Network design recommendations

[skintup]

Gents, ladies (?), oh and gender fluid (did I say that right),
I was hoping to pick some of "yawls" brain. I have a partially cabled (cat7) 3000 SQ Ft newish construction house (7 years). My house consists of 2 adults, 1 should be adult, 2 teens, and the twin terrors (7 and 7) year olds. It is a burgeoning smart home, with smart lights either in place or purchased for the whole house. Cameras, Thermostats, Dorbellls, motion sensors, water sensors, power adapters etc. Either purchased or installed.

Just wanted to add a thank you to anyone who actually takes the time to read and reply. I am FNG and this is a log freaking post. Hopefully I will have some knowledge to help someone else out in the fututre.



Additional equipment 2 NAS's (WD Cloud), a Facebook smart device, 6 Chromecast ultra's, a couple of google and amazon smart devices (the echos and google max rarely used), smartthings v3 hub, Intel Ivy i5 dedicated media server (2.5 GB connection), 3 Gaming PC's Ryzen 3900x, with Radeon 5700 Xt's, ( ryzen 5 6600xt), a ryzen 5 (3080), 2 XBOX One, 1 Nintendo switch and if I can ever buy 1 a PS5. Phones 2x S21 Ultra, Samsung Note 10, One PLus 7t, 3 iPhone 11 Max, Ipad Mini, Samsun Tab S7, a few Chromebooks, and 3 laptops. Looking at my router we use between 50 GB-120 GB a day.

My current setup consists of 1GB Spectrum modem to Asus AX11000 (running Merlin). I use a 2.5 GB connection from AX11000 (living room) to my personal gaming/workstation in my study. Back in the Ax 11000, I bind/bond the 1st 2 ports to create 1 logical, 2 GB interface that connects to a 16 Port Netgear switch where I also bind 2 interfaces together for the connection.

The Next AX11000 connection is a GB shot back to an Asus GT 5300 (running Kool share) mesh node,

The next AX11000 Connection is a GB Shot back to the Master Bedroom. Where it connects to a AX92u

My last backhaul connection is using a dedicated 5 GHZ band to an AX92U.

Summarry of infrastucure connections
Modem 1GB capability to 1 GB Asus AX11000
BackHaul to Masterbedroom 1 GB from ASUS AX11000 to ASUS AX92
BackHaul to Study 1 GB from ASUS AX11000 to ASUS GT 53000 (Kool Share)
Dedicated 5GHZ band to wireless AX92U
I do have 1 Cat 7 connection in an upstairs bedroom not being used. I could add another and bind the connection and add it to the Netgear. The bedroom is not centrally located and it may need i need a switch there then extend out of room for wireless.
I have a lot of unused network equipment such as ASUS AX92, Netgear AD7200, r7000 (koolshare), various pro safe, cisco, juniper, and brocade (sp?)devices. I GT53000 that i put open wrt on and it boots up and I csn log in, but i dint even see where to add the SSID, i gave up in 2 seconds in it, though it will be revisited.

I have added some very crude drawings that are a tad embarrassing, take it easy on me fellas.

Would I be better off with multiple AP's? I never understood how to make the devices change from AP to AP based on strength. If I do should they be the same or sperate SSID's?

The crux of the problem is upstairs users complain of lag while gaming, not negotiating to 4k at all times, and poor media center performance. ALl of us experiences random drops and performance issues

my washer, dryer, cams, moisture sensors in the garage and beyond disconnect alot

my laptop to modem damn near line speed.
modem to AX11000 to Laptop via cat 7 500GB

I have not tried the modem, to pro-safe to the laptop. I just dug it out to move things off wireless as much as possible

 

[degrub]

a couple general principles -
1) get everything off wireless that can be hardwired, even if it has a wireless option. Turn that off unless there is no other choice.
2) the more hops to the internet, the more potential lag. Have you checked for bufferbloat for the paths that are showing significant lag ?
3) more, lower RF power, APs on wired backhaul has a better chance to address your wifi signal issues than a few wifi blasters. Even down to using one power adjustable 5 GHz wall AP in each room. Restrict 2.4 GHz band to those devices that don't have a 5 GHz option. However, this band is the one likely to have the highest outside interference.

Have you done a wireless survey to see what amount of outside interference you are getting on wifi from your neighbors ?

It will help us to see your physical layout with a couple house/area plot plan views in addition to the wiring layout.
What is the interior wall construction ? gypsum board over wood stud wall ?

You likely will want to hardwire to the garage and place an AP there. If it is on a different electrical panel with independent earthing rod, consider using fiber optic or point to point wireless to avoid ground loop currents over the lan cable.

 

[skintup]

a couple general principles -
1) get everything off wireless that can be hardwired, even if it has a wireless option. Turn that off unless there is no other choice.
2) the more hops to the internet, the more potential lag. Have you checked for bufferbloat for the paths that are showing significant lag ?
3) more, lower RF power, APs on wired backhaul has a better chance to address your wifi signal issues than a few wifi blasters. Even down to using one power adjustable 5 GHz wall AP in each room. Restrict 2.4 GHz band to those devices that don't have a 5 GHz option. However, this band is the one likely to have the highest outside interference.

Have you done a wireless survey to see what amount of outside interference you are getting on wifi from your neighbors ?

It will help us to see your physical layout with a couple house/area plot plan views in addition to the wiring layout.
What is the interior wall construction ? gypsum board over wood stud wall ?

You likely will want to hardwire to the garage and place an AP there. If it is on a different electrical panel with independent earthing rod, consider using fiber optic or point to point wireless to avoid ground loop currents over the lan cable.

Thank you for the response. I have very little interference except on channel 44. I can't seem to get rid of that channel. I may make mesh nodes AP's as to avoid that channel. I just dont understand how to make my devices jump from AP to AP automatically. Same name, different name? I dunno.

 

[thiggins]

I appreciate all the details and the diagrams. But the diagrams are sort of hard to follow.

If I understand the basic topology correctly, you have three APs, the AX11000 and two AX92Us, one with Ethernet backhaul and the other using Wi-Fi backhaul.

Could you post the results of an internet speed test from one of the devices connected to the upstairs AX92U when the device is having connection problems and when it is not.

I'm assuming you are NOT using AiMesh.

The Wi-Fi backhaul AX92U should be connected to the AX11000 using 5 GHz high-band (149-161) using a different SSID. NO devices should be allowed to connect to that backhaul connection; they will compete for bandwidth and cause the problems you are describing.

The 2.4 GHz radios on each AP should be set to a different channel. I suggest using 1, 6, 11. But do a channel scan of your environment and see where most of the APs are. If you have a lot of APs on, say, Ch 4, it may be better to use that instead of channel 6.

For 5 GHz, you can try using different low band channels to spread management traffic bandwidth use. With 80 MHz wide channels, all 4 band channels are used for data.

Roaming (devices moving among APs) problems can be caused by too much signal overlap. So you could try reducing transmit power on client connect radios to see if that helps.

Connect low bandwidth devices (IoT, audio/music streamers, devices used mostly for email and web browsing to 2.4 GHz) saving 5 GHz for video and gaming. As @degrub suggests, move as many 4k video and gaming devices as you can to Ethernet.