Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system
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@keyser
Well, my house is fully wired with 5e ethernet, so wired APs would certainly be an option. I've asked several folks that are supposedly knowledgeable about such things, and they all recommended a mesh system to me. If there's a better option that would cover my house in fast, reliable wifi for something around $300-ish, I'm all for it! I'll return this Deco system asap. :) -
@elmojo said in Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system:
@keyser
Well, my house is fully wired with 5e ethernet, so wired APs would certainly be an option. I've asked several folks that are supposedly knowledgeable about such things, and they all recommended a mesh system to me. If there's a better option that would cover my house in fast, reliable wifi for something around $300-ish, I'm all for it! I'll return this Deco system asap. :)I'm sorry to say this, but your "experts" that recommended a Mesh when you have cat 5e wiring, are either not experts or have not been given all the information about your house layout. Not in a million years should anyone be recommended a mesh setup unless they cannot avoid it.
I would return the Deco system asap, and order a small POE+ switch. I assume your cat 5e wires all originate from one place in the house? Place the POE+ switch there, and plug in the 5e cables from the ordered number of POE+ capable AP's that are placed around the house. Also connect one wire from the POE+ switch to your LAN port on pfSense.
After that you will have an infinitely much better wifi solution than the mesh setup :-)Personally I would order an Aruba Instant ON 1830 8G POE+ 65w switch and x number of Aruba Instant ON AP22 Accesspoints. These are backed by a major neworking vendor and get firmware updates and compatibility fixes for at least 5 years on (Something that none of the cheap chinese brands offer) - just trust me, it REALLY worth the extra money.
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@elmojo And the wife will like the small white AP's that only require the Cat 5e cable connection (no power supplies needed as power is delivered by the POE+ switch over the 5e Wires)
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@keyser I already have a TP-Link T1600G-28PS POE switch. Will that work, or do I need that specific one you mentioned?
I wonder if how many I'd need to push wifi to the other end of my house? The Deco X55 is 3 units, but I may only need 2 of the Arubas if they have good range. -
@keyser So here's a BIG point that I forgot to ask... Do the AP22s show up as a single SSID or several? That was a big selling point of the mesh for the wife. She was sick of having to hop networks as she moves around the house.
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@elmojo Your existing POE switch can support the Aruba AP’s just fine. There are some advantages to purchasing an aruba instant on switch as well, but you might not need that.
The switch shows up and are managed just like the APs from an APP on your phone or via Arubas cloud portal. When the AP’s are on a integrated Instant ON switch, you can create and monitor everything from within the app. Fx. guest portal for wired/wireless guests, several VLANs (and SSID’s if needed) to segment your network for security and so on.
Last but not least, with the instant on switch you can see all clients on the network (wired/wireless) and where they are located/connected - and at what quality and so on. You can also get full bandwith usage statistics and service usage statistics for all clients.Yes: Regardless of the number of AP’s, you only have one SSID (unless you want fx. a second one for guests). The one SSID covers both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios on all AP’s
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@elmojo If you ever consider purchasing a Instant On switch to have the full feature set, I would suggest you order a 24 port POE+ 1830 to actually replace the switch you have (instead of linking them). The biggest gains in management and monitoring comes if all switch ports are in managed Aruba switches - so everything shows up in the APP/Portal :-)
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@elmojo But like I said, the switch is not needed. You can still use the Wifi on a standalone basis as well, You will just miss some features in the guest portal and especially in monitoring.
If you can create VLANs on your existing switch manually and know what you are doing, you can get most of the missing features back (segmenting, and multiple networks/VLANs with/without SSIDs) -
So this is weird. After an extensive chat session with TP-Link support, I'm back to thinking that the problem is with the pfsense box.
I say that because I can unplug the Deco mesh thing entirely, and plug my laptop into the pfsense router directly, and it gets no connection. Not only no internet, but not even a local network connection. It sees the cable, but spins for a minute, then pulls a funky bogus IP, and reports "no network connection".
I can't imagine what could have changed. All I did was literally unplug the cable from the Deco M5 and plug it into the X55. I touched nothing on the pfsense software. Should I have? -
@elmojo said in Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system:
I'm back to thinking that the problem is with the pfsense box.
There's zero evidence here that your pfSense is causing devices to drop off the wireless. pfSense has nothing to do with that.
@elmojo said in Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system:
then pulls a funky bogus IP,
what is the IP it gets?
