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Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

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Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#121

Post by amaccuish »

goodburb wrote: post #4

You can stick to 802.11r only by lowering the transmission power and have all the APs on the same channel, in my tests it ended up switching much faster than K/V. (~75ms) On iOS, equal channel with correct ESS will switch liberally. On Android 14+ with Broadcom chip it will start conservative, then switch liberally after the first poor signal switch-over event, up until disconnection. Android (Pixel/Moto) will never…

> You can stick to 802.11r only by... have all the APs on the same channel

Is that really true? We make sure all our APs are on different channels to prevent interference.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#122

Post by lxgr »

djfergus wrote: post #97
drnick1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most IoT devices support 2.4GHz only. Notably this applies to ESP32-based devices and older phones and laptops too. I would argue that it is the 5GHz band that is optional, the only benefit (bandwidth), being relevant only for laptops and phones when downloading something.

Let me guess you don’t live in an apartment? 5ghz is important if you are interference limited. The lack of wall penetration and short range become benefits. 2.4ghz provides very poor performance in my condo due to the 30 different SSIDs I can see from my lounge room.

The 30 SSIDs your device can see are bad, but what might be even worse are the many non-802.11 devices on 2.4 GHz that are invisible to a simple SSID scanner and don't share bandwidth fairly with 802.11 CSMA/CA. (This includes Bluetooth!)

5 GHz has much less of that, but big parts of it have weather radars as a primary user, with APs being required to detect and avoid any channel where they can detect one.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#123

Post by lxgr »

esseph wrote: post #114
lxgr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all not splits by frequency, though.

Huh? I'm responding to the question about why you might split SSIDs. SSIDs don't have anything to do with frequency necessarily, morso network segregation. Also: > What difference does the presence of legacy devices make? Is the intent to isolate them from modern devices from a network perspective? Yes. Old devices can only use limited data rates and they will drag down the throughput of other devices on the same cha…

> I'm responding to the question about why you might split SSIDs. SSIDs don't have anything to do with frequency necessarily, morso network segregation.

Sure, I was only talking about splitting by bands as I thought that's what this entire conversation is about. Of course there are plenty other reasons to have more than one network in the world :)

> Old devices can only use limited data rates and they will drag down the throughput of other devices on the same channel.

They will do so regardless of which AP or SSID they are connected to, though, as the channel is a shared physical medium.

If the goal is to isolate slow/old devices from modern ones, that can be done regardless of the band.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#125

Post by TimTheTinker »

simoncion wrote: post #106
TimTheTinker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have come a very long way since the UAP-AC. I've been using the U6-Pro backed by UCG-Max and couldn't be happier. Yes - the software running on the standalone APs is still basically OpenWRT wrapped with a management layer. But UniFi has grown to a much larger system. All the router boxes are running Debian, for example (even those with a built-in AP).

> They have come a very long way since the UAP-AC. I agree. The AC-LR and AC-LITE were way better than the -AC. That guy ran extremely hot and was dogshit at multicast. In contrast, the -LITE and -LR merely ran notably hot and were merely intermittently bad at multicast. Loading up OpenWRT on the -LR and -LITE made them work quite a lot better (though -obviously- they still ran just as warm). Ditching them for the Op…

I've also been able to deploy UniFi for my parents and my wife's parents, and easily manage their setups remotely.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#126

Post by bdavbdav »

rcarmo wrote: post #55
bdavbdav wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep exactly. This stuff quickly falls into “choose your battles” for me, and I’d rather just offload the issue

As long as you're happy with having your home wi-fi potentially controlled by the cloud...

You can run the controller on your own hardware, without any outside internet access if you so wish. It’s as cloud as you want it. They also support direct remote access.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#127

Post by jon-wood »

esseph wrote: post #48
lxgr wrote: post #16

> The obvious advice for roaming is “use one SSID everywhere”, and that is often correct if you’re running Wi-Fi in an office, a public venue, or generally somewhere where you don’t have (or care about) legacy devices. What difference does the presence of legacy devices make? Is the intent to isolate them from modern devices from a network perspective? Then create a separate SSID on both 2.4 and 5 GHz for modern devi…

> I can't think of any legitimate reason for split SSIDs anymore. Different networks / vlans / firewall rules.

Many APs now support either using Radius and username/password auth for this, or having multiple acceptable pass phrases for a WPA2 network which drop devices into different VLANs.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#128

Post by simoncion »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #125
simoncion wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have come a very long way since the UAP-AC. I agree. The AC-LR and AC-LITE were way better than the -AC. That guy ran extremely hot and was dogshit at multicast. In contrast, the -LITE and -LR merely ran notably hot and were merely intermittently bad at multicast. Loading up OpenWRT on the -LR and -LITE made them work quite a lot better (though -obviously- they still ran just as warm). Ditching them for the Op…

I've also been able to deploy UniFi for my parents and my wife's parents, and easily manage their setups remotely.

OpenWRT does that too, yeah.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#129

Post by esseph »

lxgr wrote: post #123
esseph wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I'm responding to the question about why you might split SSIDs. SSIDs don't have anything to do with frequency necessarily, morso network segregation. Also: > What difference does the presence of legacy devices make? Is the intent to isolate them from modern devices from a network perspective? Yes. Old devices can only use limited data rates and they will drag down the throughput of other devices on the same cha…

> I'm responding to the question about why you might split SSIDs. SSIDs don't have anything to do with frequency necessarily, morso network segregation. Sure, I was only talking about splitting by bands as I thought that's what this entire conversation is about. Of course there are plenty other reasons to have more than one network in the world :) > Old devices can only use limited data rates and they will drag down…

> They will do so regardless of which AP or SSID they are connected to, though, as the channel is a shared physical medium.

In a multi-ap setup you can isolate those 2.4ghz devices to their own, short range said that allows very permissive datarates. Then everything else gets 5ghz or 6ghz with mediumish output power and restricting the lower data rates. This prevents clients that move to the edge of the coverage zone from hitting lower data rates and dragging the whole channel or SSID or both down.

It just depends on your setup, number of APs, type of devices, device demands, etc.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#130

Post by TimTheTinker »

simoncion wrote: post #102
Saris wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unifi doesn't have any cloud requirements that I know of. But yes they are more expensive than the hardware you've got, at $100 per AP. For my needs unifi was worth it to not have to deal with OpenWRT again, or worse, stock firmware on consumer APs.

> For my needs unifi was worth it to not have to deal with OpenWRT again... Amusingly, I was quite willing to put up with a day or two of tinkering and puzzling over the -occasionally godawful- docs to never have to deal with Unfi and the rest of UBNT's software ever again. Even my recent move from my OpenWRT-"powered" UAP-LR/LITE to my OpenWRT Ones required only a little bit of fussing with the configs I copied over…

What about the radio/antenna quality? I have a UniFi U6 Pro and it covers my whole house (~3000 sqft, 2-story) providing nearly gigabit WiFi speed everywhere to my WiFi 6 devices. I don't know how much the radio/antenna helps (4x4, 6 spatial streams) but I don't see how the OpenWRT One would be an improvement besides its hackability.
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