I would suggest avoiding going further than 1 hop from the hardwired unit. You could have a few that are all one hop and not likely have much trouble.
Overall, this is a great tool for filling in a coverage gap in an area that is hard to run a wire, but it is also not the same as a dedicated enterprise mesh routing system.
Can the AP One connect to multiple gateways, or only one?
By one hop, do you mean two wireless mesh links? In the example above, is this out to AP One (2)?
Hi,
I have a Peplink Balance 20X. And I have a large house which is a two storied building. Now I have multiple APs (of a different brand) hooked up through ethernet in different locations. But the problem I am facing is that the devices have a tendency to remain locked on a particular AP but if they move to another area with a stronger signal from another AP, the device remains locked to the original AP meaning the signal level is low causing poor data rates.
Now if I were to replace the current APs with Peplink one considering it supports mesh system, will the problem be solved and all the Peplink APs work together to form one unified network. And will the device automatically connect to the fastest Peplink AP as I move through the home, creating a truly seamless Wi-Fi experience?
Can you please confirm, if this will be achieved? Just like the TP Link Deco model does below.
TP Link Deco
TP Link Deco
If replacing the current APs with Peplink AP ONE AX Lite or Peplink AP One AC Mini will help me achieve a superior wifi roaming experience, I am going to order 4 APs straight away. Thanks.
To be clear, Mesh is only used to make a wireless AP (an AP without Ethernet uplink) work as an extension of other hardwired APs.
Fast roaming is also supported, but not really related to mesh, but they can be nice to use together of course.
Regardless, if you have several APs all connected to Ethernet, or a mix of ethernet and Mesh APs, you just need to enable (or confirm, itās usually on by default) that the āFast transitionā setting is enabled, this allows clients to quickly handoff from one AP to another with the same SSID profile on.
Hi Travis,
Thanks for the info. Really helpful stuff!
I was wondering if you could help me out in choosing the correct Pepwave APs model and the correct number I will need for maximum coverage.
Both the floor is about 2000 square feet. The first floor is doesnāt have any walls but second floor has walls. Kindly see the floor plan below. Its also worth noting that, all the walls are made of bricks. So this is the main reason for me to ask your help.
My initial plan was to put AP One AX Lite on the first floor where there is no walls and put the AP One AX on the second floor where there many-many walls as you can see from the picture below.
Or do you think I should just get the AP One AC Mini for each bed room for maximum coverage without having to worry about the walls but then again, I would be missing out on WiFI 6.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Iāve got what Iām sure is a stupid question: if I set up three AP One AX units in a mesh, with only the central AP connected to a Balance 20X via ethernet, can I use the ethernet port on the other two to connect non-WiFi devices to the network (as opposed to only being able to use the ethernet ports on the AP One AX units as a wired backhaul)?
ETA: It looks like a similar question was asked hereāno definitive answer though, so if someone knows for sure Iād be very appreciative.
@carjr159, it should be worked if you are having this setup:
Laptop āethernetā> AP )))Mesh))) AP āethernetā> Router ā> Internet
I need to come back on this topic, as tagged VLANS in Mesh is not working.
First all Config (VLANS, AP, MESH) is done via Incontrol.
Mesh is setup via a MAX BR 2 Pro (FW 8.3.0 build 5229)as Router.
APās are AP One Flex (FW 3.9.1 build 1088)as Meshed AP in Briged Mode.
All VLANs are configured on the MAX BR 2 and the AP Recieves the SSIDs with VLAN tagging correct.
Mesh does also work as untagged VLAN getās its ip address and the WAN port is up via Mesh and the AP is online in incontrol
This whole setup also works once the AP is connectted via WAN Port to the MAX BR2 LAN port (trunk mode , any vlan).
I did a pcap trace on the LAN and WAN port of the AP and i can see the DHCP discovers beeing tagged with right VLAN. On the MAX BR2 i did a trace as well an no DHCP packet is traced.
Is there a way to get this working: VLANS on the MAX BR2 pro, AP One Flex in Mesh mode replicating the SSIDās and VLANS ?
Thanks for your ideas and support
Does this happen to all clients (laptop and smartphone) that connect to the SSID with VLAN tagging?
May I know the AP is directly connected to the LAN port of BR2 Pro?
This happens to all clients , SmartPhones (iOS/Android) and Win11/10 Laptops.
Also if i assign an IP manually (from the correct range) no traffic goes through.
Once the AP is connected directly on the LAN Port of BR2 all works fine.
The Problem occures only in mesh mode.
I also changed config controll from IC2 to AP Controller in BR2 but no change at all.
There is also a ticket open: 23031029
The AP One Flex is powered via PoE on the WAN port throug a MiniSwitch with no access to any ip Network or dhcp service. Mesh connection is up and runnig
Since you opened a ticket on this, I suggest following up there as we have more visibility on the reported issue.
Thanks.
Did you ever succeed in this setup with the mobile platforms? It seems not an exceptional use case to me, but indeed quite hard mixing up L2 and L3 networking where speedfusion was not intended to.
Iām very interested in your experiences in this.
No. At least not with PepLink devices.
To be honest, we have petty much abandoned all our PepLink devices for the moment. While they do seem to have robust fail-over and bonding capability, they proved too rigidly implemented to adapt to anything but the most standard use case. I will admit, I became a bit frustrated with PepLink sales folks over-selling them and then weeks of time spent in forums, with support, and testing the devices, unable to find a solution. Things that pushed us over the edge include:
We instead purchased Cellular routers based on OpenWRT. They provide much of the same basic functionality as the PepLink devices, and weāve designed a network architecture with them using custom routing rules and multiple ports configured as WAN ports that allows us to have multiple links between two endpoints and choose the path that makes sense on the fly. They donāt do failover as robustly as PepLink devices do, unfortunately, and for that use case, we may end up re-installing our PepLink devices.
