Evo WiFi Controller - Active TCP Sessions

[StuartP]

The following review might be of interest:

http://www.dreamgreenhouse.com/revie...home/index.php

[G4RHL]

Netgear Orbi is not a mesh system.

I can say that it works exceptionally well. For the first time ever since I have had an internet connection, and that is well before the internet if that makes sense, I am not getting connection failures with devices. I have a contented wife who no longer grumbles that her iPad has lost connection. Streaming to Apple TV or the BT box I have is no longer an issue, my Evohome Control Panel seems to connect and respond better. The Orbi consists of two units. One in my study upstairs connected to the internet and hard wired to my desktop and other controls, and the other in my lounge downstairs? I also now have a number of redundant extenders etc.plus a BT Home Hub 6 which I would not even give away - to the dustbin perhaps.

[paulockenden]

Orbi isn't mesh, but many of the others (Velop, Amplifi, Eero, etc.) are.

Most UK homes only need two stations, in which case the difference between mesh and star topology is moot. In fact, the dedicated back channel used by Orbi has distinct advantages.

[DBMandrake]

Orbi isn't mesh, but many of the others (Velop, Amplifi, Eero, etc.) are.

Most UK homes only need two stations, in which case the difference between mesh and star topology is moot. In fact, the dedicated back channel used by Orbi has distinct advantages.

Personally I would avoid any sort of mesh or repeater system that does not use a dedicated back channel, if you care about performance.

Back in the days of Internet connections that were <8Mbit you could afford to halve your usable throughput from say 24Mbps to 12Mbps on then state of the art G by using a repeater, as it would still be faster than your internet connection.

These days with Internet connections up to 250Mbps its difficult to even reach the throughput of your internet connection for a single device connected to a single access point, unless that device had 40/80Mhz channels and multiple streams.

Throw a repeater into the mix and at best you're going to halve your usable throughput, and a multi-hop mesh network is going to be even worse again, unless it uses dedicated back channels.

Even with devices that do, you have to consider the fact that the whole reason you're placing a second access point at the other end of the house is that the signal is too weak there - which means by definition that the link between the two AP's or mesh devices will itself be relatively weak and nowhere near optimal speed. Real world performance can plummet due to the poor backbone performance this can cause unless the location of the AP's is carefully chosen.

If at all possible the best solution is an Ethernet backbone - even if you have to drill a couple of holes in the floor to run a cable under the floor!

[paulockenden]

Personally I would avoid any sort of mesh or repeater system that does not use a dedicated back channel, if you care about performance.

Well if you think about it, a true mesh can't have a dedicated back channel. A back channel only really works in a star topology.

Imagine a mesh where it's five hops back to the base. You're going to need five DIFFERENT channels totally dedicated to backhaul. It just won't work. There isn't enough spectrum.

If each station shares one single channel for this then you might as well just lump it in with the public bands and be done with it. As soon as you start sharing the backhaul between nodes you've lost the one advantage that a dedicated back channel brings.

P.