Plus, you’ll have a handful of smart home devices that also need Wi-Fi access. There is a good chance that you’ll have Netflix and YouTube streaming simultaneously.
In this day and age, pretty much every house in the country has at least two or three connected devices. Within this guide, you will learn all about the best mesh WiFi network systems of 2018 and how they can help. A multi-node system may very well be the solution that you’ve been looking for. Thankfully, some new products may be able to help. This is something that you need to rectify as quickly as possible. If you have a large home, you’re most likely going to suffer from dead zones. Other times, it might be a problem with your equipment. The problem may sometimes originate from the ISP. Keep in mind though that a frequency band cannot be allocated specifically for meshing, and both bands will still be available for servicing clients unless the SSID is configured to use the 5Ghz band only.Pretty much all homeowners are going to experience Wi-Fi problems at some point or another. If it is desired for two APs to mesh on 5Ghz as opposed to 2.4Ghz, then the APs should both be set to the same 5Ghz channel, but different 2.4Ghz channels. To do this, refer to the article on manually changing channels in a mesh network. While it is not possible to select which frequency band should be used for meshing, it is possible to manually adjust channel selections to direct the AP toward a desired behavior. Once the AP hears all the neighboring APs, it finalizes a route based on the link quality and the number of hops. Additionally, the number of hops are also considered and preference is given to gateways with lower hops. If no valid neighbor is found at all from all channels, it stays on the configured channel.īased on the scan results, the repeater AP develops a table of all the detected gateways and their corresponding link quality metrics. The configured channel has higher precedence if a valid neighbor is found on it. If a valid neighbor (in-network AP or Meraki AP) is found, it goes to that channel. Once the AP goes in the mesh mode, The AP scans all channels to collect info from all neighbors.
The current route to a given mesh gateway may change over time, to adapt to network conditions. In the event of a mesh gateway failure or the emergence of a new mesh gateway with a better routing metric (lower metric equals better route), all new traffic flows will be routed to the new mesh gateway. Data traffic sent between devices in a Cisco Meraki network is encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. If the ideal path changes due to node failure or route metric, traffic will flow via the best-known path. To that end, it is generally recommended to allow auto-channel selection in networks with repeaters.Įach AP in the Meraki mesh network constantly updates its routing tables with the optimal path to network gateways. All Cisco Meraki APs that support meshing will automatically try to mesh if they lose their wired connection, or be available for connections from repeaters if connected as a gateway. This protocol is also designed to provide ease of deployment while maintaining low channel overhead.Īs part of the self-healing nature of meshing, the access points will automatically detect each other and select the best route to a wired gateway. This protocol is designed specifically for wireless mesh networking and accounts for several unique characteristics of wireless networks (including variable link quality caused by noise or multi-path interference, as well as the performance impact of routing traffic through multiple hops). Meraki devices in a mesh network configuration communicate using a proprietary routing protocol designed by Meraki.