I was just at my father-in-law's for Christmas and was reminded that I need to help him with his WLAN setup. He's currently using his ISP Vodafone router's wifi, so no matter what will bring an improvement.
the original router is on the 4th floor, the living area is on the third floor, the current setup is sufficient in terms of illumination => replace the Vodafone thing on the Internet connection with a “proper” OpenWrt router
There is a balcony leading off the living area on the third floor, from which you have an unobstructed view of the garden and which has a power socket => Install an OpenWRT outdoor access point on the outside railing facing the garden that communicates with the new main router in the apartment via Mesh/802.11s
Install an identical Open Wrt outdoor access point to the one on the balcony approx. 50m down in the garden as the crow flies, which receives the signal from above via Mesh/802.11s
Here are my personal conditions:
at least for the main router stable support of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), if possible also Wi-Fi 6e (not a hard requirement)
for all three devices stable support of mesh / 802.11s
the best possible, latest wifi standard for the two outdoor access points. In the garden, the stable connection up to the balcony is the decisive factor, not the speed.
the outdoor access points should really be rainproof, they will be exposed to the air without protection. I don't want to build myself a housing.
23.05.5 should currently be supported stably without any restrictions, and support by OpenWrt in the future for all three devices should be as long as possible
The most important requirement of all, which also outweighs the other requirements in terms of priority: as cheap as possible, the Christmas presents are actually already done. To be fair, however, we are “only” talking about a network with 3-5 smart phones, televisions and devices. The APs for outdoor use could cost a little more, but for the main router it should more point to €50 rather than to €150
I'd reconsider the outdoor requirement. There's not many of them to begin with. Those that exist tend to focus on longer distance coverage over bandwidth, leading to below-average 5GHz support. They are usually a bit more expensive, too. This all leads to them not exactly being fan favorites amongst the open source community.
I'd rather look for waterproof plastic boxes. There's a reasonable collection of those meant for general electrical installation, coming with sealed or sealable wire ports that are made of non-see-through gray plastic. Depending on your local climate, there's a chance your problem won't be moisture but heat or cold, but if a 20€ plastic box drops your target device category from 150€ down to 50€, I'd personally give it a shot.
Given 5GHz antennas are all internally anyway and 2.4GHz antennas wouldn't be of interest to me, I'd not even bother with putting electronics inside the box and antennas outside. Just seal the whole device in a box, done.
My current favorite router is a Cudy AX3000. Has a really tiny box, has good coverage, is reasonable fast and can be found cheap. I got mine for 35€ from Amazon a couple of months ago, currently they are around 45€.
Is your mesh requirement a hard one? Rj45 wires on a spool are cheap. Cat7 outdoor ones rated for below-surface installation can be had for around 1.50€/m on a 50m spool. Combine that with a simple PoE injector, and you can put your APs nearly anywhere on the property. The amount to which my parents are willing to accept gray boxes and me putting wires below the lawn increases drastically when combined with decoration stuff like birdhouses or lighting for flowers.
So my recommendation would be:
Consider arbitrary outdoor device boxes over outdoor access points.
Drop the mesh idea and think about wiring combined with PoE.
Just to be clear, the T0 has the SFP+ port and dual 2.5 ports. Your post makes it sound like you have to choose between the SFP+ port of the T0 or 2.5 ports on the T1.
You talk about wifi6 or 6E but then you have this requirement? So do you want Wifi7 or upcoming wifi8 standard?
Ohh here it comes🤣, it would probably be impossible to became rich by gambling on this requirement showing up on this forum because since it is always listed then the odds are very low.
So what do you really want to do?
And what ISP speed are we talking about and how many users are there supposed to be in the network. You can’t build the world without money, especially nowadays when the money isn’t worth anything anymore.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply, I appreciate it. That's exactly how I would do it “sensibly”.
Unfortunately, my parents-in-law live in an apartment building, which means that they share the stairwell, garden, etc. I am also about 500km away in terms of support. I'm going to have a mesh access point installed on the balcony, quick and dirty, which I've prepared at home and will send to them
I wanted to express this break-even point at which the curves from the parameters [ price / technology (802.11n < 802.11ac < 802.11ax) / support / ... ] meet in the best possible way. My in-laws would probably be happy with a 2G cellular connection just to listen to online radio or read their emails in the garden
Frollic's reference to the T56, for example, was a direct hit
Now I just have to think about the 1 or 2 outdoor access points.
Oh thanks, I wouldn't have recognized the outdoor housing of this model from the linked table of hardware, for example . Wifi 6 at the outdoor access points is, as written (best possible), not a mandatory requirement.
I only mentioned the EAP225 as an initial suggestion for discussion, but the following criteria are important to me:
really weatherproof housing (ZyXEL NWA55AXE has “only” IP55 rating. Is that enough to survive heavy rain or -10 degrees Celsius?)
Price best possible <=100€. Of course, I don't want to discourage suggestions such as “for 120€ you get the ultimate device”.
Stable, long-term OpenWrt support
Range / field strength down to the bottom of the garden (approx. 100m)
IP55 is actually pretty high. A normal outdoor wall socket and (power)switch only have IP44.
So rain yes, actually pretty much all types of rain and 1/4” garden hose.
IP classification has nothing to do with temperature, that is pretty much what the manufacturer say in the product datasheet that define what it will handle in form of temperature.
