We are looking at this more and trying to make a decision which way we’d like to proceed for larger homes. We use the Mimosa G2 block on every deployment today, but there are some limiting factors in larger home deployments. We may not have been doing things correctly, but using the wireless repeater mode cuts the bandwidth of the wireless network in half. We know that we can use a wired connection to extend the range, but in most deployments, that is more wiring than is easy or feasible to do at a moderate cost. Additionally the G2 is only 2.4 GHz. We like this unit, but it just doesn’t feel like a good solution for large homes.
We also use Mikrotik Hap ac2 in our non-Mimosa deployments, or in situations where the customer needs more than one ethernet port. That works pretty well, but doesn’t give any mesh extension capabilities. We have messed around with SSID sharing/mesh type settings in the Mikrotik to hook more than one up, but not sure that this is as stable as we’d like. We also aren’t able to see the other nodes very well, but we might not be doing something correct. We have a pretty good test bed at my house. Internet comes into the utility room on the basement floor, and needs to cover about 6000 square feet on three different floors. We previously used a regular router (Mikrotik Hap ac2) at the connection point and wired extenders in the upper floor. Coverage was spotty at parts of the upper floor and pretty spotty in the middle floor. As a test we got the Ubiquiti Amplifi product and were able to verify significantly better coverage as well as throughput of >400 Mbps from the farthest end of the house to the connection point. Much, much better than the wired extender did. We also tried the Netgear Orbi and saw results that were pretty similar. The mesh stuff definitely works. The Ubiquiti Amplifi product was pretty impressive, much more so than their regular Nano gear, etc. The equipment looks impressive, the software is quick and well designed, and the things is super simple to get running. Far more impressive than normal Mikrotik software interface stuff (we use Mikrotik for all our infrastructure as well as some of the customer routers). We’d be all over this as a solution, except that the only remote management they have is using Facebook or Google accounts, and you can’t do this by IP address. Pretty much a deal breaker for us. The Netgear Orbi product is about what you’d expect. Same interface as all their routers, hardware is pretty well done, but nothing special. Again, pretty easy to hook up. Big thing is that it has remote management and that seems to give us access to everything we’d want from the testing that we did. It is pretty expensive though, but that doesn’t scare us away as we are asking customers to buy this equipment for those that have larger houses. Although it does have Remote Management, the Orbi doesn’t allow for a Provider login and a customer login like we do with the Mikrtoiks. We really like this because we can manage the router for the customer, but still give them access to change SSID id and password, do some port forwarding, etc. We have some Calix stuff headed our way to try out. From talking to folks, we expect it will do very well with the management side of things. I expect the performance to me more on the lines of the Ubiquiti Amplifi since there isn’t a dedicated backhaul/mesh radio band used, but we’ll see when we put it to the test. The biggest concern I have with the Calix stuff, is that it becomes a much larger decision. Instead of just buying a few of these for the large houses, you have to buy the cloud service and commit to a whole new brand and management platform. One of the nice features of the Calix stuff though is that you can buy the same main router for every installation and just add the mesh units where needed. A drawback of the Calix and the Netgear Orbi is that they want to be set up in Star configuration only, they don’t allow daisychaining like the Amplifi product does. We did test the daisychained configuration of the Amplifi for performance and it did very well. Again, much better than a wrired extender did surprisingly enough. We hadn’t considered the Unifi product, but from doing a little bit of reading it looks like every AP would expect to be wired, which would be tough for us to do. Since we have some Ubiquiti stuff here and there, it wouldn’t require commitment to a new management platform, that would be pretty nice. Our testing has gone well enough that we are pretty convinced some sort of true mesh network is needed for these larger homes, it just works so much better than repeaters, extenders and the like. Regards, David Coudron From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Rory Conaway Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 10:46 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Mimosa does 1 repeater, AC Cubes do 2 repeaters at least, and Unifi is unlimited. All 3 of them have cloud management. Why pay a monthly fee if it isn’t necessary? Does Callix have additional features beyond connectivity like blocking torrents or parental controls? Rory From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 8:35 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Designed for single-device (or more if mesh\repeater\etc.) is needed vs. assuming a large ecosystem. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions<http://www.ics-il.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/googleicon.png]<https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/linkedinicon.png]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/twittericon.png]<https://twitter.com/ICSIL> Midwest Internet Exchange<http://www.midwest-ix.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/linkedinicon.png]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/twittericon.png]<https://twitter.com/mdwestix> The Brothers WISP<http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> [http://www.ics-il.com/images/fbicon.png]<https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>[http://www.ics-il.com/images/youtubeicon.png] <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> ________________________________ From: "Rory Conaway" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 6:20:13 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi What is the advantage of Calix versus Unifi? Rory From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of David Coudron Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 12:02 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Chuck, We’d be pretty interested in that. Love to see that happen. Cory, can you reach out to us in the meantime, we’d like to learn more and some decisions to make soon about our directed for managed whole house Wifi. Regards, David Coudron [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> | Mobile: 612-991-7474 Advantenon, Inc. [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> | 3500 Vicksburg Lane N, Suite 315, Plymouth, MN 55447 | www.advantenon.com<http://www.advantenon.com/> | Phone: 800-704-4720 | Local: 612-454-1545 From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 12:38 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Calix