Hey guys,

I am currrently trying to cover most black holes in my house, it is quite spaceious and some rooms get weak connection and need to be sorted out probably with more AP903s which I will purchase soon, but what would option is better to have them all as access points or to create a mesh network with them all?

I am currently rocking a setup
Vigor 2927AC
Vigor AP903 x 2
Vigor AP900 x 1
Vigor AP802 (plug) x 1

I will soon probably replace the 900 with another 903 and then buy a few more 903's to cover some more black holes I currently have and experience with my IOS devices. Just wondering what the best setup would be for a house environment any help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

What is better, AP or Mesh?

My take, is that "Mesh" is an attempt at IEEE 802.11s , with a bit of Central Management thrown in.

IEEE 802.11s lets wireless repeaters talk to one another - potentially via intermediate nodes - without the need for the links to be manually defined. As far as I can see, it only starts to come into its own, when the area to be covered is so large, that several 'hops' are required. With one hop, from Mesh Root to Mesh Client, it's effectively just a WDS bridge. With wireless bridging, throughput is drastically reduced, unless there is a dedicated radio for the 'backhaul'. The AP903 doesn't have one. (Maybe you can use 5GHz for the backhaul and 2.4GHz for the clients?)

Wired 'mesh' mode is really nothing of the sort - it's just a centralised management tool. If at all possible, the answer is always wired Access Point mode :wink:

Are you sure you actually have dead-spots? ... and it's not a Roaming issue - where clients are refusing to let go of the first AP they saw? Are you using some kind of Survey Tool - or just reacting to the behaviour of your IOS devices?

In another forum, a poster was of the opinion that "Mesh" was better, because it helped get rid of this problem. I speculate that their particular Mesh implementation was using lower-powered nodes, which encourage the wireless client to look elsewhere. You can of course, (theoretically anyway!), alter the transmit power of Draytek Wifi products, to give this effect. The AP-assisted Roaming Assist options are also well worth exploring.

These are just my own prejudices and ramblings. Others may have different ideas :lol:

I don't have "different ideas" :wink: , but I have (after much faffing) currently left my set up of 2926ac root, 3x AP903 wired nodes and 1x AP903 wireless node in "mesh mode"

As hornbyp says, the AP903 does not have a dedicated backhaul channel (although some Draytek devices do ), so in my view a big advantage of a proper mesh system is
absent....

The main advantages for me over a set up using the APs as APs with wireless bridging to the wireless node are a) I don't have to manually add the MAC addresses of the APs involved in the "bridging" part and b) I can easily check on the mesh status from the GUI of the 2926

A disadvantage is that the 2926 appears to send out "config" to the AP903s even if I don't tick anything in "config sync". For example, I have a 4th SSID on 2.4GHz on the 2926 for a specific local device - I do not want that SSID on any of the APs, but it nevertheless appears on them, so I have to go to each of them in turn and disable it.

As we are in lockdown, you can have hours of fun playing around with different arrangements, "roaming" options etc. :lol:

Edit - I was wondering why my Arlo IP Camera in the garage had apparently disconnected - on looking through the AP903 wifi settings I noticed that 2 of my SSIDs had mysteriously changed from AES encryption to TKIP/AES :? Changing them back to AES only and the camera immediately reconnected.

This is without any re-booting of the APs and with no intentionally initiated "config syncs". Bizarre. The 4th SSID had also re-appeared on the AP903s, so I've removed it yet again

I did notice that the "Central AP Management" boxes appear to be ticked by default on the AP903s, but as I don't use that feature I've now unticked them.

The "Basic Config Sync" table in the 2926ac does not allow any of the parameters to be changed. There is no "Advanced Config Sync" option (as I recall that there was on the AP903).

This "auto sync" nonsense is such a pain that I'm going to try reverting to using one of the AP903s as the root.

Hmm, further to the above and my attempts to revert to using one of the AP903s as the root, with the current firmware (1.3.7.1) it appears that setting any of the nodes to "wired uplink" mode results in them always being seen by the root as "offline" and their dashboards saying "As wifi mesh is not in use for higher security please switch to AP mode"

Pretty sure this didn't happen with the earlier firmware. Kinda makes one wonder what is the purpose of "wired uplink" mode :?:

Update - on reverting to using the 2926ac as the root, I ran into the same problem - the wired nodes insist on remaining "offline" as far as the root is concerned, with the "please switch to AP mode" message refusing to go away. Very odd, since this configuration was working until I decided to try an AP903 as the root. :? :?

So I've now gone over to all AP903s as AP mode, no meshing about. Required a bridging setup from the kitchen to the garage, not really a problem but I see it's only available on 5GHz now - the AP900 gave one a choice of bands.

Piste Basher wrote:
Required a bridging setup from the kitchen to the garage, not really a problem but I see it's only available on 5GHz now - the AP900 gave one a choice of bands.

This is WDS bridging, I assume?

Does that mode support VLAN tagging?

Yes, although there is no specific menu item for WDS bridging as there was in the AP900, the MAC address boxes appear in the 5GHz setup page. I'll have to check in the garage again to see if the tags are propagated.....will let you know.

Edit - before doing that I decided to try something I meant to try a while ago. I've now set all 3 wired AP903s to be mesh roots and the one wireless node in the garage is linked to the root in the kitchen.

Working OK so far....