Should I use different frequencies in my house

joebre

Have a 3 storey house with poor wifi range as router on top floor. Have just installed an AP on ground floor and a Range Extender on the middle floor.
Should I have them all on the same frequency or each on a separate frequency as I want to be able to connect to the strongest frequency as I move through the house.

ED E

The AP definitely should be on a different frequency, otherwise you'll just degrade the service hugely where they overlap at all.

If the range is extender is a repeater, it HAS to be the same frequency as the source, its how it works. If its a homeplug setup then you should set it to a third channel.

Dont use adjacent channels, eg: not 1,2,3 use 1, 3, 5 or spread them further if you like.

joebre

The router is top floor. The Extender is mid-floor and the AP is bottom floor. I believe that the Extender halves the speed and maybe should be avoided. Maybe I should remove the Extender and just use the Router and AP. Will my devices roam seamlessly between the two devices ?

ED E

Yeah, two transmission points should be plenty for most homes.

Roaming is client dependent but as long as the SSID, PSK and security type are identical it should be pretty seamless.

apoeiguq3094y

joebre wrote: »

The router is top floor. The Extender is mid-floor and the AP is bottom floor. I believe that the Extender halves the speed and maybe should be avoided. Maybe I should remove the Extender and just use the Router and AP. Will my devices roam seamlessly between the two devices ?

The extender halves the maximum theoretical speed, so if its a 300Mbs router, it will behave like a 150Mbs one. That doesn't really matter if you have 20Mps or 50Mps broadband. The bottleneck will still be your internet connection.

It would make a difference if you were transferring within your own network a lot, but thats rarely the case in a home set up.

Seamless roaming can be hard to get. if a client is connected to e.g. your top floor, then when you go downstairs it will only switch when it loses the top floor one, not when the ground floor is better than the top floor.

joebre

We have a B&B with guests on both the top and bottom floor. Middle floor is the our living area and guest dining room. I have the SSID's called Top, Middle & Bottom so guests will know which SSID they should connect to
Would it make any difference if I had just one SSID and they would connect to the strongest signal ?

ED E

If the SSIDs are different the clients wont roam properly, they'll use their ordering in the "wireless networks list", which usually means the newest one takes priority.

joebre

So if I had just one SSID, would the client roam from the top floor to the middle floor or would they have to switch ?

TheChizler

joebre wrote: »

So if I had just one SSID, would the client roam from the top floor to the middle floor or would they have to switch ?

It would roam automatically if they lost the signal from the top. Or they turned their wifi off and on. Works better if all the access points are the same model, I've had trouble mixing brands in the past.

joebre

Router, AP & Range Extender are all the same manufacturer. House is not that big that one would loose a signal and pick up another. Most of my problems have been solved as I managed to get a cable to an AP on the bottom floor, as there is a concrete ceiling.