When I was still living in an apartment building, I faced the problem of low speed in a room far from the router. Indeed, for many, the router is in the hallway, where the provider reached out for optics or UTP, and a typical device was also installed there. It’s also good when the owner changes the router to his own, and typical devices from the provider are, as a rule, the most budgetary or simple models. You should not expect high performance from them - it works fine. But I installed a router with gigabit ports, with a radio module that supports operation at frequencies of 2,4 GHz and 5 GHz. And the speed of communication with the Internet within the apartment, and especially in the back rooms, was quite depressing. This is partly due to the noisy 2,4 GHz band, partly due to the fading and multiple reflections of the signal when passing through reinforced concrete structures. And then I decided to expand the network with additional devices. The question arose: Wi-Fi network or Mesh-system? I decided to figure it out, conduct tests and share my experience. Welcome.
Theory about Wi-Fi and Mesh
For an ordinary user who connects via Wi-Fi to the network and watches videos on Youtube, it will not make any difference which system to use. But from the point of view of organizing a normal Wi-Fi coverage, these systems are fundamentally different and each has both pluses and minuses. Let's start with the Wi-Fi system.
WiFi system
This is a network of ordinary routers that can work independently. In such a system, one master router is allocated and the rest become slaves. At the same time, the transition between routers remains invisible to the client, and from the point of view of the routers themselves, the client will move from one cell to another. Such a system can be compared with cellular communications, because a single local network is formed with routers-translators. The advantages of the system are obvious: the network can be increased gradually, adding new devices as needed. Moreover, it will be enough to buy inexpensive routers with support for this technology. There is one minus, but significant: an Ethernet cable and power must be connected to each router. That is, if you have already made repairs and have not laid the UTP cable, then you will either have to pull it along the plinth, where possible, or consider another system.
Mesh system
This is a network of specialized equipment that also forms a network of several devices, creating a continuous coverage of the Wi-Fi signal. These points are usually dual-band, so you can work in both 2,4 GHz and 5 GHz networks. The big plus is that there is no need to pull a cable to connect each new device - they communicate via a separate transmitter, creating their own network and data is transmitted through it. Subsequently, this data is transmitted to a regular Wi-Fi adapter, reaching the user. The advantage is obvious: no additional wires are needed - just plug the adapter of the new point into the socket, tie it to the main router and use it. But there are also disadvantages. For example, the price. The cost of the main router is several times higher than the cost of a conventional router, and the cost of an additional adapter is also significant. But there is no need to redo the repair, pull cables and think about wires.
Let's move on to practice
I have already moved from a reinforced concrete apartment to my own house and also faced the problem of a drop in the speed of the wireless network. If earlier the noise of the air by neighboring Wi-Fi routers was strongly influenced (and after all, everyone strives to unscrew the power to the maximum in order to “drown out” the neighbors and increase their speed), now distances and overlaps have begun to influence. Instead of an apartment of 45 square meters, I moved into a two-story house of 200 square meters. You can talk a lot about life in the house, and even the fact that the neighbor's Wi-Fi point only occasionally appears in the smartphone menu, and no more wireless networks are detected, already says a lot. Be that as it may, I tried to place the router in the geographical center of the house and at frequencies of 2,4 GHz it provides communication everywhere, but on the site the coverage is already lame. But when you watch a movie from a home server on a laptop in a room far from the router, sometimes there are fading. It turned out that the 5 GHz network is unstable with several walls, overlaps and the laptop prefers to switch to the 2,4 GHz network, which has higher stability and lower data transfer rate. “We need more speed!”, as Jeremy Clarkson likes to say. And I went looking for a way to expand and speed up the wireless connection. I decided to compare two systems head-on: a Wi-Fi system from Keenetic and a Mesh system from Zyxel.
Keenetic Giga and Keenetic Viva routers took part from Keenetic. One of them acted as the organizer of the network, and the second - as a slave point. Both routers have gigabit ethernet and a dual-band radio. In addition, they have USB ports and a very wide range of firmware settings. At the time of the test, the latest available firmware was installed and the Keenetic Giga was the host. They were connected to each other via a gigabit wired Ethernet cable.
