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Forum Discussion
Simplisafe Camera Connection Issues with New 960 6E Orbi
I have a simplisafe system with 2 doorbells, 1 inside camera, and 1 outdoor camera. I've always had issues with my old orbi and simplisafe with connections dropping, etc. I just bought a brand n...
I purchased a TP-Link AC750 extender and set up a 5ghz and 2.4ghz signal. Both connected to my 5ghz ssid from Orbi.
I put it in the room right outside where the door bell is and it doesn’t work. I moved it outside because it’s a covered courtyard (just on the outside wall of that room) and the signal is strong from the extender (around 300mb). Now the cameras work.
Why, how? I can stand down the street and get signal from my Orbi. Where the doorbell is gets 500-600mb. Yet it won’t work. Is that due to it being a mesh network? So this extender is not a mesh then. Somehow connecting to the extender (and both networks have the same ssid and pass) the cameras are working. I don’t understand how is why.
It’s also very weird to me that a wall with stucco can kill a 500mb signal but I can run down the street with internet? I’m very confused.
I put it in the room right outside where the door bell is and it doesn’t work. I moved it outside because it’s a covered courtyard (just on the outside wall of that room) and the signal is strong from the extender (around 300mb). Now the cameras work.
Why, how? I can stand down the street and get signal from my Orbi. Where the doorbell is gets 500-600mb. Yet it won’t work. Is that due to it being a mesh network? So this extender is not a mesh then. Somehow connecting to the extender (and both networks have the same ssid and pass) the cameras are working. I don’t understand how is why.
It’s also very weird to me that a wall with stucco can kill a 500mb signal but I can run down the street with internet? I’m very confused.
chuck27p wrote:
Somehow connecting to the extender (and both networks have the same ssid and pass) the cameras are working. I don’t understand how is why.
My guess is that the camera has selected the TP-Link WiFi extender because it has the strongest signal. (Stucco is built on a wire mesh ("chicken wire?") that may not be particularly friendly to WiFi signals.)
When using a WiFi Extender, my preference is to give the "extension" a completely different WiFi SSID than the primary WiFi network. That way, the device will never be tempted to connect to a very weak mesh host signal.
I also think of WiFi more like Alchemy than science. Almost "Black Arts".
chuck27p wrote:
So this extender is not a mesh then.
This is exactly correct. Any independent WiFi access point or "extender" that is connected to the Orbi network will create a separate WiFi network. The benefit of a "mesh" system is that devices will roam seamlessly from one unit to another. The WiFi protocols control how the device communicates with the access points and the access points communicate with each other to facilitate roaming.
Here's an easy experiment. The Simplisafe outdoor camera is totally mobile. Pull it off the wall and walk to the other side of the house. (As far as possible from the extender as possible.) Does the Orbi Attached Devices (or Connected Devices) show that it connects to different Orbi units as it moves around?
(I'm probably not helping any at this point. It's late.....)
I'll do some more testing with it tonight. Ideally, I'd prefer to have the extender in the house, not outside in the elements, but I may not get around this due the construction of that area.
I don't know much about the extenders, never used them before, so I'm sort of "testing" things. I tried using an ethernet cable to plug into the extender and the satellite in the room, but that seems to have messed everything up. I changed it to an access point, and now I'm having all sorts of issues, including with the satellite. So I guess I need to remove the wire, change the mode back to extender, and then go from there.
I have both a 2.5 and 5 signal on the extender turned on. I tried only one or the other and the signal was not good. I named them both the same SSID, which is different than the orbi SSID. Is that bad to have both 2.4 and 5 using the same SSID and password from the extender? Why do they both have to be on to work?