Router recommendations

Hardware
61

For Omada, I believe you do need to create an account when setting up. But you can definitely switch “cloud access” off and on as you desire after that. Whether “off” results in 100% actually not communicating anything to the mothership is always a good question for any product.

After using Omada for a year, my biggest gripe is that updates from the vendor are lacking. There are some annoyance-type issues that have been open for quite a while.

That said, I do recommend it. My system has been very stable and it’s definitely an improvement from my previous setup of just an ISP provided combination router/access point.

All things considered, I’d describe Ubiquiti as still the gold standard, and Omada as a decent, cost-effective silver alternative.

1 Like
62

So, what are you using now?

I am leaning toward:

A TP-Link ER7206 router,
one or two EAP650 Access Points,
one TP-Link TL-SG1210P 8 Port Gigabit PoE Switch,
and a TP-Link OC200 Controller.

Do you think that this is a good starter package, and will it handle 100+ simultaneous connections?

I don’t need a guest or IOT network, just a replacement for my Verizon router. I may add them as I get more comfortable with the Omada software.

63

Yes, that’s very similar to my setup. With newer devices, so even better. I’m definitely not guru enough to guarantee it will handle 100+ connections, but I would confidentially say you will be better off than using just your Verizon router.

I have:
OC200 Controller
R605 Router
2210MP Switch
2008P Switch
EAP620 HD Access point
EAP235-Wall Access point

I have the EAP620 on the ceiling upstairs and the much smaller 235-Wall downstairs, and this seems to work very well. Obviously your house layout (and cable routing options) should dictate how the access points are placed.

How many cable-connected devices you have will determine whether more than one switch is needed. Don’t forget that the OC200 and each access point needs an ethernet port. POE is great for these - I’ve not had POE before and it’s a great addition. I have a Reolink IP camera running off the POE as well.

Adding VLans for guest and IOT was part of my justification for getting this equipment, but I haven’t worked up the confidence in my network configuration skills to dive into that yet…

64

Thanks for the feedback. I am beginning to gather that the limit on simultaneous connections will be in the AP. Does this sound right?

Trying to keep the costs down, my current Ethernet distribution uses some unmanaged gigabit switches. Since I only need POE for the APs I am thinking to buy one of their 8-port POE switches. They appear so similar in the specs, how do you decide on which one? My existing Ethernet and dumb switches should still work for the non-POE devices (mostly PCs and a couple of cameras).

Also, I have a couple of Intel NUC computers loafing in my server closet, so I am thinking of installing the Omada Software Controller on Ubuntu. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Your thoughts?

65

Hi @stevemann,

I am no network expert at all. I work in IT and we had a lot of WLAN issues, many different root causes. I was able to have a quick look over the shoulder of someone, who knows this stuff.

  • in every router, there is IP lease time → the time that the IP address is reserved for a client. Could it be that your have phones that use random mac addresses? → new IP address each time → there might be no free IP address available. (ok, at home, this is a rather unrealistic scenario, but you never no with cheap devices)
  • How about other 5GHz networks interfering with your network? Consider changing channels.
  • 5GHz allows for high mbits/s, but is easily blocked by a wall. A connection might be next to impossible.
  • There might be an issue with your DHCP.
  • Within the Unifi Network Application, there are a million options, such as IGMP Snooping or Multicast DNS or Minimum Data Rate Control or BSS Transition - most of which I do not fully understand :slight_smile: - but they affect the connectivity of the devices.

If you are prepared to invest in company-grade equipment, you should know one or to things about network infrastructure and how it works.

Chris

p.s.: I manage 50+ devices in my network. We have a little house, 3 levels + garage. I have an old USG-3P, one 8-Port-PoE-Switch, 2 access points (UAP-AC-Lite, UAP-AC-LR). I have 4 wireless networks, 9 VLANs, 60 Firewall rules, 1 NAS and 1 server running 10 docker containers). In the beginning, I had some issues with the network, but for the last 12 months, it has been running very stable. I only recommend Unifi, if you are prepared to do some reading and spending (many) nights configuring the whole thing. :slight_smile:

66

OK, two weeks of frustration with the Omada system. Three EAPs, one POE switch and the ER605 router. Every computer has Internet access OK, but my IOT devices are very unstable. They connect randomly for a few minutes and even a few hours, then either re-connect spontaneously or just disconnect until rebooted. Mostly with problems connecting to my MQTT broker server.

I am wondering if I bit off more than I need with Omada? I don’t need the complexity of multiple vLANs, segregated ports, etc. I just want a simple, single LAN for my 86 WiFi devices and 20 wired devices.

I am still within the return period with Amazon, so I could send the Omada devices back and buy the Deco system:

deco
deco1278×648 144 KB

(I am tempted to keep the switch, though).
If you recall, my problem with the Verizon router was that after 60 WiFi devices it became unreliable. The Deco page says “up to 200 devices”. Is this realistic?

So, questions for you. The documentation is not clear- do I need a router in addition to the mesh devices, or does one of them act as the router?