From the Zyxel side there will be a Mesh system consisting of Multy X and Multi mini. The older point, Multy X, was connected to the Internet, and the "younger", Multi mini, was installed in the far corner of the house. The main point was connected to the network, and the additional one performed the function of distributing the network via a wireless and wired channel. That is, an additional connected point can also serve as a wireless adapter for equipment that does not have a Wi-Fi module, but has an Ethernet port.
Functionality
The manufacturer often claims in press releases about the unusually wide wireless network coverage of their devices. But this works in an open area without walls, reflective surfaces and radio interference. In reality, many have experienced slowdowns and packet loss in apartments where one and a half to two dozen wireless networks are visible on a smartphone. This is also why it is more efficient to use the not so noisy 5 GHz band.
For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the Wi-Fi head units and Mesh systems as routers. Each of the routers can simply be a wireless device. But I'm wondering how many devices and at what speed the router can provide access to the network. On the first question, the situation is as follows. The number of supported devices depends on the Wi-Fi module. For Zyxel Multy X and Multy mini, this will be 64 + 64 devices for each band (2,4 + 5 GHz), that is, with two points, you can connect 128 devices at 2.4 GHz and 128 devices at 5 GHz.
Creating a Mesh network is made as simple and intuitive as possible: to work, it is enough to have a smartphone and install the Zyxel Multi application there. It doesn't matter if you have an iOs or Android device. Following the prompts of the installation wizard, a network is created and all subsequent devices are connected. Surprisingly, for the initial creation of a network, you must enable geolocation and have an Internet connection. So you will have to at least have access to the network from your smartphone.
For Keenetic routers, the situation looks a little different. The number of connected client devices depends on the model. Below I will give the name of the routers and the ability to connect clients in the 2,4 and 5 GHz bands.
Giga III and Ultra II: 99+99
Giga KN-1010 and Viva KN-1910: 84 for both bands
Ultra KN-1810: 90+90
Air, Extra II, Air KN-1610, Extra KN-1710: 50+99
City KN-1510: 50+32
Duo KN-2110: 58+99
DSL KN-2010: 58
Lite KN-1310, Omni KN-1410, Start KN-1110, 4G KN-1210: 50
You can configure routers both from a computer and from a smartphone. And if in a local network this is easily implemented via a web interface, then there is a special application for a smartphone, which will later make it possible to use additional functions, such as a torrent downloader or access to files on a connected USB drive. Keenetic has a great feature - KeenDNS, which allows, in the presence of a gray IP address, to connect to web services of published services from an external network. That is, you can connect to the router interface behind NAT, you can connect to the interface of a DVR or web server behind NAT. But since this material is still about the network, it should be noted that organizing a Wi-Fi network is also very simple: the master router becomes the master device, and the slave adapter mode is turned on on the other routers. At the same time, slave routers can create VLANs, can work in a single address space, they can set the power of each wireless adapter in 10% increments. Thus, the network can be expanded many times. But there is one thing: to organize a Wi-Fi network, all routers must be connected using Ethernet.
Testing technique
Since the wireless network on the client side does not have a difference, and from the point of view of the technical organization of the network is fundamentally different, the method was chosen towards the user. Testing was carried out separately on Zyxel Multy X + Multiy mini and Keenetic Giga + Keenetic Viva devices. To avoid the influence of the provider, a server was raised in the local network in front of the head unit. And on the user device the client was organized. As a result, the topology was as follows: server-leading router-access point-client.
All tests were carried out using the Iperf utility, which emulates continuous data transfer. Each time, the tests were carried out for 1, 10 and 100 threads, which allows you to evaluate the performance of the wireless network under various loads. It was emulated as a single-stream data transfer, like watching a video on Youtube, and multi-stream, like a torrent download. The tests were carried out separately when connected via a 2,4 and 5 GHz network.
In addition, since the Zyxel Multy and Zyxel mini devices can act as an adapter, they were connected via Ethernet to the user's computer at 1000 Mbps and three speed tests were also performed. In a similar test, the Keenetic Vivo router participated as a Wi-Fi adapter, being connected by a patch cord to a laptop.
