Deco X20 setup - placement
This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.Deco X20 setup - placement
This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
The Deco X20 setup app has you pick the layout of your home so it can tell you where to place your nodes. But then it doesn't have any info about placement. Am I missing something?
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As you change the number of floors and rooms on that page, it will change the graphic above. There isn't any detailed information about where to place your units, however, the standard rules of internet connections apply.
When placing the Decos think about:
Potential Electronic Interfecreneces between Units
The Thickness and Material of Walls
The Overall Distance Between Units
Network Load by Room
The Decos can always be moved if you think that there is an issue with the placement. The Decos use a smart mesh system that will account and calculate where you place the nodes in order to provide the best connection.
The goal of creating a mesh is to create the fastest PATH to the modem, and setting your devices up with this in mind can improve the stability of your network. Think of it as a freeway interchange, and you want to try and distribute your traffic across the different highways. However, every once in a while a road will close(due to interference or high traffic) and push other traffic towards the other freeways.
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As you change the number of floors and rooms on that page, it will change the graphic above. There isn't any detailed information about where to place your units, however, the standard rules of internet connections apply.
When placing the Decos think about:
Potential Electronic Interfecreneces between Units
The Thickness and Material of Walls
The Overall Distance Between Units
Network Load by Room
The Decos can always be moved if you think that there is an issue with the placement. The Decos use a smart mesh system that will account and calculate where you place the nodes in order to provide the best connection.
The goal of creating a mesh is to create the fastest PATH to the modem, and setting your devices up with this in mind can improve the stability of your network. Think of it as a freeway interchange, and you want to try and distribute your traffic across the different highways. However, every once in a while a road will close(due to interference or high traffic) and push other traffic towards the other freeways.
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Thanks, Riley. I think I have them in good spots now.
My original kit was a Deco X20 3-pack. Then I picked up a W3600 2-pack at Home Depot. Are the Decos from the W3600 kit compatible with the X20s? Both are AX1800, right? At one point I had all 5 running and showing in the Deco app, but the wifi network was a mess. Cutting out the 2 Decos from the W3600 kit improved things drastically. As you said, I was probably overloading the network. However, I have a shed out in the yard with power, but no network. I was thinking of trying out one of the W3600 nodes out there to see if it would work. But if there is a compatibility issue, I won't bother.
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All of our Deco Units are meant to be compatible with each other, making expansion and network upgrades simple and quick. The main thing is that the features provided to you in the Deco App, such as parental control, are set by the main deco unit. This means upgrading only the main unit, could potentially allow for more features to become available. When connecting older Decos, or different Decos to the network, the system will only use the features that are available for each node. For reference, this is how some houses are connected.
For your shed situation, I would recommend visiting the PoE Deco Survey Available as this is a new hardware feature that TP-Link is considering, and could prove beneficial to your network if you were willing to run Ethernet cables to your shed. If the connection to the unit in the shed is weak after setup, you can also move another node closer to the shed to increase the stability and performance of the network.
I am curious about how your network was slowed with all the nodes. As I understand it, the nodes simply function as a client, so there should be no problem with network stability. The only issue I could see is if maybe the devices were too close to each other and your devices were constantly having to choose different units to send data to. I would also look into using a network switch to connect your devices to your main unit if using a wired backhaul, this can help to evenly distribute traffic throughout the wireless network.
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I originally set up 5 units. The 3 Deco X20 nodes and the 2 W3600 nodes. All in mesh with no Ethernet backhaul. I have no way to do that, although I did recently purchase some MoCA gear to utilize the coax in the house. So I might be able to get a couple of the nodes on Ethernet backhaul eventually.