@elmojo said in Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system:
All I did was literally unplug the cable from the Deco M5 and plug it into the X55.
You said before that plugging in directly works.
That says right there it's not the pfSense. The MESH hardware is different - this is the change.You should get real APs. I buy Aruba IAPs off ebay for $25-$50 each. IAP-205Hs and IAP-303Hs. They work together, take local or POE power, support VLANs and have extra ETH ports on them you can VLAN away or shut down. Or use for cameras with POE passthrough (from POE+). Great little things.
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@rcoleman-netgate said in Poor wifi performance after upgrade of mesh system:
You said before that plugging in directly works.
I did? I don't remember saying that, but if I did, I was wrong. I just plugged my laptop directly into the pfsense, and got nothing. :/
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@elmojo I specifically asked you to do that and you said it worked.
Is the interface in pfSense set up for VLAN traffic at all? Is your computer set to a static address and its on the wrong subnet or are your MESH devices all static and there's no DHCP on the interface?
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@rcoleman-netgate
I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were asking. I thought you were asking if the Deco was connected directly to the pfsense, without any other equipment between. My fault.
I'm not using VLANS at all. My computer (I assume you mean the laptop?) is DHCP.So I've definitely got something all screwed up, I just can't figure out how...
If I go into Status>Interfaces, I have the following... https://ibb.co/BHpkLcq
Prior to me fiddling around this afternoon, OPT1 was disabled, so please ignore that line for the moment.
However, I have no idea why OPT1 was disabled, since that's the port that my Deco M5 was connected to, and somehow it was working.
If I plug my laptop into igb3 (OPT1), I get no connection, pretty much as you'd expect, since I'm sure it's not properly configured. I see it has no IP.
If I plug the laptop into any free port on my switch, which is connected to igb1, then it pulls an IP in the correct range and everything works fine. This is true of my Deco as well. If I plug it into the switch (not directly into the pfsense as it was before), then it works, but I'm certain there was a reason why I had it on a separate port before, I just can't recall why right now.
This is what happens when things work too well. They don't require constant fiddling, and I forget how/why they were set up a certain way.
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@elmojo Can you take a screen cap of the Interfaces->Assignments page and post it here?
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@rcoleman-netgate Sure! https://ibb.co/Nn2Ym8k
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@rcoleman-netgate
I think I'm beginning to piece together what happened. The short version is that I'm an idiot and have no business touching my own network. :/It seems that maybe OPT1 was disabled all along. I had 3 M5 Deco units. The "main" unit was in my network closet, plugged directly into my pfsense router, into port OPT1 (igb3). The 2nd unit was in my Living Room. I had an ethernet cable plugged into it as well, from a wall jack, because I had read in the documentation for the device that it supported ethernet backhaul. I think I misunderstood this to mean that it would use the ethernet connection as a faster/more stable connection back to the 'main' unit, rather than connecting wirelessly. The 3rd unit was in my bedroom, and connected only wirelessly, via mesh.
I now believe that in fact the Living Room unit was the only one receiving internet service, since OPT1 was disabled. This means that even though it wasn't designated in the Deco app as "main", it was serving the house, kinda through the back door, so to speak. This could also account for why my speeds and signal strengths weren't as good as expected. Doh.
Anyway, if I am correct in all this, how can I enable/configure OPT1 to be the "internet service" port for the Deco, while the LAN port remains the port that serves the switch? -
Did I scare everyone off? :)
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Hi, let me try to help you enable opt1.
Login to PF sense, on the top header you will see interfaces. Click on that then click on assignments. From there, you will be able to add opt1 to your interfaces. from there, click on opt1 to enable that interface. after that, you will have to go to your firewall rules and add a rule, allowing Internet. I would just copy your land rules and make them the same as your opt1 rules.
This is the most important part. At any time if you need clarification/understanding. On the right side of the top header there is a circle with a question mark. click on it and it will take you to documentation explaining that page. -
@uglybrian Thanks. If you notice in the screenshots posted above, I had already done those steps, other than the firewall rule. When I try to copy the rule from my LAN, it just opens the rule editing page. What am I doing wrong?
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Sounds like you’re almost there. Once you get to the opt1 rule editing page. Simply put the same rule there as on your lan network, you may have to do it manually. After that at the bottom of the page click on the save. You need to click on save after every change you make. Don’t forget to click on the ? For clarification and instructions if you get a little lost.
