How To Create an Outdoor Mesh Network with wifi cameras Circling a Neigborhood
We wanted to update our old cabled security camera system with TP-Link's VIGI C340-W cameras. We needed 29 wi-fi cameras surrounding our neighborhood. First, the local TP-Link tech experts advised us to create a mesh network with four EAP650 devices. It turned out that it is almost impossible for EAPs to catch each other's signals. Since, our contractor promised us a solution, he installed four additional EAP225, four CPE510, and two CPE710 with three separate routes that merge in our security building. However, it became a mess due to limited data transfer rates of CPEs (300mbps) that drop with each hop. As a result, we started experiencing low video quality (especially at night), very low frame rate (as low as 10fps), frequent drops in recording etc. due to signal and data transfer rate limitations.
Our neighborhood consists of 105 houses and the 29 security cameras surround them almost in a circle of 2.56 km.
The Tp-Link USA Outdoor Solution Guide suggests that EAPs can be only used on 3 hops to create a mesh network. Moreover, the Tp-Link data suggests that EAPs almost have 250 m range on 2.4 ghz, and may be some more on 5ghz if each cameras are connected to eaps via switch to turn them to 5ghz.
I would definitely be appreciated if you could kindly answer some of those following questions:
- Is it possible to form a mesh network with supposedly 10 or more EAP devices? Can it be supported via software updates?
- If not should we only use CPEs to transfer video data of each camera one by one like a mirror?
- What would be a wiser solution for a large-scale wifi camera system like ours?
