robdy2k wrote

@Fl1nst0ne  - thanks for this, I'm following your lead here.

 

On your network diagram is the TL-R480T+ also your firewall please?

 

I find it odd that many people are staying the 480 doesn't have Gig ports, can anyone from TP Link confirm this please?

I managed to purchase a Cisco 5505 ASA firewall from EBAY :)

@Fl1nst0ne Hi 

I live in rural France so fibre is out out the question - and ADSL painfully slow. Not really my area of expertise but I have cobbled together via the load-balancing TL-R470T+ router three 4G WLANS (A Huawei from Bouygues, with SFR sims inside an Archer MR200 and an ArcherMR600) plus Poynting aerials. It is extremely likely that this can all be optimised which is why I am here!

This set up is in the conservatory and connects to the rest of the house via TP-Link PowerLine to meet an old Asus router acting as an Access Point connecting to the rest of the home via Cat5 with Apple stuff and a TP-Link switch. 

I wanted to build a TP-Link OneMesh wifi network and so bought a TP-Link RE505X, acting as an access point, to talk to two TP-Link RE300s. However, it seems OneMesh needs a router not an access point to create a wifi system.. correct??? Any thoughts??

Looks like your setup 'dwarfs' mine 😃

My setup includes a WiFi mesh system from another manufacturer and can be setup as a router or access point. Hopefully someone can help you from the forum with your TP-Link OneMesh system?

@MarkRB 

RE means range extender. You bought a wifi extender*** (RE505X) that product is not even cheap, compared to the onemesh compatible AX20 which is a WIFI6 router/access point.

Basically you could have rather just bought a DECO mesh system. The M4 is only wifi5 but very stable and cheap. The other decos that do wifi6 are still expensive.

If you previously got the RE300 then you could not use them in mesh with the decos (that would need a similarly looking product called Deco M3W that is exclusively for deco), so your direction was not that wrong but missed the point that RE products don't act as access point.

Did you mean that you wanted to replace the old structure (powerline+asus AP connecting to a switch and devices via cat5) to the mesh system?

- Configure the R470T+ with the 3 WANs*. Choose different IP ranges for those 3 cellular modems. E.g.: one on 192.168.1.x, other on 192.168.2.x etc.

- If you can avoid the powerline because you have cat5e cables in the building everywhere, then do it as powerline is not as stable as ethernet.

- Buy a onemesh compatible router, it can only work in onemesh if it is in router mode!**
You can choose between the wifi5 routers: C6, C80; wifi6 routers: AX10, AX20/AX21 or more expensive ones if you wish.

- Connect this router to the R470T+. Choose the IP range of the new router different from the R470T+'s LAN IP.

- Connect the RE devices to the new router in onemesh.

The disadvantage of onemesh against real mesh solutions like Deco is the inability of having a "wired backhaul". As you have the ethernet cable around the building, that would have been useful to maintain the maximum bandwidth between the wifi APs.

Also that you can't connect two onemesh routers, only a onemesh router with REs (and compatible powerline)

Perhaps the biggest drawback is that onemesh system just like any wifi extender solution halves the speed (bandwidth) between the units.

With real mesh system you get much better speed. And with tri-band mesh system you would have a spare band exclusively for wireless backhaul, these are more expensive products like the Deco M9 Plus.

----------------------

*to get the best internet speed, you need to set them up with manual band selection. On the two TP-Link MR devices it's possible but probably not with the official firmware. Look for this question here on this forum, about the beta firmware for your product that enables manual band selection.

Turn off the wifi signal on the 4G modems for the maximum performance of them.

**the 4G modem routers can work in access point mode with onemesh but in your situation it's meaningless as you have multiple 4G modems connecting to a load-balancer and onemesh would come afterwards.

Edit:

***actually the RE505X can work as an access point, indeed, ...but only without the onemesh feature. Pfffff!

@Arion Thanks for the detailed and rapid response! Much appreciated - and very helpful. 

