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Forum Discussion
Re: Additional Satellite to WiFi 7 970 Series
plemans, no, it’s 2000 sq ft. But house construction and 6Ghz wall penetration limitation regd 3 Satellites.
It’s a 1950’s modern, all poured concrete (rebar also included in interior walls, walls also have metal Hvac ducting, and metal conduit between every electrical switch, lights, and plug outlets)
Floors are terrazzo (if your not from Florida, it’s poured concrete with river pebbles embedded in top layer which are shaved flat and polished). The entire living area in the middle of the house (between the utility room and bedrooms) is one big open room with floor-to ceiling glass on front and back walls.
No attic or basement, metal roofing. All utilities come in on south end of home. Bedrooms are on North end. I had to drill a hole thru the south west 6” thick wall to get my ISP fiber cable into the utility room, and then another hole in the common wall between utility room and home office where RBE 971 router is located.
I then had to run Cat 6A (and I also included Cat 8 and OM4 fiber for future use, I wasn’t doing all this again!) for wired backhaul out from Router thru utility room to backyard where I opened a trench in the yard around to the north end of the house and buried the backhaul cables. I then drilled into bedrooms located in the NW, and NE corners of the house to hardwire a 970 satellite in both rooms.
Since there’s no way to run wiring inside the house, I couldn’t relocate my Router to a “central location”. So I basically have a mesh node in 3 of the 4 corner rooms of the home. With multiple interior “metal filled” concrete walls between each of the nodes, metal roofing, concrete/“rock” floors, and walls of concrete or glass, there is still good WiFi coverage and I haven’t seen any interference so far.
The prior home networking configuration with 2.4/5Ghz WiFi trying to use wireless backhaul was very challenging and I really wanted faster 6Ghz speeds. I quickly learned with the addition of 6Ghz to our WiFi choices, 6Ghz is nice, but it’s definitely not 5Ghz (as it relates to coverage through walls (especially concrete).
The couple that built the home new in 1955 owned a large mercantile store here in town, so everything they used in building the home was “industrial”.
I’d never seen this before, but the original HVAC coil/furnace was still working when we bought in mid 90’s (we’re the 2nd owners). All HVAC duct work (supply and return) are buried beneath the concrete flooring. When the return air comes up through a big “hole in the floor” under the HVAC/furnace unit, that industrial grade unit took up a whole wall in the utility room. One side of the unit for heating had natural gas burners, while the other half of the unit for cooling had cooling coils. To convert from heating to cooling, it wasn’t the flip of a switch like we have today, it involved a huge lever that moved a baffle and redirected the return air flow from the heating half to the cooling half!
So, yes just based on home-size, 3-nodes would be interfering with each other, but due to one man’s preference in construction materials, I am a networking “outlier”. After all the wired backhaul work I did, I’m certainly not bragging about needing 3 WiFi nodes in this house either!
It’s a 1950’s modern, all poured concrete (rebar also included in interior walls, walls also have metal Hvac ducting, and metal conduit between every electrical switch, lights, and plug outlets)
Floors are terrazzo (if your not from Florida, it’s poured concrete with river pebbles embedded in top layer which are shaved flat and polished). The entire living area in the middle of the house (between the utility room and bedrooms) is one big open room with floor-to ceiling glass on front and back walls.
No attic or basement, metal roofing. All utilities come in on south end of home. Bedrooms are on North end. I had to drill a hole thru the south west 6” thick wall to get my ISP fiber cable into the utility room, and then another hole in the common wall between utility room and home office where RBE 971 router is located.
I then had to run Cat 6A (and I also included Cat 8 and OM4 fiber for future use, I wasn’t doing all this again!) for wired backhaul out from Router thru utility room to backyard where I opened a trench in the yard around to the north end of the house and buried the backhaul cables. I then drilled into bedrooms located in the NW, and NE corners of the house to hardwire a 970 satellite in both rooms.
