Mesh Wifi with backbone

[marcplante]

Looking to set up a mesh Wifi network in my house. I have an Ethernet backbone running across the ground level to the basement, so I can set up two nodes on ethernet. It would be nice to have a third node on the 2nd floor, though not critical. My Netgear R6400 is delivering 200 Mbps (per speed test) to a desktop in the 2nd floor office.

Specs
House is only 4000 Sq ft across three floors. Colonial, so a fairly compact box.
FIOS Gig connection installed in a corner of the ground floor.
Ethernet cable from that router to the basement to opposite end of the house. stopping point in the middle to hard wire the connected Blu Ray player with a GIG switch.

I currently run the FIOS wireless and a Netgear R6400. The coverage is OK, but hopping across routers depending on where in the house I am. I tried one of the FIOS extenders, but it didn't have enough range from the installation location available on the backbone.


Requirements
- Strong Wifi across the house. I have a Gig pipe and want to get a couple hundred Megat my end points
- Seamless roaming across access points, hence the interest in "Mesh" vs just adding access points.
- Parental and device level controls would be nice since I have an adventurous son.
- Two nodes can run on the backbone, I was thinking of a third upstairs in the office would need to be wireless. Kids are 10-12. Who knows where things will go in the next 5 years.
USB ports to attach media drives would Be nice. I have a NAS, but also have a bunch of Terabyte drives building up as I migrated kids notebooks to SSDs. I figure I can hang those off the network as backup servers
- Reasonably Easy to administer. I've heard the Linksys stuff can be a bit touchy to set up. Google seems like the Apple version of Mesh. I'm looking for something in between. Probably don't want to go all the way to a commercial (ubiquiti?) implementation. I only know enough to be dangerous.

Which brands? Netgear Orbi? others?

Thanks

 

[Genx87]

Ubiquiti in the home is nice. And it isn't that expensive. Some of their Wave 2 devices with 3 radios can be had for ~130 bucks on Amazon. I would do this over buying a few linksys or netgear routers. Which may cost just about as much but lack the controller. You have the wire, forget mesh. Your clients will pick the AP to attach themselves to and the Ubiquiti controller will do its job. You will need a machine to run the controller software.

 

[XavierMace]

I'm quite happy with my TP-Link Deco mesh kit. Super easy to setup.

 

[Eric Fazekas]

I run Linksys Velop in bridge mode - three wired nodes in the house (5000 sq ft ranch with two upstairs bonus rooms) and one wireless node in a detached building (connects back through one of the wired nodes in the house so it's on the same network). It's been doing great since I went to the bridge mode, but I was having issues when I had it set up on it's own. I don't think the parental controls are great out of the box, but if you run them in bridge mode from another router you could manage that through the main router.

Velop has two ethernet connections on the bottom of each node. One can wire as the backbone and the other can provide a wired connection to a computer or a switch. On the wireless node in the detached building I use one of them to connect a POE switch that provides connection and power to some (currently two) LOREX cameras which extends my security camera system in the house to that building. They record 24x7 at 1080p and over that wireless connection between the building and the house those two cameras only have occasional lag. The distance between the wireless nodes in the house and the building is about 80 feet (through two brick walls).

Now that it's set up in this configuration it's fast, seamless and has had very little issues. I think once in the last 6 months I've had to power cycle one of the nodes...the one on the side of the house that feeds the detached building.

 

[NeonFlak]

@Genx87 Where can you get the Ubiquiti Wave 2 AP's for $130? Their cheapest Wave 2 device is $292 (on Amazon) as far as I can tell, which is the AC HD. I'd like to try one if there is one at the $130 price range.

@OP Everyone's environments and needs are obviously different. My internet connection is not nearly as fast as yours, 300/50. I run an Untangle box w/Home license as my edge device and core router. Because of the work I do, I was in the position to have just about every Mesh system and 9 different APs in my possession all at the same time.

So, for me and my environment:
The best "mesh" (more of a sat system) system, regardless of ethernet backhaul or not, was the Netgear Orbi RBK50, it uses a 4x4 5ghz radio for backhaul (the other Orbi's are a 2x2) and had the highest consistent wireless speeds regardless of how many clients were connected.
Second best of the mesh systems was the eero Home 2nd gen. It also uses a seperate 5ghz radio for backhaul but is 2x2. It is slower than the Orbi in most cases but allows multiple hops where as the Orbi is a single hop (because it's a sat system, so all sats need to be in range of the base). Of all the mesh systems this had the most "reliable" connection for wireless clients. Bonus is that the beacons function as night lights.

If you have ethernet for backhaul I would 100% recommend "prosumer/enterprise" wireless APs and of those I can whole heartedly recommend the TP-Link EAP245. I'm not sure what magic TP-Link did with this AP (or maybe it was just my environment) but it provided the best wireless speeds of all the stuff I had in my house, this included Wave 2 and MU-MIMO stuff. The APs can be managed as "solo" APs, so direct web based management. Or, like the UniFi stuff, they have controller software you can use to centrally manage multiple APs. Because of Amazon's awesome return policy and the fact that these APs are less than $100 each, I'd suggest giving one a try.
Second best was the UniFi AC-Pro, don't have much to say other than that. It's a UniFi/Ubiquiti/Ubnt product, I'm a fan and was a full Ubiquiti network house for a long time. Their stuff is easy to work with and they have a great community.

 

[Genx87]

I thought the AC-Pros were Wave 2. Oops. For home use they are still great.