More than one wifi

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I have a couple of dumb wifi access points that appears to work well for my 2000 sq ft wood frame one storied home. However, if I place one access point in each room connected to the router using RJ45 is that a good thing or bad?

More access point better throughput or bad? Is there any resource that dwells on this? Much appreciate any thoughts.

2

Generally it can be a good thing.... you do need to tune them properly, though.

Done right, you'll have good throughput in each room and nearly seamless roaming from one room to the next.

I really like this video -- it is based on the Unifi system, but all of the concepts apply to OpenWrt.

1 Like
3

Thanks. I will experiment. Recently, I switched to wpa2/wpa3 mode in wifi settings and either that or something else I was doing, all my access points gave up on me. All disconnected now and I am on RJ45 and trying to figure out if that was because I added another to already 3 access points or something else.
Thanks again.

4

Don't use wpa2/wpa3 mixed mode (sae-mixed). There are many client devices that don't work properly when this is enabled. Instead, use either WPA2 or WPA3 only.

Also, if you have multiple APs, make sure they all have the same SSID, same encryption method, and same passphrase.

5

OK. Will do that. This was a good video. Will WPA3 accept visitors who have say older phones with wpa2 capability?

6

A client that is WPA2 only will not be able to attach to a WPA3 ssid.

But that should only be an issue for really old devices, or embedded/iot devices. Any phone that can run normally on a supported version of Android or iOS should have wpa3

1 Like
7

This video is very well made and I learned a lot. I found that as soon as I lower the power level the wifi stops to work. It has a red slash in a circle on it says disabled. Same when I change the band - it stops to work. I configured 802.11r. Not tried Dawn or Usteer and wonder if that is just a needless over kill in a home with spotty wifi but only two users.

Also, at some places they talk of install full wpad (vs wpad-basic-mbedtls installed as default) and its not clear if it mean:

wpad
or 
wpad-mbedtls
or
wpad-openssl
or
wpad-wolfssl

They are all about the same size. My device has a lot of flash space (512MB) and so not a challenge.