nokia beacon 1

[Lala81]

10 minutes ago, Alpha78 said:

Mesh is not that seamless, as I found out the hard way. I have a pair of Linksys Velop tri-band mesh installed at home, and when I step into my house it connects to the first unit. When I move into the bedroom where I have another unit, it shows the WiFi as full strength on my phone but pages aren't loading properly. But give it a while, it will work fine. Or I will need to turn off and on WiFi again, then it will connect to the nearest unit with strongest signal.

That said, the performance of the WiFi has been good. With 3 pax working from home and running concurrent virtual meetings, the connection is still fast and stable.

I don't have mesh. So I have to manually switch between my mbr and my living room network. 

My friends with mesh say no issue. But they all have 3 nodes and above. 

Yes often the limiting step is the device not being smart enough to switch to the next wireless AP. Anyway mesh is the way forward. Just that I am cheapskate. My routers are all amazon black Friday sales one haha 

[Alpha78]

5 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

I don't have mesh. So I have to manually switch between my mbr and my living room network. 

My friends with mesh say no issue. But they all have 3 nodes and above. 

Yes often the limiting step is the device not being smart enough to switch to the next wireless AP. Anyway mesh is the way forward. Just that I am cheapskate. My routers are all amazon black Friday sales one haha 

I don't know whether it's because I'm using mine in bridge mode, still depending on the Singtel router to provide DHCP IP addresses. My mesh nodes are all running on wires to the main router, to maximise the performance. Now my hands are itching to buy the Linksys router that supports mesh, so that it becomes a uniform system.

Like you, I was using 2 different WLANs for different areas of my home. Every now and then need to reboot, WiFi units acting strange. Luckily I changed to mesh network at the start of the year, within 2 months it's fully maximised by 3 people working from home.

And yes, mesh is the way to go for the future.

[Lala81]

1 hour ago, Alpha78 said:

I don't know whether it's because I'm using mine in bridge mode, still depending on the Singtel router to provide DHCP IP addresses. My mesh nodes are all running on wires to the main router, to maximise the performance. Now my hands are itching to buy the Linksys router that supports mesh, so that it becomes a uniform system.

Like you, I was using 2 different WLANs for different areas of my home. Every now and then need to reboot, WiFi units acting strange. Luckily I changed to mesh network at the start of the year, within 2 months it's fully maximised by 3 people working from home.

And yes, mesh is the way to go for the future.

The only time I reboot my WiFi is cos my brother printer wifi receiver sometimes cannot detect. Otherwise its on. Sometimes one year reboot once lol

[Ender]

16 hours ago, Lala81 said:

Just keep it as spare router bah. Though It's been many years since a router up lorry on me. 

 

Ya, even though takes many years for a router to break down, but when it does, lots of anguish and frustration. We just can't have no internet for one hour...

That is why we have a TP-link router as spare..LOL.

[Ender]

1 hour ago, Lala81 said:

The only time I reboot my WiFi is cos my brother printer wifi receiver sometimes cannot detect. Otherwise its on. Sometimes one year reboot once lol

You guys 24/7 leave the router on? I always off when go to bed.

[Lala81]

25 minutes ago, Ender said:

You guys 24/7 leave the router on? I always off when go to bed.

Sometimes middle of night can't sleep or wake up early etc. Want to surf mah... 

My WiFi is on 24-7.

[Voodooman]

3 hours ago, Lala81 said:

I don't have mesh. So I have to manually switch between my mbr and my living room network. 

My friends with mesh say no issue. But they all have 3 nodes and above. 

Yes often the limiting step is the device not being smart enough to switch to the next wireless AP. Anyway mesh is the way forward. Just that I am cheapskate. My routers are all amazon black Friday sales one haha 

Heard mesh is slower, can't get to the speed of the full fledged router, true?

[Lala81]

10 minutes ago, Voodooman said:

Heard mesh is slower, can't get to the speed of the full fledged router, true?

Not that I'm aware of. But I've not read up indepth.

the different mesh routers are rated differently. Ideally get something ac2xxxx and above. Ac1200/1300 is very basic. Basically just basic WiFi 4 but with mesh technology for integration of different wireless access points.

Your newer receivers and routers should be WiFi 5 standard and above. WiFi 6 is for future proofing. 

[Jamesc]

On off the router everyday what if the switch spoil?

[Ender]

4 hours ago, Jamesc said:

On off the router everyday what if the switch spoil?