historically sold to ILECs via dedicated regional sales reps. You had personalized service. They didn’t have a product with universal appeal until they did the 844. I will volunteer to stock and sell their products via my ecommerce site if they will give me enough margin to make it worth it. From: Ken Hohhof Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 11:03 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Agreed, but that’s their business model. I think similar to the companies that OEM “gateways” to the likes of AT&T and Comcast. These are not supposed to find their way onto Amazon and Walmart online stores for end users to buy themselves and then try to figure out how to link them into their service provider’s operations systems. I guess our customers could make the same complaint about us. Maybe a few WISPs have online ordering portals, but I’m guessing very few. Not talking about put your location in here and a salesperson will call you, but actually sign up and schedule installation, similar to what we used to do with dialup service (where we just needed to assign a username and password, and publish a list of local access numbers). From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Jon Langeler Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 11:37 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi I think it’s a turn off when they don’t have an online store somewhere to simply order a 10 or 100 pack, or anything. But I got that vibe from them as well. Jon Langeler Michwave Technologies, Inc. On Dec 23, 2018, at 1:14 AM, Jason Wilson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: How does one get Calix to talk to you? They seemed less than interested to talk at WISPAPalooza and no call from the lead generated at he show. Jason Wilson Remotely Located Providing High Speed Internet to out of the way places 530-651-1736 Office 530-748-9608 Cell www.remotelylocated.com<http://www.remotelylocated.com> On Dec 22, 2018, at 7:35 PM, Darin Steffl <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: You have to buy direct from Calix. We upped our plan prices $10 per month for new subs and now give the router "free". We're slowly migrating existing customers to these new plans and putting the Calix in their home. We're about 60% complete with the process. It dramatically reduces the number of tech support calls related to wifi issues. Huge time saver, money maker, and keeping customers happy and churn low. On Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:56 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] wrote: The other piece of information that wasn’t apparent to me on casual inspection is there’s a minimum sub count if you want to use their Cloud features. My take is you need to come at it from the perspective that all your subs are going to get the Calix router, rather than viewing it as an optional upsell. At least if your WISP is relatively small. If you have 5000+ subs, that would be different. You could go through a transition with existing customers, but eventually it would be like a cable modem, everyone gets one. Either you throw it in for free, or charge a non optional modem rental fee. From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2018 7:23 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi I buy direct. I think that is how they do it with everyone. Sent from my iPhone On Dec 22, 2018, at 6:20 PM, David Coudron <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Where do you purchase the Calix equipment from? Our typical sources don’t seem to carry them (Streakwave, Winncom, ISPSupplies, Linktechs, etc. Are you purchasing direct from Calix? Regards, David Coudron From: AF <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Darin Steffl Sent: Friday, December 21, 2018 5:34 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi Calix is the only good method today for routers and a mesh solution that can be managed by the ISP. Powerline adapters suck and we don't use them anymore. WiFi extenders are just as bad and we tell customers to throw them in the garbage. They cause more issues than they fix. We have 850+ Calix GigaCenters in the field and are deploying more of the Mesh units. Everything is very easy to provision and we have full visibility into the home network. Pricing is pretty good and we get to make money on it instead of the customer just spending money on their own solution. Sell it to the customer that we will warranty for the life of their service with us. On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 5:31 PM Jason McKemie <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: The GigaSpire Max & Blast look intriguing. Not sure on pricing as of yet though. On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 5:06 PM <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Calix 844 has a mesh extender that supposedly has touchless provisioning. I have a mesh box at home to play with but still have not taken it out of the box. From: David Coudron Sent: Friday, December 21, 2018 4:01 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: [AFMUG] Managed whole house mesh wifi We have been running into more and more situations where customers either have homes that are too large to effectively cover with a good router, or have so many devices at the far end of the house from where their router has to be positioned that we are looking for good options to provide better whole house coverage. We have worked with Powerline extenders, but consider them to be too inconsistent for wide spread use, and have worked with some wireless extenders. The wireless extenders have a pretty big impact on wireless speed that we aren’t excited about them as a go forward solution. We also can’t log into the powerline or wireless extenders without some port forwarding work in their main router. We have played around with some mesh options, particularly the Ubiquiti Amplifi product, which we really like, but feel like it is not an option since we cannot manage it remotely. Netgear Orbi certainly seems like a viable option, but kind of spendy if you need 3 nodes. Cost isn’t necessarily an issue since customers will buy this equipment rather than us fund it, but we don’t want the solution to be so expensive no one opts for it. I know there has been a few threads on managed routers, but this seems like a little bit different take since we are going to have customers buy the equipment, but would like to be able to manage remotely. I suppose one option would be to still provide an inexpensive managed router as we currently do and have them manage the mesh system on their own. Any thoughts on what has worked well for whole house mesh systems, especially in a remote management situation? Regards, David Coudron ________________________________ -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- Darin Steffl Minnesota WiFi www.mnwifi.com<http://www.mnwifi.com/> 507-634-WiFi [Image removed by sender.]<http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi> Like us on Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi> -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com ________________________________ -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
