Conflicting N300's? What am I missing?
I know enough about access points to get myself in trouble, apparently, and I need help.
I recently purchased and installed two N300 2T2R Access Points to provide full wifi coverage for my home. AP#1 is in the SW corner of the first floor, and AP#2 is on the NE corner of the second floor. Both are wired to a modem/router that has had the wifi disabled (this sits closest to AP#1 if that matters) . The settings I have:
- Both N300s are set as Access Point mode
- DHCP: disabled on both
- Identical security and password
- SSID: same on both
- Subnet: same on both
- Different IP addresses (xxx.xxx.x.101 and xxx.xxx.x.102)
- Gateways on each same as IP addresses (xxx.xxx.x.101 and xxx.xxx.x.102 - read an article that said the that the gateway has to be identical between the two APs, but when I changed the gateway of AP#2 to .101 while leaving the IP as .102, then I couldn't connect to that AP)
- AP#1 channel = 8, AP#2 channel = 11
With this setup, I can connect to each AP separately. This was tested by disabling/enabling one at a time. With both enabled, the service is good as long as you are closer to one that the other.
The problem is that zone between the two where you are relatively the same distance from both APs, specifically my wife's home office, Nest, Alexa, etc. Wifi connection drops rondomly and periodically, and when there is service, it's much much slower than when you are in range of only one of the APs. Disabling either of the APs resumes performance to normal. I went through the typical reboots, disconnect/reconnect, etc to see if that would clear it up, but no luck.
I have temporarily turned off AP#2. My wife's office now has expected performance, but the corner of the house where AP#2 is has practically no service because it's too far from AP#1.
And just as fyi - moving APs to a more centralized location is not an option due to the layout of our home. These two corners are about the only place to get an AP.
Any help or feedback would be appreciated.