MAC and SSIDs
Thank you for your recent article on mesh Wi-Fi, which was very interesting. One of the questions that I have that wasn’t answered is how the devices see the network. Do they just see it as one big network, so once you’ve joined to one node it will automatically join to all nodes? I read that if you use wireless repeaters and set them to the same SSID, the devices will seamlessly switch over as needed.
I’m now wondering if this would work in my situation. I live in a house with a couple of extensions so have cavity walls between some of the rooms. To get around this, I have several wireless access devices spread around the house all connected by wired Ethernet (sadly, I have a 24-port switch in the study!). Are you saying that if I set all of these to the
same SSID, my devices will automatically switch to the strongest signal? This does sort of happen at the moment with different SSIDs after
I’ve joined the devices to each access point. Would it work better if I used the same SSID?
The other question your article didn’t answer was whether the mesh systems support MAC address filtering, and if it only has to be set up in one place. On my setup, I have to set the MAC addresses up on each access point. I know some people will say that MAC address filtering is easily breached, but I like to do everything I can to secure my network.
I’ve worked from home doing IT support for about 20 years and now use a VoIP phone. Due to the pathetic state of the internet in this country (I get 12Mbits/sec with FTTC in central Hampshire!), I find the phone breaks up sometimes depending on what other people are doing in the house. I have tried setting up QoS, but this hasn’t helped much. Can you please do an article on QoS as I suspect more people will be trying to work from home. Dave Wright
Associate editor Darien Graham-Smith replies: I’m happy to confirm that mesh systems do indeed present as one big network; as you move around the house your devices should seamlessly and silently switch to whichever transmitter is nearest (this normally works with regular Wi-Fi repeaters too, if all nodes are set to the same SSID). Advanced features such as MAC address filtering only need to be configured once in the mesh’s administration portal or app, and will then apply across the whole network – an advantage of using an integrated system versus multiple individual extenders. And thanks for your note about QoS – we’ll look into this!