Backhaul issues in difficult building

[schoolwifi]

I work in an old building with a mix of cinderblock and drywall walls (mostly cinderblock though). We've had issues with wifi forever for obvious reasons, but in 2019 it was decided that we had to figure something out to get wifi availble in the classrooms (small school - about 10 classrooms and a gym area we're trying to cover). The ceilings are not dropped in most rooms with only inches between them and the flat roof. The wall situation and relatively limited budget make wiring something somewhere between really undesirable and impossible. We've tried to hire professionals twice and they wouldn't even take our money to try!

Anyway, figuring it was worth a shot, we set up an Orbi RBR40 and 6 RBS20 satellites a few months ago, and it actually works fairly decently. We keep having issues with backhaul stability though. Sometimes everything is green, but often various satellites change to yellow or even purple. We can usually go around and reboot things and get it back happy, but it won't stay. This seems to happen when for some reason a satellite decides to connect not to the closest one as it had been, but to one that's farther away. Limited electrical outlet placement restricts moving things around somewhat, but if anyone has any ideas on how to maybe set it up so that this doesn't happen, I would really appreciate it. I understand enough about networking and router settings to be dangerous so I can probably get in a change things with no issue, but I'm not at a point where I can really figure it out for myself. Thanks!

[CrimpOn]

One possibility is to connect at least some of the satellites to the router using PowerLine adapters.  These use the existing electrical wiring to create a network within the walls.  I have four PowerLine adapters in my house connecting Tivo, WiFi access points, etc. (Actually, two of these: https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/powerline/tl-pa9020p-kit/ 

PowerLine is as esoteric as WiFi.  How far apart things are.  How many different electrical circuits are involved.  For example, I get over 1 gigabit to another bedroom on the same circuit, 380mb to a room farther away on a different circuit, and only 170mb to the garage which is farther still on a different circuit.  If your Orbi satellites are "Daisy Chaining", the effective througput may not be all that great, either.

The "good news" is that experimenting with PowerLine will not cost that much.  About $300 will get you six adapters.  They won't damage the Orbi's or involve tearing up walls.  And, if the experiment is a dud, Amazon will probably take them back.

Personally, my choice would be to run ethernet cables down the hallways hidden inside plastic wiremold up near the ceiling.  I would probably try PowerLine first, just to determine if it works in your environment or not.

[plemans]

Another thing to check into would be moca adapters. If there's coax ran within the building you could use moca adapers for the backhaul. I've found them more reliable than powerline when it comes to larger buildings. 

[CrimpOn]

Good catch on the MoCHA.  I have used that as well. Both of these technologies take advantage of existing wiring.  Maybe someone ran coax to all the classrooms in hopes of doing televised instruction years ago, and it is still there.

[schoolwifi]

Thank you! Unfortunately I'm fairly confident that there isn't any coax. It wasn't all that long ago that we got rid of the tube tv's on rolling carts and mounted flat screens or projectors and none of those are wired to anything but a laptop or dvd player. 

[schoolwifi]

I'm pretty sure powerline was attempted in the past with poor results, but that was with different routers. Since we have something semi workable with Orbi now, adding that might be enough to give it the boost it needs. A lot of the wiring is outside the walls in metal conduit (or buried in the cinderblock) and circuitry is weird due to add ons to the buiding over the years, but that's definitely something simple enough to try! Thank you.

We do have wired IP cameras that they ran in plastic wiremold, and we've had a lot of issues with it falling down. I don't know if that was poor installation or just the nature of our walls, but it was one of the things brought up when they said that they wanted wifi with no wiring. That's something to consider for sure though.

[CrimpOn]

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@schoolwifi wrote:

We do have wired IP cameras that they ran in plastic wiremold, and we've had a lot of issues with it falling down. I don't know if that was poor installation or just the nature of our walls, but it was one of the things brought up when they said that they wanted wifi with no wiring. That's something to consider for sure though.

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People often attempt to stick plastic wiremold to the walls using double-sided tape.  I might be tempted to use construction adhesive and maybe a concrete nailgun every so often.  If someone suggests going across the roof and down into rooms (through the roof), say "I'll get back to you a year from never."