Why do we need Wi-Fi Mesh?

It has already been said but it can’t be said enough, all you need is mesh!

Wi-Fi mesh is the new normal and there is nothing we can do about it. We are not talking about delivering 10s of Mbps to customers, when 802.11a/g/n would be ok. Current applications and number of connected devices require much more than that. We are already in the Gigabit era, and for that, we need good and reliable Wi-Fi.

Of course, it would be great to cable everything, but that’s not always possible. Maybe there is no room for cables and many devices are Wi-Fi only. So, I will assume there is no choice: we need at least one mesh AP to work together with your main AP, which could be your Home Gateway, or any other 3rd?party AP connected to it.

Initial Considerations

I live in a small house in the Netherlands with plastered walls. It is around 70 square meters, which for many people would mean that I don’t need a Wi-Fi mesh system! Well, that’s not the case.

My main AP must be connected in the living room, where I have the DOCSIS connection. However, I need a good Wi-Fi connection in the farthest room of the house, which is not that far at all. On a straight line it is approximately 6 meters, but there are some obstacles on the way, such as thick walls. So, I need to provide a “checkpoint” between the room and my main AP.

Test setup

The clear path from the Main AP is the corridor, but the Main AP cannot be installed facing it. That would help a bit to propagate the RF signal to the Test Point.

I decided to use the Speedtest as a test tool. Iperf would also be great, but I would like to have the feel that customers sometimes have when they have issues and the first thing they do is testing their speeds.

AP and Devices Config

• Main AP: DOCSIS 3.1, 802.11ac 4×4.
• Mesh AP: Tri radio 802.11ax, using an exclusive 5 GHz for backhaul and another 5 GHz 2×2 for the fronthaul.
• Test point: I did three consecutive tests on three different devices, not in parallel.
• Windows laptop with Intel(R) Wireless-AC 9462 adaptor.
• Iphone 13 (802.11ax 2×2)
• Iphone XR (802.11ac 2×2)

The limitation of course would be the windows laptop, since it could reach a max PHY of 433 Mbps, which would be max 300 Mbps TCP.

The backhaul between the Main AP and the Mesh AP was using a 5 GHz channel, 4×4 with 80 MHz bandwidth, theoretically going above 1 Gbps.

I subscribe to 350 Mbps down and 35 Mbps up.

Testing!

• With MESH AP

I have decided to put the results on a table, since some of them failed when no Mesh AP was used.

For the first run, I have installed the Mesh AP on the location indicated in the figure. It was reporting around -60 dBm, which is a pretty good signal, and it would not limit the rates.

I have used Speedtest CLI for the laptop and the Speedtest app for the mobile devices.

As can be seen, we have a consistent speed above 200 Mbps for all devices. The iPhone 13 could achieve even more than 300 Mbps in one run. Latency and jitter are also consistently low, which means more stability.

The laptop was reporting a good signal connected to the mesh AP:

• Without Mesh AP

The tests were basically the same, but I have removed the Mesh AP from the way, disconnecting it from the power source. I have reconnected the devices again, so they would also try to connect to 5 GHz if the signal was strong enough during pre-association.

It is important to remember that the Main AP has a 4×4 radio, while the Mesh AP has a 2×2 radio for the fronthaul.

Interestingly, the best results were for the iPhone XR. It seems it connected to 2.4 GHz, so at least it has a stable connectivity, with consistent latency and jitter measurements. However, the rates would not be enough for bandwidth hungry applications, such as UHD video and would possibly be very bad for concurrent devices.

iPhone 13 was unusable most of the time. It would get a better signal only when vertically positioned! When horizontally placed on the test point, it would fail all tests, not even starting them. A simple VoIP call would be very bad (not mentioning a video call!)

The laptop could also achieve some good values, but the failed upload means trouble. I could see it was connecting on 5 GHz using “netsh wlan show int”, but the signal was varying a lot between 40-60% quality, while with mesh it was showing more than 80%.

Final Remarks

Mesh was a life savior for my setup, as you could see. Even though not collecting a lot of data, it is clear the rates and overall stability are really improved.

A Mesh AP would mean overall better coverage and rates for customers. Extending the range of the signal inside the customer premises would also make 5 GHz capable devices to connect more to the 5 GHz, providing higher rates and less interference, which in turn results in more airtime to devices and decreases packet error rate.

If you can use a Mesh AP with an Ethernet backhaul, that would be perfect. If that is not possible, it is important to place the Mesh APs “halfway” between the Main AP (or other Mesh AP) and the target location, so the Mesh AP stills received a good signal from its parent node.

So, the next time you think you don’t need mesh because your house is small, or maybe you do not consider yourself a heavy user… think again ??