The distances between the points are about 10 meters, reinforced concrete ceiling and two walls. The distance from the laptop to the endpoint of the access point is 1 meter.
All data are entered into a table and speed graphs are plotted.
The results
Now it's time to look at the numbers and the graphs. The graph is more visual, so I will immediately give it.
On the graphs of the connection chain are the following:
Zyxel mini: Server - Wired - Zyxel Multy X - Wireless - Zyxel Multy mini - Notebook (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265)
Zyxel Multy: Server - Wired - Zyxel Multy X - Wireless - Zyxel Multy X - Notebook (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265)
Keenetic Wi-Fi: server - wire - Keenetic Giga - wire - Keenetic Viva - laptop (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 adapter)
Keenetic amplifier: server - wire - Keenetic Giga - wireless - Keenetic Viva (as a repeater) - laptop (Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 adapter)
Keenetic adapter: server - wire - Keenetic Giga - wireless - Keenetic Viva (in adapter mode) - wire - laptop
Zyxel mini adapter: server - wire - Zyxel Multy X - wireless - Zyxel Multy mini - wire - laptop
Zyxel Multy adapter: server - wire - Zyxel Multy X - wireless - Zyxel Multy X - wire - laptop
The picture shows that all devices at a frequency of 2,4 GHz are less productive than those at a frequency of 5 GHz. And this despite the fact that there was no noise from neighboring interfering networks, since if there was noise at the frequency of 2,4 GHz, the result would be noticeably worse. However, it can be clearly seen that the data rate at 5 GHz is almost twice as high as at 2,4 GHz. In addition, it is noticeable that the number of simultaneous download streams also has some effect, that is, with an increase in the number of streams, the data transmission channel is used more densely, although the difference is not so significant.
It is very clearly visible when the Keenetic router acted as a repeater that the transmission speed is divided in two, so you should take this into account if you want to transfer large amounts of information at high speed, and not just expand the coverage of the Wi-Fi network.
In the last test, where Zyxel Multy X and Zyxel Multy mini acted as an adapter for a wired connection to a remote device (the connection between the base Zyxel Multy X and the receiving device was wireless), demonstrated the advantages of Multy X, especially in multi-stream data transfer. The Zyxel Multy X had a larger number of antennas: 9 pieces versus 6 for the Zyxel Multy mini.
Conclusion
Thus, it is obvious that even with an unloaded air at a frequency of 2,4 GHz, it makes sense to switch to 5 GHz when you need to transfer large amounts of information quickly enough. At the same time, even at a frequency of 2,4 GHz, it is quite possible to watch movies in FullHD quality using a router as a repeater. But a 4K movie with a normal bitrate will already begin to stutter, so the router and playback device must be able to operate at a frequency of 5 GHz. At the same time, the highest speed is achieved when a set of two Zyxel Multy X or Zyxel Multi X + Multy mini is used as a wireless adapter.
And now about the prices. A tested pair of Keenetic Giga + Keenetic Viva routers costs 14800 rubles. A set of Zyxel Multy X + Multy mini - 21900 rubles.
The Zyxel mesh system can provide wide coverage at a very decent speed without running extra wires. This is especially true when repairs have already been made, and no additional twisted pair cable has been installed. In addition, the organization of such a network is as simple as possible through an application on a smartphone. We must add to this that the Mesh network can consist of 6 devices and have both a star topology and a tree topology. That is, the end device may be very far from the starting router, which is connected to the Internet.
At the same time, a Wi-Fi system based on Keenetic routers is much more functional and provides cheaper networking. But this requires a cable connection. The distance between routers can be up to 100 meters, and the speed will not decrease at all due to transmission over a gigabit wired connection. At the same time, there can be more than 6 devices in such a network, and Wi-Fi roaming of devices when moving will be seamless.
Thus, everyone decides for himself what to choose: functionality and the need to lay a network wire, or the simplicity of expanding a wireless network for a little more money.
Source: habr.com