Budget Mesh WDS with Ethernet Backbone

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Bob McKay

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Feb 26, 2014
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Hi all,

I'm moving in to long single story property and know that the wifi will require 3 access points minimum for decent coverage. I've considered using WDS units to get blanket wifi coverage but from what I've read it you can lose a lot of throughput due to the admin overhead of the backbone between the APs being done via Wireless too. I can easily implement an ethernet backbone but can't seem to find any detailed information about models that can be setup like that (Ethernet backbone, multiple APs - single wireless network).

Anyone have any ideas or experience? I like the look of the TP-Link TL-WA901ND units.

Bob
 
Solution
abailey
Putting in an Ethernet cable is the way to go for sure. You can use any wireless access point or wireless router (in access point mode) to do what you want. You will set them up by band (if you have multiple bands, the TP-Link you referenced had 2.4Ghz only). So if you have three, 2.4Ghz access points. You will set all of them with the same SSID and password. You will set them to different channels, though. In the 2.4Ghz range use only channels 1,6, and 11. So set them to those channels and make sure the channel width is set to 20Mhz, not 40 or auto. That should be all you need to do. Your router should give out the DHCP for your entire network.
If you also have 5Ghz wireless. You set all them with the same SSID and password...
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abailey

abailey

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Mar 23, 2014
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Putting in an Ethernet cable is the way to go for sure. You can use any wireless access point or wireless router (in access point mode) to do what you want. You will set them up by band (if you have multiple bands, the TP-Link you referenced had 2.4Ghz only). So if you have three, 2.4Ghz access points. You will set all of them with the same SSID and password. You will set them to different channels, though. In the 2.4Ghz range use only channels 1,6, and 11. So set them to those channels and make sure the channel width is set to 20Mhz, not 40 or auto. That should be all you need to do. Your router should give out the DHCP for your entire network.
If you also have 5Ghz wireless. You set all them with the same SSID and password (different from the 2.4Ghz SSID ), but you can leave the channel as auto and the channel width as auto. This is because there are many more 5Ghz channels and the AP's can usually find a clear channel by themselves.
Last thing on you Ethernet backbone. It is not a problem to daisy chain your devices, especially if your backbone is Gigabit. You may need to put in a small inexpensive Gigabit switch if you use an AP instead of a wireless router in AP mode as the AP's usually only have one Ethernet connection and thus you can't daisy chain. By daisy chain I mean you run a cable from your router to the first AP and then from that AP to the next AP (instead of two different cables going back to the router).
 
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