Mesh wifi

Jan 11, 2021 Last reply: 5 years ago 23 Replies

Ah. I wondered what frequencies Hive used. I wasn't sure whether it was 860 MHz, like some weather stations use. It explains why the historic temperature graphs on Hive (one reading per hour for the last two days, only accessible on the Hive web site, *not* on the Android app!) have occasional gaps, suggesting that normal thermostat-to-hub comms is occasionally failing even though the two devices are normally well within range.

FWIW, my Hive system seems OK with and since I've added mesh wifi. It has the occasional 'can't connect' strop at the thermostat, but the phone app has always worked.

That is kind of the whole point of WiFi 6 as they now call 802.11ac. The devices support a number of technologies that *reduce* the spill over effects, and make much better use of the available channel space.

In particular band steering, beam forming & transmit power management. So the router will automatically push clients off the 2.4GHz band toward the 5GHz ones when it would help. They direct the transmission toward the device and not omni directionally (done using multiple antenna configured as a phased array), and they dynamically ad the Tx power to be "just enough".

They can be very full in some areas. The problems tend get worse when you have lots of clients trying to talk "louder" than all the others - hence why tx power management is important.

I have had cases where there is plenty of signal level in the place of use, but still poor throughput. Mesh kit often solves that.

That can be a problem - especially with older iPhones I have noticed. Some better WAPs support AP assisted roaming, which helps fix this. Basically if the AP sees a device with a poor signal, but knows from conversation with other APs on the same network that they can see a stronger connection to the device, they kick the device off, so that it re-pairs with the closer AP.

(they can also support a "strictly minimum" setting as well, that allows them to kick of a client with a very poor signal even if there are no other APs for it to talk to - saves it wasting resources that will give it crappy connectivity that is no use to man or beast!)

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