person picks up, set up network name, password, connects internet and it is meant to work. It's super minimalistic. Seriously configurability is the lowest I've seen on any device.

 

[degrub]

A couple things to try
1) set the security to WPA2 only if allowed.
2) set the channel width to 80 only.
3) turn off DFS

Are the IOS phones on 18.3 or the last version they support ?

The client device always determines when to switch. Nothing we can do about it in the AP. IOS devices are notorious for trying to hang on to a weak signal, even next to a stronger AP.

Concrete/block walls are difficult for 5GHz.

 

[Majdan]

@degrub, thanks will try, I always have the newest version of iOS and I think that's the issue haha . I've heard this issue started happening long time ago since some version of it.

 

[Tech9]

The issue is that iOS seems to have terrible bug with 5Ghz networks.

More like some sort of incompatibility with your equipment. I have 30+ active Apple devices for personal and business use and Wi-Fi works as expected or at least no one told me it doesn't. Home APs are all Ubiquiti and business APs are all Cisco.

See the connection time for this one:

The period of high latency and short no Internet service recorded was ISP maintenance at 4AM.

 

[tgl]

The issue is that iOS seems to have terrible bug with 5Ghz networks

That's a pretty large claim to be making, considering how many millions of people use iDevices just fine on 5GHz. I think it's probably more the fault of your APs or your wifi configuration.

If your interior walls are concrete, then you may need a policy of "zero walls between client and AP" in order to get reliable service. However, it's really difficult to get a multi-AP setup to work well if you can't tune the APs' transmit power. If the APs are set to max legal power, that's way more than client devices (particularly small ones like phones) can transmit. So you get into situations where the client can hear the AP just fine and doesn't think it needs to move to another one --- but the AP can't hear the client very well, leading to lots of retransmits and awful service. You really need to be able to reduce AP Tx power to something closer to what the clients can transmit in order to get proper client roaming behavior.

Between the lack of configurability and the bugs you are running into (which, let's be honest, are most probably the fault of your APs not your phone), I think you need to be thinking hard about replacing the APs.

BTW ... while I have low hope that this will help, have you tried disabling DFS channels?

 

[Majdan]

As a senior software engineer (at two FAANG companies), I can say it is hard to claim who's this bug is without deep debugging including people from Apple and potentially device maufacturer. Sometimes there is a bug in service that is not yours and you have to mitigate it by having incorrect behavior which might be the way to go as it it causes least harm.
But what I can say is that these issues seems to happen from some version of iOS. I can see that myself on my own devices, as well as, I see other people saying this online. Two phones with newest iOS have these problems but two older phones and one iPad with old iOS seems fine. I also see people complaining about wifi dropping on other phones so who knows. And based on that I wouldn't blame the APs on this.

I designed placement of my devices in a way that I have rasonable signal on my phone in most common places in my house. Thats why I have 4 wired routers in my house. But you know what, it helps a bit but there are still places where connection drops. And then I wondered, maybe cause I have to many APs, I tried removing them, not much improvement. I tested this on single AP, same problem. And with 4 APs I feel that in one room congestion could be the issue cause it's surrounded by one AP without wall and 3 APs though single wall.

Replacing all my devices is costly, especially with something more pro like ubiquiti which would allow me to configure what I need. I read that wifi 7 would have my problem solved thanks to MLO. But right now I don't have single client supporting wifi 7 and these devices are even more expensive.

I guess at this point I should probably wait to get more clients supporting wifi 7 and buy new devices at that point (maybe even wifi 8 if its released depending on the cost). Or hope Apple improves wifi connectivity on their iphones with some iOS update.

Anyways, thanks for help

 

[Tech9]

Look for Qualcomm based hardware on your next update. From experience - better compatibility and better software support. TP-Link has pretty good and relatively cheap access points from Omada business series. Controller managed Omada system works very well.