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I would be cautious about a lot of opinions about Wi-Fi stated online - a lot of them are ventured by people who literally have no idea how Wi-Fi really works and thusly they buy into the myths and reach the wrong conclusions. They may be well meaning, but well meant nonsense is still nonsense. Thusly, a lot of Wi-Fi ills get attributed to the "router" (or AP) when it's more likely to be some environmental issue (such as a new interference source) or a client issue: No-one ever wants to attribute Wi-Fi issues to their client device - especially if it's got a picture of an apple on it - it's always pre-concluded that anything wrong "must be the routers fault." The case cited "my Wi-Fi is not working as well as it used to" is classic symptom of something environmental (say a neighbour has switched channel or bought a new car using 2.4GHz radio for it's keyless entry, you microwave oven is leaking, etc) rather than a problem with the router itself - though of course, router can go wrong, but it tends to be spectacular and catastrophic rather that a slow gradual degradation before an eventual death.
I might suggest you are more likely to find informed opions here at AVF and I also quite like Tim at SMallNetBuilder.
If your SH is routing well enough, then I'd leave it alone and just turn off it's Wi-Fi is that's all that's troubling you. Indeed, as "bad" as you might believe it to be at Wi-Fi, I'll bet it's serving it's immediate (physical) locale well enough, so there's an argument to say you "may as well" leave it on and fix the outlying areas (by deploying more AP's.)
Where life gets tricky is in deploying a "guest" network over multiple devices - essentially a second network (Wi-Fi or wired.) We do this kind of thing all the time in big business using technology called VLAN's which allows us to create multiple networks (often dozens) sharing the same physical kit, but the VLAN's keep the traffic for each network separated from each other in flight between and within the AP's/switches/routers.
If you want a guest network with multiple Wi-Fi hotspots, you need to figure out how to keep the "guest" network traffic separate from the "main" network as it transits between multiple AP's (VLAN's in the best way.) There's more to it than just deploying AP's that can sport multiple SSID's. Most SOHO kit doesn't offer such a "guest" network facility apart from single router solutions that do this "in a single box" - e.g. my WD router does so and BT routers offering their "FON" solution do similar, but they couldn't extend it to additional AP's as they lack the VLAN capability.
Some of the newer "whole home" type systems might offer this sort of thing (better still if they automate it all) in which case (conversely to something I said earlier) you may indeed need to junk your existing router (and/or use it only as a modem) as the first "box" of the whole home system might need to be that which connects to and routes traffic to from your ISP and would be the point where guest and main traffic is initially divided.
You might consider contacting your ISP and see if they offer anything that avails the facilities you want. If not, you need to dig into the spec. sheets and be sure whatever you want to buy offers what you want. Multiple AP's serving a single network is dead easy, AP's offering multiple SSID's is also dead easy (though most SOHO devices don't,) keeping the traffic from each SSID separate in flight between AP's and thence to/from the Internet is a bit harder but do-able. So don't "just assume" that because an AP offers multiple SSID's it is suitable for traffic separation - you need to look for the VLAN capability (and everything else in your network needs to play nice too.)
We can get into the detail more if there is interest. |
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2-12-2019 04:45:55
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