Multiple WiFi Networks At Home?

[jyl]

My home wifi was two Apple Airport Extremes, one on the ground floor wired to the cable modem, the other on the third floor and powerline network wired to the first. This worked well enough. I had two separate WiFi networks and could wire devices like Roku to the AEXs. My down speeds over WiFi were around 20 Mbps, using an iPhone 6 and fast.com.

About a year ago, I installed an eero mesh system with a base station wired to the cable modem and two beacons. This works much better. I have a single WiFi network covering the whole house and get about 60-70 Mbps down.

I left the AEXs in place, thinking it would be good to have some redundancy. But nothing runs on the AEXs any more, except the wired Roku.

Should I get rid of the AEXs? Is its WiFi signal possibly slowing my eero network, adding to my cancer risk (in green), or otherwise likely to be doing any harm?

[herr_oberst]

You should get rid of the AEX and donate one of the express boxes to my home network!

[jyl]

By "express" you mean the little Airport Express extender thingys? That are about the size of a pack of cards? I have one or two you can have, am not using them.

If I get rid of the Airport Extremes, they are yours. But undecided . . .

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by jyl

Is its WiFi signal possibly slowing my eero network

Yes, very likely is for the 2.4GHz band, usually the most congested.

If you (or it) selects - for example - Channel 6, the radio signal will "bleed" over 2 channels either side - to the point where it renders them useless if that signal is strong/close enough.

So out of the 2.4Ghz channels 1-11 that the FCC permits in North America, there are really only 3 channels (1, 6, 11) available with any decent bandwidth if there's contention from other network APs nearby.

Once there's several others around, things just don't work very well. It can be difficult to get good wifi in an apartment building, for example, just because of the density.

And some of the newer jacked-up "gamer" APs are set up to deliver maximum bandwidth by sprawling across 8 channels - and beam out like a Wolfman Jack show to boot. This can end up being a little anti-social, when you "see" the signal from your neighbor stronger than the AP you're sitting next to...

If you have no neighbors, there's probably no issue; if there's only 2, both systems will park on channels at opposite ends of the band (assuming set to use auto-select and it works), and things should be fine.

But once you have contention for 2.4Ghz spectrum (some devices don't/can't use anything else), things go downhill pretty fast. If this is going on, all data transmitted on the 2.4Ghz bands will be at lower rates than under ideal conditions.

There's (usually) so much free spectrum on the 5Ghz band in comparison that you're very unlikely to have any issue there. For now. Unless there is an extremely high-density of networks/APs around you.

There's any number of WiFi Analyzer/survey apps for your phone that'll show you signal strength and channel contention, MAC addresses/SSIDs of APs around you etc.

Originally Posted by jyl

adding to my cancer risk (in green)

Heh. I don't worry overmuch about WiFi....

[RWebb]

HiFi guys like those for wireless xmission - so you could adv. at one of those sites

[Gogar]

what’s the hardwire down speed straight out of the modem?

Personally I’d ditch the AEX, use the mesh, and clear up the airwaves a bit. Use the power line adapter to get to the Roku.

[jyl]

The eero app reports 72 Mbps down, that's wired to the modem.

I don't have a desktop computer that I can plug into the modem. But just sitting here with my iPhone on the eero WiFi, I'm getting about 65 Mbps down.