Question Mesh Network Busted?

[GodisanAtheist]

I have a mesh network consisting of 3 Deco M5's. It's worked quite well for the last several years but either a recent firmware update or hardware issues seem to be giving it a bunch of problems.

Xfinity promises us 800mbps and speed tests normally return about 650-700mbps so we generally do pretty close to the promised amount off the main Deco. Typically see a 1/3 drop for each deco hop, which is normal.

Now however download speeds for anything not connected to the main "router" deco are in the absolute gutter. Generally the last Deco in the link would manage 3MB/s, but on speed tests I ran today it was having trouble with hitting even 1Mb/s (yes bits per second). Loading webpages is crawling, it's absolutely not normal speeds.

Trying to download something off of steam connected to the second deco in the link and best it can manage is ~500KB/s.

Worse still, the second and third deco seem to randomly drop out and in to the network at random.

I've swapped the decos around, restarted the network, made sure fast swapping and beaming are activated, but all for naught.

Curious if anyone has any insight or is experiencing similar issues with their M5's after this last firmware update, or if some antennas or hardware seem to have failed and is it just time to scrap and replace the whole thing?

E dit: while writing this comment the second Deco has dropped and reconnected twice.

 

[aigomorla]

I think it was noted that mesh needs to be spaced out relatively well, otherwise you run interference in hand off's from one AP to another.

And not to bash TPlink... but.. no nevermind i'll bash them... i absolutely HATE TP-Link.

 

[Hans Gruber]

I have the M9 plus mesh 3 pack system. A couple of things to consider. One is to completely restart your modem, switches if you have any and the Deco M5 pucks. All of them. Full power off for a few minutes and start them up with the modem first.

Keep beam forming on but turn off fast roaming. On the newest firmware there is an option for restarting your mesh network on a schedule. I have mine set to restart the mesh system once per week in the middle of the night.

Run network optimization every few weeks via the app to make sure you do not have any conflicts. I think you issue is a chain of order issue with the ip's in some sort of conflict. Hard restarting everything should solve your issues.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I have the M9 plus mesh 3 pack system. A couple of things to consider. One is to completely restart your modem, switches if you have any and the Deco M5 pucks. All of them. Full power off for a few minutes and start them up with the modem first.

Keep beam forming on but turn off fast roaming. On the newest firmware there is an option for restarting your mesh network on a schedule. I have mine set to restart the mesh system once per week in the middle of the night.

Run network optimization every few weeks via the app to make sure you do not have any conflicts. I think you issue is a chain of order issue with the ip's in some sort of conflict. Hard restarting everything should solve your issues.

- I'll give this a try. Haven't tried bringing down the whole system and restarting from scratch.

The thing is its worked fine for nearly 5 years, and after the latest firmware upgrade started being a little wonky until it became nearly unbearably unstable yesterday evening and today. So I don';t think it has anything to do with positioning, since its worked fine for a long time in the existing locations. Entirely possible some of the hardware might have just gone bad.

Wife works from home full time, so might consider putting some money into a fancier high end system if the full restart from scratch doesn't do the trick.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Update: The hard reset didn't really help things along (didn't hurt anything either I'm sure) so I went ahead and deleted the wifi network and set the whole thing up with a new network name.

Added each Access Point back like it was a first time set-up.

And that seems to have done the trick. Everything back to downloading at the expected speed, connectivity across the house.

Added all of our wifi devices again and all seems to be well.

Not sure what happened to the old network that tanked it, maybe just loaded down with years of device IPs, maybe that last firmware update didn't do so well with the existing network or who knows.

That said, the devices are definitely entry level and about 5 years old at this point. Definitely has me thinking on getting a higher power, newer, more capable model.

 

[aigomorla]

I think you had problems with handoff's.
They were like, you take it, no you take it, then i'll take it... no i'll take it.

I think your solution maybe only temporary.
How large of a house we talking about?

I think a real SOHO grade AP might be a better solution, like a Zyxel or a eNGenius.
Or if your going to run a dedicated controller, Ubiquiti is also good, but i really recommend you running a dedicated controller for Ubiquiti AP's.