Thoughts on this approach...

[resurgence]

I have been called out to a house that is about 5,000 square ft, 2 floors and is a "wide U' shape facing a massive backyard. The inside of the "U" of their house is comprised of large windows, on both floors, and old wood. Current WiFi setup has about 12 Access Points (Airports), they have about 10 Sonos zones and about 5 iMacs. Thing is...all the Sonos and iMacs are hardwired which is great because for whatever reason they aren't registering on network correctly or at all. Haven't chance to look at their Airport Extreme (new 2015) to see what it's doing. But that's easy troubleshooting. Their WiFi network is constantly fighting over handoffs, complete dead zones here and there, etc...just a mess. They get 300/20 so that's a plus.

Anyway, I was considering creating a mesh network or dropping better, newer AP's in but I had a thought...since the entire back side of the house is wood and glass, all their rooms and hangout spots are on this side of the house as well, "bowls" like a wide U....could I get away with mounting a super high power outdoor access point with a 30deg or 45deg radius, POE from the back of the yard and aim the deg radius at the house. With all those windows and wood I should be able to blast them with one signal and stay steady? Everything else I can easily straighten up as they are stationary and hard wired...so, maybe...just maybe I could pull this off?

Thoughts? Anyone try this before? I am still researching AP's to take into consideration of strength, Dbi, etc...but here is one that I am looking at.

Would love some thoughts!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...45deg_access_point-_-9SIA29J3BV4921-_-Product

 

[stevech]

No mesh.
Just APs. I'd guess 4 APs if properly distributed.
ASUS is a good pick.

Is this for hire?

 

[coxhaus]

Why would go from 12 access points to 4? They already have the infrastructure to support 12 units why not use it? Maybe they are running 5GHz. Of course I would run 5 GHz 40 mhz. I sure like the Cisco mesh software on their SMB units. I have no issues. So I would run both 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz just to be safe to support everything. Maybe a couple of the same SSIDs guest and home on all units so they get as much roaming as possible.

 

[sfx2000]

quick thought - before swapping out any gear, go around and unplug every other AP (seriously)...

Do a site survey before and after - might be surprised at the difference

 

[resurgence]

@sfx2000 I am doing exactly that. Unplugging everything and doing the survey in a couple hours.
@coxhaus @stevech Yeah, doing the AP's/Mesh is easy but I am thinking of taking a different approach to a unique house layout and materials of the house.

I am going to see what results, my idea of putting a super high power AP outside facing the house, would yield. Anyone ever taken this approach?

 

[resurgence]

No mesh.
Just APs. I'd guess 4 APs if properly distributed.
ASUS is a good pick.

Is this for hire?

@stevech no, not for hire. Thanks though

 

[coxhaus]

With your outside approach it seems like the best signal is going to be outside and the weakest signal is going to be in the house. Seems like this is back wards. I would think you would want the inside where people spend most of there time have the best signal.

 

[System Error Message]

His approach is in the wrong environment. The only time when you want a high power signal is when you want to create a point to point link. Regardless of the output of the wifi AP it is useless if clients cannot reach it.

 

[resurgence]

So, I setup a test today at the location and it worked pretty good! The signal, within the 30deg radius, was actually stronger than some of the AP's inside. I guess my approach was like a massive spotlight in the dark shining on a the house. We actually can't do it because the line itself would be over 800ft from the Router to the outdoor AP. It would have cost more to run this line in the ground or in conduits and not to mention the degradation of the signal over that distance. Basically, the homeowner was happy to be getting 1 solid signal but the other work and expenses required to get it rolling was the deal breaker. So, we are dropping in some AP's to blanket the place in WiFi. The layout of the house is very unique. But anyway...I'd like to think my approach was "outside the box" ONLY due to the layout of the house and the massive windows and wood....We managed to do a straight 200ft CAT from the router to the AP and the throughput was pretty good hitting around 120mb out of 300mb.