67

By the looks of it. I wasn’t even aware that 100 clients on a wifi radio is something that needs planing. Every cheap tp-link or avm router/ap from the last decade that runs openwrt can probably handle this. Talking about devices that can be found used for $20…

Whatever quid you wanna spend… Jusz do yourself the favor and take care that your new device is capable of running openwrt. It often extends the productable lifetime of devices by a decade after the manufacture already abandoned it

You know what 2 devices are? They are UP TO 200 devices…

1 Like
68

+1 for “only buy hardware that runs OpenWRT”

69

I feel for you guy, very frustrating! In the babble below, I will give you some of my background and current state in hopes that it helps you.

tl;dr:
Your Q 1: my experience and gut say that the Deco mesh will handle 100+ devices.
Your Q 2: my setup uses Mikrotik devices for routing, dhcp, routing and firewall. Deco’s are only WiFi Access points in my setup. So using Deco for all functions is not something I have experience with. My gut however says, Deco will be better for all functions than (as I understand your setup) your Verizon device.

Hard to peer into your setup, however it does sound like from your current report here, that the change to the Omada system has NOT addressed some of the core issues you were having. And combine this with having to learn this new complex Omada stuff… not fun. Other than one period when I was trying a NetGear WiFi solution in my too many evolutions, I have never had multiple IoT devices of various kinds have connection issues. I still wonder about DHCP setup in your network, this based on some ‘mysteries’ I have see in networks over my crusty old years… If you can expand on your MQTT server setup more, that help folks visualize your setup. As I understand your setup, relying on your Verizon device to provide as many services as it is doing for the number of devices you have does see a possible source of problems. Other than the complexity of the Omada system (as I understand it, with no first hand experience, but projecting my Mikrotik, UniFI and OpenWRT experience on to it), the Omada might be able to address you issues, if you can KISS it to start and make sure that you move all services away from the Verizon device. One of the biggest road blocks I have found with networking setups in Home Automation is that this is the area where it is the most difficult (if not impossible) to have a complete production and test environments. And as a result, in my experience, I end of f’ing up my production network with a ‘small’ change in some part of these complex systems like Omada, Mikrotik, Unifi and OpenWRT.

Yes, I would leverage the Amazon and Costco return policies as part of you path to success. If you have a simple enough WiFi AP setup and Verizon setup, you might be able to move back and forth between solutions and see which find the most optimal. But getting that Verizon device to be nothing more than a bridge device to your ISP should be part of you path, the ISP provide device should be providing NO network services in your end setup.

First up, I am so far happy with my TP-Link three access point setup with the BE16000 units. Is it the ideal setup that I would like to have, NO. As I stated, it is frustrating compromise that is reality of this changing world of home technology.

As picture shows below, I average around 60 wifi connected devices, with about 25 wired devices. Not quite to the numbers you are looking at, however the TP-Link setup seems to be handling this number without problems. Of course, me having right at 60 device on WiFi is an unfortunate number based on your problems :wink:

An important note, I am using the TP-Link devices as access points, they are not servering as my DHCP server, DNS server, Firewall, ZeroTier VPN or any internal routing services. All of these are still being handled by my 2 Mikrotik devices.

I was able to swap the WiFi services from the Mikrotik device to the TP-Link devices simply by keeping the same AP name and secrets. No changes to any devices to move between the old and new access points. I have the 2.4 and 5 GHz networks mashed together with a single AP name. This has never caused me an issue in many years. The new 6 GHz network (networks?) have a different AP name currently.

I had no devices fail to connect to the new TP-Link access points. I have a pretty fair mix of various ESP 2x and 3x devices running various versions of Tasmota, ESPHome and custom Arduino and Espress SDK code. As well as a number of other MCU devices from a number of other manufactures, such as the various ones under the Tuya family, Tuya firmware and Open Beken firmware. No issues with them staying connected.

I do have three on going connection ‘type’ issues that I am studying with the TP-Link access points. None are show stoppers.

  1. I have noticed my Google home speaker devices (I have 4, 2 speakers 2 displays) seems to drop off the network and reconnect at random times. I see it happen on the displays maybe once every couple days. They reconnect fine, and so far have not caused any issues with using ‘Hey G’ voice stuff. IMHO, my Google devices have always been ‘different’ with WiFi as well as other network services. For example they are the only devices on my network that have a built in network DHCP reset they do on their own every night. They all 4 connect on 5 GHz, so radio and antenna design might be a factor. To throw more monkey wrench into this, my 5 Apple Homepods would randomly (more frustratingly because I use them for music) drop off the Mikrotik and NetGear access points in the prior iterations, now on the TP-Link Decos they are solid on 5 Ghz, and have shown no drop offs.
  2. I was unable to get a Acer linux laptop to connect to the 6 GHz network with the Mediatek PCIe WiFi card that it had, as I understand it, this card should have been able to see and connect to the 6 Ghz frequency, however no luck. I swapped the PCIe card for an Intel AX210 card and have been able to use the 6GHz connection to the access points fine. Can I tell you any difference as yet between the 5 GHz and 6 GHz connection as yet, No.
  3. I have one FOSCAM wifi camera that I could not connect to from the above linux debian laptop after the wifi card swap, until I rebooted the camera. Every other device that connects to the machine worked fine. I have no idea what is source of this anomaly, could have been the Mikrotik inner workings or in the TP-Link interworkings. MAC address of cards was different, however IP addresses were same some maybe some ARP resolution issue some where.

