MattiaG wrote

Hi TPlink Community!

 

I'm setting up a network for a small business, that has different buildings spread in around 500m/1km apart from the central location.

Right now only two of the buildings are connected, about 300 meters away from each other, but in the near future we'd like to extend the connection to two more.

 

For the network we chose the Omada network, and right now it has the following configuration:

 

• 1x OC200 controller
• 1x ER605 Router
• 1x TL-SG2008P 
• 3x EAP225-Outdoor
• 1x EAP225-Wall

 

One of the Outdoor AP is wired to the Switch, while the others are wirelessly connected using mesh uplinks.

 

Right now, during peek presence on site, the network is unstable, from my analysis due to the Outdoor accesspoints being too far from each other (Adding an additional AP in the middle fixed the problem), I guess that the many devices connected to the network and placed in between APs might cause too much interferences.

 

Since this needs to be fixed for peek usage moments and the future need to connect other locations, I would like to propose the following:

• Remove the mesh uplinks from the EAPs
• Add (for now) two CPExxx for the bridge between buildings
• Connect the EAPs to the CPE in order to view them as "wired" uplink, using the (should be) more robust CPE connection 

 

My questions are:

1. Can/Should I use CPExxx devices to extend an existing Omada Network?
2. Can the CPE be configured as bridge only without changing the network at the other end of the bridge? (This should be the bridge mode mentioned in the CPE page, asking to be sure)
3. Can this bridge mode operate in Point to Multi-Point environment, when connecting future buildings?
4. Generally speaking, is this a good idea, or should I just add more EAPs to cover the area and use mesh network?

 

Thanks for any support that you'll be willing to give!

 

Mattia

  @MattiaG This is very similar to a site network that I have running.  Initially we used mesh wi-fi but found that it was too fragile & subject to constant dropouts.  We have used TP-Link CPE's to bridge between areas with the intial PtP now running as PtMP.  Properly configured the CPE's will just bridge, without changing any network settings.  This is a far superior method over additional mesh heads.  Just be aware that the CPE's are not configurable/controllable from the Omada SDN controller.