I’ve been anxiously waiting for Mesh Support in Firmware 8.1.1 upgrade. But, just read the release notes for Beta 2 and the Pepwave Surf SOHO MK3 is not listed as getting Mesh support.
How else can I solve my problem. My house is long and narrow. My Surf SOHO Router is in the middle of the house and has iffy support at either end of the house.
I want to put all my houses Internet-of-Things (IoT) on the Pepwave’s Guest network for security. My TV is on the south side of the house. My Roomba sweeper is on the South side.
TV works with an extender. But, the extender isn’t really the same network. The Roomba has problems with it. The control code isn’t very reliable. If the Roomba looses connection to the Internet, it stops and leaves a message about being blocked from returning to base.
I need a way to extend the guest wifi network on the Pepwave router to either end of my house.
Note that I can take two of the hardwire LANs, assign them to the guest network, and put a wired Access Point on either end of the house. Would that work?
I use the Surf otg for that. Pepwave stopped supporting it, why they did is the question.
I have a Ethernet cable from Surf soho to the Surf otg.
The Surf otg has has its own WiFi AP. I have a WiFi security cam on that and it all works great.
I also have a outbound policy created on the Surf soho for the Surf otg and cam.
Maybe you can find a couple of these Surf on the go devices and setup a similar LAN. But like I stated they are not supported anymore.
I think that is a typo because the SOHO MK3 has 11ac Wi-Fi and the Mesh feature should be there. You could grab a couple AC Minis and put one at either end of the house and create a mesh.
Of course you can also hard wire them in as you suggested as well.
Just checked. Does not look like 8.1.1 is available yet. I missed the Zoom meeting today. Did they give an availability date? I’m not interested in trying the Beta 2 that’s available.
Surf SOHO does not, technically have a Guest Network. And, that is good news. It can create 16 networks/SSIDs and, if you want, each one could act just like a Guest Network. You could, for example, create an SSID just for your TV.
As for your question, you do not need mesh. It is always better to use a hard wired Access Point when possible and in your case it is possible.
You would need mesh if, for example, the router was in the South end of the house and you needed an AP in the middle and an AP at the North end. For the AP in the North to talk to the AP in the middle, you would need mesh.
Wondering if powerline adapters are better than mesh. Performance wise perhaps, but requires additional hardware and potential failure points.
This is what I did at my mothers home. She is still using ISP provided router so bought a pair of power line adapters so she could hardwire an AppleTV in the basement.
Doing mesh would have meant streaming over wifi which isn’t desirable.
I am not familiar with powerline although I do know it has been through multiple generations, so should be pretty good by now. But, it may not work depending on internal wiring conditions that I don’t understand. And I have never seen it discussed for an apartment building. And, it just scares me. MOCA (coaxial cable) seems like the better wired alternative, but again, not an expert.
Something to add to your blog perhaps at some point.
That and Thread mesh. Seems like the next frontier for better performing and more secure IoT. Apple’s HomePod Mini supports thread mesh (ip-based private mesh) … not amy thread enabled IoT devices on the market but now that Apple has joined the “Thread Group” I think we’ll see many more.
Not sure if it’ll impact how we segment our IoT into vlans, but it’ll surely help with range. I digress from the original thread topic.