However, again no issues with the bulk of the IoT devices connecting to the TP-Link access points.

Some background on my setup. I am not using any VLAN or separate WiFi networks for my production houses. Do I play around with those on test setups, yes, but not in production. I do do some simple private IP network separation via routing by using routing abilities of the Mikrotik devices.

I think like you and many others trying to get to a stable segregated network setup that allows for easy blocking of devices going out to internet and other unintended internal communication is / has been goal for a number of years and evolution’s of my networks. Still not there and probably will never be ‘complete’.

Good hunting!

deco-01.PNG
deco-01.PNG1125×2436 202 KB

70

True. Here’s my current setup:

My Connection visuals
My Connection visuals1418×905 393 KB

Again, as with the Verizon router test, I reduced the IP load and when I got down to 70 devices, things started connecting again.

I asked Omada Support if the ER605 Router can handle 100 devices, and his reply was 60- to 70. He also recommended switching to the ER7206 Router. The specs say:
"【Increased Network Capacity】Maximum number of associated client devices – 150,000. Maximum number of clients – Up to 700."

I am likely going to go that way next.

71

“ER605 Router can handle 100 devices, and his reply was 60- to 70”
I think this person was selling McAfee antivirus licenses to grandmothers before their current job… :disguised_face:

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable on the Omada SDN stuff, but it it does raise an eyebrow what that person says about limit. Again, I don’t know how packets are being bounced around a Omada network, however in what universe does it make sense that a espHome light bulb would have any reason to be talking to this router device? and causing some performance limit on it??? Again, I don’t know Omada, however, my understanding of ‘simple’ wifi is that if you have for example a wifi based espHome light bulb, a wifi based espHome light switch and a wifi based Home Assistant server (I realize that would not be the best idea) that all talk TCP/IP packets between these three devices, these packets would never leave the wifi network and so would never touch this ‘router’ device. So how would those devices be burdening your ER605 ISP router/NAT/Firewall?

I hope your not being sold a bill of goods… or if that is the way this Omada system works, that does NOT seem to be a very good design.

On another topic in looking at the specs of some of these Omada devices, I hate to say it, and spend more of your coin, but it does seem ‘limiting’ now a days to be buying network ‘hubbing’ devices that ONLY support 1 gigabit ports… I have to admit, even in my stuff, the different between 1 gb and 2.5 gb connections between devices is starting to be noticeable.

72

Data does go through the router. The router is involved with the Data Link Layer (Layer 2) which deals with the addressing of devices on the same network.

As I understand the limit to the number of devices a router can handle is how much memory the router has. It needs memory for packet buffering, storage of router tables, Network Address Translation and other stuff. More memory means more capacity.

That’s the limit of my understanding of the OSI Network Protocol.

Bill of goods? I still have time to return everything to Amazon if the upgrade router doesn’t fix my issues. Then I may consider your solution.

73

Wow, you are getting down into some weeds with SDN and Layer 2. I’m not saying it is not an interesting space to be in for a home network, it just well above my pay grade… I started down the layer 2 route with OpenWRT, because as I am guessing with the Omada stuff, this really looked to give me that maximum control. I just found it too much effort, not enough documentation. Hopefully the Omada stuff is ‘easier’. As an FYI, the new version of Proxmox offers SDN built in, that perked my interest, however again does require a lot of work currently. And as I understand it, there is not much interop between current SDN systems. I get it if one device is handling both, it just that Layer 2 and Layer 3 are separate. In one of my Mikrotik ‘switches’, it supports both a Layer 2 switch functions, which I use for VLAN, and it supports Layer 3 router functions, which I use for IP routing.

One question I have for you. My understanding is the word ‘router’ is not a valid term when talking about Layer 2 stuff, it is about ‘switches’. This kind of like my frustration with folks using ‘repeaters’ in the universe of Zigbee, it’s frickin ‘routers’ in Zigbee… As much as I dislike the human language, if you don’t grok the basic terms, you are one step behind in the adventure.

Good hunting!

74

In Omada you can manage the different levels. For example under Network Security you can set up Access Control Lists at the Gateway, Switch, and EAP level.

75

signal-2023-12-21-10-22-11-658
signal-2023-12-21-10-22-11-6581398×2048 122 KB

Awesome! 171 connections (wired & wireless) and still plenty of memory free.

76

I assume that this is OpenWRT. What hardware is it running on?

I am not opposed to running OpenWRT on my hardware, but I won’t do any firmware changes while I am still experimenting with OTS (Off the shelf) solutions.

77

One that was 12 years ago a bargain alredy.

And despite being called End-Of-Life from the manufacture still going strong, getting openwrt updates and by the looks of it outperforming devices which are 10 years younger and cost 10 times more