Question

After trying a 5G router + mesh WiFi setup from local ISP here in Finland which was a disaster, I decided to return the ISP provided hardware and keep the 5G plan (400/100) and invest in an RUTX50 which arrives tomorrow. Yes, overkill no doubt from a home network but I was looking for something more powerful and that could maybe support local port forwarding without having to place the internet router in bridge mode. Although I guess there are sub EUR 500 5G routers that could do that but I digress. 

My son is an active gamer and since we can only get mobile data where we live I'm trying out 5G in order to improve internet speeds and overall network performance. On 4G (150/50) with our ISP branded 802.11ac 4G router from Huawei, once someone starts gaming, downloading or streaming something nobody else can use the internet for anything else.

I was thinking about a 2-part mesh WiFi setup as well, one node connected to the RUTX50 over ethernet and the other over wireless backhaul, serving the internet connection to my son's PC using ethernet (assuming of course the internet connection doesn't bottleneck anymore). I have been looking at tri-band TP-Link, ASUS and Amazon's Eero Pro mesh wifi setups.

I was then researching a bit and came across this post and started wondering would a singe Teltonika device acting as a mesh WiFi node be suitable? I guess it would need to support 802.11ac at least. If this would be an idea can someone recommend a device for such a setup?

[EDIT] I posted this and then thought that those 802.11ax tri-band mesh devices are tri-band for a reason and the WiFi 6 support allows the wireless backhaul to perform better, depending on internet speed and LAN/WAN port speeds of course. So overall it might be better than 2 Teltonika 802.11ac devices in mesh mode, although our internet speed, at least to start with is 5G 400/100 so maybe not.

David

Answer 1

Hi,

Assuming you use RUTX50 to provide internet connectivity and you would like to setup a mesh network to expand Wi-Fi coverage, then you need another device to act as a mesh node.

RUTX10 would probably be the best option here. RUTX10 does not have mobile connectivity option, but it supports 802.11b/g/n/ac Wave 2 (WiFi 5) with data transmission rates up to 867 Mbps (Dual Band, MU-MIMO). In this case, RUTX50 would be the mesh gateway and RUTX10 a mesh node. It is likely that 802.11ac Wi-Fi will be enough in your case, but this depends on your requirements. Currently, none of the Teltonika devices support 802.11ax wireless standard.

Kind Regards,

Andzej

Comments

Thanks Andzej,
Yes I had checked the range earlier https://teltonika-networks.com/products?filter=939 and RUTX10 would appear to be suitable, and no the mesh node would not need mobile connectivity. Only to expand the network so a client device could be connected over ethernet.

David