 Now I'm worried. 😓

[Jamesc]

5 minutes ago, Ender said:

 Now I'm worried. 😓

Don't worry.

If spoil just use the spare TP-link router.

[Alpha78]

19 hours ago, Lala81 said:

Not that I'm aware of. But I've not read up indepth.

the different mesh routers are rated differently. Ideally get something ac2xxxx and above. Ac1200/1300 is very basic. Basically just basic WiFi 4 but with mesh technology for integration of different wireless access points.

Your newer receivers and routers should be WiFi 5 standard and above. WiFi 6 is for future proofing. 

All the AC2xxx sometimes can be misleading. Linksys advertises the combined speed of the number of units in the bundle, so a single AC2200 in a bundle of 2 becomes AC4400, in a bundle of 3 becomes AC6600.

Actually the important thing is whether it's dualband or triband, triband ones work better when you are using wireless to relay, so when one 5GHz band is used for backhaul, you still have one 2.4GHz and one 5GHz radio serving the devices. Dualband ones will suffer from reduced throughput when wireless backhaul is used. For me, I am kiasu, using triband nodes with wired backhaul, which gives maximum speed.

By the way, WiFi 6 is horrendously expensive right now, and few clients are on WiFi 6. Can wait a couple more years before upgrading to it.

[Lala81]

1 hour ago, Alpha78 said:

All the AC2xxx sometimes can be misleading. Linksys advertises the combined speed of the number of units in the bundle, so a single AC2200 in a bundle of 2 becomes AC4400, in a bundle of 3 becomes AC6600.

Actually the important thing is whether it's dualband or triband, triband ones work better when you are using wireless to relay, so when one 5GHz band is used for backhaul, you still have one 2.4GHz and one 5GHz radio serving the devices. Dualband ones will suffer from reduced throughput when wireless backhaul is used. For me, I am kiasu, using triband nodes with wired backhaul, which gives maximum speed.

By the way, WiFi 6 is horrendously expensive right now, and few clients are on WiFi 6. Can wait a couple more years before upgrading to it.

I'm pretty OK with AC speeds. I don't mind having mesh but just that I don't want to junk my previous routers. 

Haha often it's the device not being able to detect a better connection quickly

I have this problem when I walk past my work place before I go to makan nearby. Before I do so I need to go past a safe entry checkpoint with security. So when I walk past, my phone registers my workplace WiFi signal, and it keeps trying to access the WiFi signal even though I'm outside Liao and getting further. Then by the time I reach the safe entry checkpoint, it's still trying to reach the out of range WiFi despite 4g being available. So I manually have to switch off my phone WiFi to speed this along. 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Lala81

[Stratovarius]

15 minutes ago, Lala81 said:

I'm pretty OK with AC speeds. I don't mind having mesh but just that I don't want to junk my previous routers. 

Haha often it's the device not being able to detect a better connection quickly

I have this problem when I walk past my work place before I go to makan nearby. Before I do so I need to go past a safe entry checkpoint with security. So when I walk past, my phone registers my workplace WiFi signal, and it keeps trying to access the WiFi signal even though I'm outside Liao and getting further. Then by the time I reach the safe entry checkpoint, it's still trying to reach the out of range WiFi despite 4g being available. So I manually have to switch off my phone WiFi to speed this along. 

For me, I just use my phone data. I have the same problem as you. It's quite irritating. So my phone now seldom links to wifi even at home. Home wifi is mainly for TVs, ipads and laptops. But I do use deco m5 at home with 2 units meshed.  I think is ac1300. Good enough for me.

[Sotong1977]

On 7/26/2020 at 1:12 AM, Ysc3 said:

i have just recontracted my starhub subscription today and they are giving me a pair of Nokia Beacon 1.

anyone using it now ?

how is it compared to a conventional wireless router ? 

the downside i read so far is that it only has one LAN port. (i actually prefer to wire all my stuffs up for stability)

wireless is for those devices that cannot be wired up.

if its not going to serve much purpose, then i will just take delivery of the Beacons and throw them in my storeroom and stick to using my ASUS router.(which has 4 ports)

 

What i did is to connect the 1st beacon to my existing wifi router via lan cable. The router is to serve IoT that requires 2.4ghz connection and the 2nd beacon act sort of like a wifi booster for one of my bedroom that has poor wifi receptivity. This bedroom now has very strong wifi signal.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Sotong1977