Network Optimization: WiFi Analyzer for best channel range

[aigomorla]

Tami as Xavier stated i dont think you are still quite understanding how MESH Wifi products works.

Normally when you have mesh devices, you need to disable all WIFI except mesh, so you can have zero hand off capability.
By having 2 different devices your causing a overlap.

You need to pull all other wifi AP devices / extenders off your network, and get more google wifi devices to fill in gaps like Xavier stated in his first post.

The main point of Mesh devices (your Luma's) is for seemless handoff between AP's so that your client devices are connected to the best AP at all times. However, you have non-mesh devices in the mix. Using the same SSID prevents you from manually switching networks, but you lose the intelligent handoff. Meaning even though you were standing next to the R7000, your client device may still have been connected to one of the Luma's as the signal from them isn't low enough to drop the connection. Adding extenders can actually make matters worse because you could be causing signal overlap. The ideal setup would be to lose the extenders and turn off the WiFi on the R7000 then get more Luma's to fill any gaps.

This is why a lot of us that know network dont like mesh too much.
Its not open flexibility unless you stay within the cardboard box mesh is.

 

[tami]

I completely understand. However, again, I have settings I don't want to lose and the mesh network, as you allude to, does not afford the flexibility that I need, hence the requirement for those extenders.

Perhaps I'll run Google WiFi as-is, set all my necessary devices as static on the Netgear (they're all not moving around the house anyway), and then Google WiFi will be the only thing serving DHCP. Since it's running through the router, I'd also hope that I can get access to the 10.10.10.x network since it is talking to it.

I am still wondering though about why I don't see the Asus devices on the Device List. Any ideas? Does it matter?

 

[aigomorla]

what settings are you trying to save?
Do you have devices on your network, which needs to be within the same subset? ie... 10.X.X.X?

Im completely lost in what your wanting to accomplish.

For example, do you have a NAS on a subset which you want access to?
Do you want to have guest features on your wifi to limit network share, and just restrict to internet?

I think your problem maybe more in VLAN then actual WiFi.

 

[tami]

It works so no worries.

10.10.11.x is routed through 10.10.10.x and talks to 10.10.10.x. I have no intention of setting up any devices on the 10.10.10.x to talk to 10.10.11.x and it's probably not backward compatible anyway.

And no, I just have a number of servers and machines with very specific port forwarding rules, hours my kids can use the Internet, etc etc. I could add almost all of that to Google WiFi if I really wanted to waste the time doing that, but I'd rather not. Especially since I have very little kids at home who can just unplug the thing and I'd lose connectivity.

 

[tami]

Okay, just a question. If I set up Google WiFi, can I still use those Asus routers as extenders? Would they be compatible? I changed the gateway and DNS of the Asus routers to the Google WiFi private IP, so I would think yes, but I'm not 100% sure if this would work.

 

[tami]

Re: my last question, supposedly the answer is yes: https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/7139494?hl=en

That being said, right now those Asus routers are connected to the Netgear. Despite these Asus devices having their own IP addresses, I think I'm going to have to connect them to Google to work as extenders under the 10.10.11.x network. They're wired, though. Hopefully that's not an issue.

If anyone has ideas, thoughts, or opinions (I can take the criticism as I did before ), feel free to add them here.