Since there’s no way to run wiring inside the house, I couldn’t relocate my Router to a “central location”. So I basically have a mesh node in 3 of the 4 corner rooms of the home. With multiple interior “metal filled” concrete walls between each of the nodes, metal roofing, concrete/“rock” floors, and walls of concrete or glass, there is still good WiFi coverage and I haven’t seen any interference so far.
The prior home networking configuration with 2.4/5Ghz WiFi trying to use wireless backhaul was very challenging and I really wanted faster 6Ghz speeds. I quickly learned with the addition of 6Ghz to our WiFi choices, 6Ghz is nice, but it’s definitely not 5Ghz (as it relates to coverage through walls (especially concrete).
The couple that built the home new in 1955 owned a large mercantile store here in town, so everything they used in building the home was “industrial”.
I’d never seen this before, but the original HVAC coil/furnace was still working when we bought in mid 90’s (we’re the 2nd owners). All HVAC duct work (supply and return) are buried beneath the concrete flooring. When the return air comes up through a big “hole in the floor” under the HVAC/furnace unit, that industrial grade unit took up a whole wall in the utility room. One side of the unit for heating had natural gas burners, while the other half of the unit for cooling had cooling coils. To convert from heating to cooling, it wasn’t the flip of a switch like we have today, it involved a huge lever that moved a baffle and redirected the return air flow from the heating half to the cooling half!
So, yes just based on home-size, 3-nodes would be interfering with each other, but due to one man’s preference in construction materials, I am a networking “outlier”. After all the wired backhaul work I did, I’m certainly not bragging about needing 3 WiFi nodes in this house either!
4 Replies
Dang. Let me congratulate you on doing the hard work for the backhaul. That's flipping impressive. Most peopleI suggest that to tell me to take a hike but you've already recognized the issues and done what you can to mitigate it.
Great work!
I'm a bit jealous of the industrialized setup too. here in MN its all wood/sheetrock.
I have seen the underground hvac done. its a pretty nice setup
Sorry.... I seem to have "lost" the first part of this conversation. Did this start with a question about "will another satellite connect to one of the existing devices by WiFi?"
If so, I hate to be a "wet blanket", but there is every indication that connecting another satellite with WiFi may be difficult because of the building construction. If two bedrooms side-by-side require separate satellites, what are the chances that the 5G backhaul signal will penetrate the same sort of wall to reach a satellite in the large central room?
It may require getting out that drill with concrete bit.
- CrimpOn, another member asked me why I had 3-nodes in a 2000 sq ft house. I added wired back haul when I bought the 970/971 system this past April. So I was just explaining the house construction that has given me such heartache since my first dial-up internet connection and my need for two satellites seemingly too close together.
My point was that factors other than building size can dramatically impact WiFi performance (especially since 6Ghz does NOT penetrate as well as the 5 GHz band we used to love so much!)
There is another “room space” between those bedrooms, so it’s not just one sheetrock wall separating those satellites. That space contains two bathrooms, one opening to each bedroom. Inside both bedrooms, there are built-in double door (solid wooden) closets, 3-sets, each located side-by-side built along the wall shared with the bathrooms.
So for 6Ghz WiFi satellite in one bedroom to interfere with the other bedroom satellite, a wireless signal would have to penetrate a solid wooden closest wall, a poured concrete wall, tiled bathroom walls, tiled shower stall, another poured concrete wall, and another solid wooden closest door.
There is rebar in both concrete walls, as well as metal conduit for all electrical wiring runs, metal HVAC ducting running inside the poured walls up to high vents in each bathroom, plus copper hot and cold water pipes.
If you could get an upload/download speed of 100Mb/sec thru all that, we’d have to name it a Houdini WiFi signal!
Thanks for your comments, but with the latest software update, I think my 3-node mesh Orbi system has stabilized (I’m still evaluating, and it hasn’t helped that ATT has been doing fiber reconfigurations last Thur/Fri that bled into Sat, and I think the internet issues I’ve had with my network are related to the ISP, and not with the latest NG WiFi 7 mesh system).
