Optimal AP One AX qty and placement

[kgarvey]

I’m looking into moving away from my B310X → eero system setup to a fully-Peplink/Pepwave-based setup by replacing the eeros with some AP One AX units. One thing I like about the eeros is that I can just plug them in wherever I have an ethernet jack or where I want to add mesh coverage, with not too much planning involved. They’re also desktop units.

As the AP One AX is designed to be ceiling-mounted, I’m trying to figure out what the optimal setup would be. Here’s a rough floorplan. Can anyone possibly recommend quantity and placement? I’ve initially purchased 2 but can get more if needed. Thanks in advance!

Edit: forgot to add, the house is roughly 2900 sq ft.

[stego]

Assuming this is a bungalow. The AP AX is a powerful unit.

You might get away with one if you can centrally locate it on the ceiling in your living room.

Using two of them would require to space them out to either side of the home to avoid too much overlap. At that point you’d have to start tweaking the signal strength and client threshold values on each unit to get proper handoff as you roam through the house.

Ceiling mount in a central location will always offer optimal performance.

[stego]

I had Eero Pros in the past as well and really liked the plug and play easy setup.

That said, Peplink APs support mesh but I don’t believe supports hardwired backhaul like Eero.

The benefit with Peplink mesh is extending your network wirelessly.

Wi-Fi Mesh Support: Overview and Howto

Now that we have both AP and Router Beta/RC firmware with Wi-Fi Mesh support, I wanted to walk you through the finer points of how to use this. Intro to Mesh What is Wi-Fi Mesh and why would I use it? Wi-Fi mesh will let you take one of our Wi-Fi enabled routers or APs that now support Mesh and wirelessly expand the WI-Fi coverage using other Peplink APs. You can use Ethernet cables to add more APs in other areas. This is nothing new, we have had AP controller support for years to allow manag…

So you’d have to hardwire an AP close to your office ISP demarc then mesh the second AP somewhere in the middle of the home.

Rule of thumb is mesh point should be half way between your source and destination.

But hardwired APs will perform better. But more labor involved in running POE cables.

If you can do a site survey of your wifi signal strength with 1 AP centrally located vs 2 might give you better idea on placement and quantity.

I use inSSIDer and Netspot on Windows.

[kgarvey]

@stego

inSSIDer and Netspot on Windows

Thanks - I’ll look into those. The whole site survey thing is a bit beyond me so we’ll see how that goes.

[stego]

It’s pretty straight forward. And the inSSIDer website has some useful articles on everything networking to help you get going.

You might be surprised at how many neighbouring networks are around you. Unless you live in the country.

[C_Metz]

I just want to mention when you look at your floorplan, really think about where you use your devices. While most people think about covering every square inch of their house… I like to focus and place dots on the floorplan where I actually spend most of my time on wireless… At my desk in the study, laying in bed in the master, sitting on the couch in the living room. It really helps me to choose AP locations. If I make the signal green in all the locations I spend plenty of time in, I find it’s at least yellow at the front of the washer where I’m loading clothes LOL I rarely spend time there

[Datahead]

Haven’t tried it myself, but you can put a ceiling mounted AP on top of a tall bookshelf that reaches up close to the ceiling…Might be handy to do that when testing before you start drilling holes and everything

[stego]

When I was setting up my AP minis, I screwed together 1x3 and made quick mount to place AP near ceiling facing down. Clamp the mount to railing or whatever is available and move around your home and take signal measurements to see where best spot is.

[kgarvey]

Yeah, fair enough - I definitely tend toward the “total coverage” side, but I see what you mean. Will be interesting to see how the tests go.

[kgarvey]

That’s a great idea, thanks! I have a ladder I can probably use along with some other stuff to simulate the right height.