I guess I was thrown of course by this marketing statement from TP-Link

"RE505X is more than just a wireless range extender.
Simply plug an Ethernet cable into its port to easily turn that wired connection into a high-speed dual-band wireless signal." (i.e. an access point.. but alas now I realise not OneMesh)

... and of course now it makes sense to have another router with another IP range

and thanks for this tip .. will need to investigate "manual band selection"

*to get the best internet speed, you need to set them up with manual band selection. On the two TP-Link MR devices it's possible but probably not with the official firmware. Look for this question here on this forum, about the beta firmware for your product that enables manual band selection.

Turn off the wifi signal on the 4G modems for the maximum performance of them.

Again .. super thanks 

Mark

@Arion 

To advise that I have been able to set up "Manual Band Selection" on the MR600 which got me thinking that of course this can force a number of 4G routers to use different cell phone towers to help build in some resilience... 

@MarkRB 

A bit off topic but...

...if you use an R470T+ that has 100Mbit ports and not gigabit, you really wasted your money for the RE505X as a WIFI6 extender.

Depending on the total bandwidth achieved by the 3 cellular ISP, the R470T+ can easily be the bottleneck here.

Especially that you invested in the MR600 4G+ modem that is also gigabit and for a good reason.

Now, if you had plan for distributing the internet traffic between the two available LAN ports on the R470T+ in this case you could have a more balanced situation with the current devices.

E.g.: you connect the switch to one LAN port and the wifi router (that you need to buy now) to the other port. Your wired devices would get up to 100Mbit and the wireless devices also 100Mbit.

If your ISPs provide around 100-150 Mbps download speed or more in total, that would make sense.

Even so, honestly, you chose the wrong products (and if you could sell them somehow, would still be better). Instead of the RE505X + some RE300 you could have bought a 3-pack Deco M4 that would be more than enough for your internet bandwidth. It has gigabit ports and you can even connect them with ethernet cable as a wired backhaul.

The M4 units are versatile, can be used individually as traditional router/access point as well. So, if you find the 2 units being enough to cover your place, you can use the 3rd one somewhere else. This is a much better solution than range extenders. I had RE products for years before I bought the Deco and I couldn't be happier with the move. It just works, after setting up the Deco you can forget it, no further assistance needed (other than doing the occasional firmware updates by the Deco app when it notifies you)

The only downside of these Deco products (for some people) is that those have less tweaking options than many traditional routers. It's really meant to be an easy to use solution.

@Arion 

All very good to learn .. thank you! 

Right now the system bottleneck is the 4G signal strength in the area .. even with the 3 x 4G routers (with at least 2 different4G signal providers)  connected to the R470T+ the typical speed is around 25-35 Mbps, occasionally peaking to 60-70 Mbps according to speedtest.net .. hence I have not been so concerned with using powerline to connect the R470T+ with the rest of the network..or the 100 Mbps on the R470T+

By the way we can only dream of fibre here , and the old ADSL connection was often at 2/3 Mbps or lower! .... 

... which means any more tips to boost the 4G router performance would be most welcome :) 

@MarkRB 

Did you try choosing the 4G band with manual band selection?

We used to have a similarly slow situation with three ADSL lines in our condo at the lake. Recently got a reasonably priced unlimited plan for 4G and we achieved – using MR6400 – around 30-35Mbps (that can slow down during the summer season though), with MR600 it would be at least 50-60Mbps for download.

The major improvement was, however, when we added microwave ISP that gives another 80/10Mbps that we will activate for the 6 months a year, the rest of the year the 4G modem will serve the much lower demand of traffic.

Try to find a microwave provider in your area that sells the service for residential customers at a reasonable fee.

@MarkRB 

I know you currently have an Archer MR200 4G router and a Archer MR600 4G+ router but you might be able to improve your download/upload speeds if you use an Archer MR600 (Cat 6) 4G+ router with beta firmware, specifying which bands to use for carrier aggregation; if it is supported on the nearby masts?  Have you tried this functionality yet?

CheerZ