When I first set up the 5 nodes, they were fairly evenly spread out. I have one in my office on the lower floor connected to the router (Main node), one at the other end of the lower floor, one on the ground floor near my wife's desk, one in the garage, and one in the shed. The issue was with the garage and shed nodes. They would always be connected to the office node, which was the furthest one away. The garage node had a very weak signal and would only show 5ghz. So none of the IoT devices would connect to it. It was suggested on another forum that I reduce the number of nodes to 3. I took out the W3600 nodes, leaving the office node, the second node on the lower floor, and the node near my wife's desk. Oddly enough, the mesh wifi got stronger and the IoT devices in the garage and the shed started working better. Hence my earlier question about the compatibility of the two systems.
I still don't think I have decent wifi coverage in my garage. I have 4 cameras there (one Eve camera and 3 Logitech Circle View cameras). They tend to drop offline a lot (just got a pop-up notification that my driveway camera is offline). I believe that's due to the marginal wifi there. I could try one of the W3600 nodes in the garage again, but if it goes back to trying to connect to the office node and ends up with a weak signal, I'll be back where I started.
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I just added one of the W3600 units to the network. It's in the garage. I was a bit concerned at first because all my Homekit devices went unresponsive after the node came online. But then I power cycled all the Homekit hubs (4 Apple TVs and 3 Homepod Minis) and everything came back up. So maybe that was my issue originally. Lesson learned.
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I'm glad that you were able to get everything working. I always recommend taking your entire network down and rebooting so that the devices will all start communicating with each other again. If I am correct, there is an Optimize option in the Deco app that might have given your HomeKit devices the information needed to reconnect to the correct node. It sounds as though your devices were simply connecting to the wrong node, hence the poorer performance.
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When you get the notice that the devices are disconnected, are they actually disconnected from the network? Or could the notification be triggered by the device changing what node to connect to and then briefly losing its connectivity?
Placing a node that would allow these devices to have a consistent connection may solve this issue; however, the main issue that occurs when it comes to garages is the presence of a firewall. The firewall is a super thick and dense wall that will block or interfere with most wireless communications. For this reason, the cameras may be having to maintain a stable connection, to the node, through this wall.
When I was configuring my Zigbee Network, I actually had to place a light bulb on the side of my garage that would extend the network into the garage. I never realized the interference caused by the garage walls until then.
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Even though the device may be further, your unit still may believe that you are able to get a better signal/experience while setting up the way it is. There are also different factors that affect how the device will send traffic throughout the mesh. For example, any thick walls or floors will impede the signal and may be worse for your other units that connect to it. Other factors include how many devices are connected to that node, are there any appliances generating electrical interference. If you would like to try and force the connection, you should first try to rearrange your nodes slightly, to see if they will provide a better experience in different places. In the app, there is also an option to optimize the network which will allow the nodes and devices to connect to the correct nodes after you make adjustments.
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@Msix
I bought this locally (black Friday - Walmart) had stock and slightly better price for BF.
First the APP is great (even for an old guy like me)
I did have some trouble at first but did get internet working. When I tested using phone w/ookla speed test (BTW I learned this is the cleanest download speed test - computer programs will often detract from a clean test on computer)
Once I did my first test the speed was not up to par (I pay for 500 meg down / 20 meg up)
I saw that there was a firmware update, so I had this update, which took about 10 minutes, then I had trouble getting back onto the router - power cycle on the router and solved that issue.
Once connected and configured my ISP modem it reconnected and BOOM ookla test on phone up to 590megs.
I plugged in the other Wi-Fi pod and let them connect, found that this one also had to update firmware.
After another reboot of the routers tested the connection again and still download speed well over 500 megs.
I tested on my Dell laptop which is room next door and was downloading at over 400 megs.
I am very pleased with this since I had a Spectrum Wi-Fi 6 and technician came out day before and troubleshooting the system since the download was getting so slow streaming TVs were dropping.
I had an older Netgear we plugged in which showed 300+ speeds consistently - the Spectrum guy tried a new modem and Wi-Fi router. both were not working... so dropped the $5 / month rent.... and when I found this black Friday deal though I'd give it a try. Hopefully it stays great.
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