Every week someone shows us a three-node mesh kit that still drops out in the back bedroom. The problem is almost never the number of boxes. It is where they are, how they are connected to each other, and what the walls are made of.
Start with the building, not the square footage
The "one access point per 1,500 square feet" rule you see online assumes an open-plan office with drywall partitions. Houses are not that. A 1,800 square foot bungalow with an open living area might need one well-placed access point. A 1,800 square foot two-storey brick house with a finished basement might need three, because every floor is a separate problem and brick eats 5 GHz signal.
What matters, in order:
- Floors. Plan on at least one access point per floor you care about. Ceilings with ductwork, tile or in-floor heating block more than you would expect.
- Wall material. Drywall is fine. Plaster-and-lath, brick, stone, concrete block and foil-backed insulation are not. Mirrors and large appliances are surprisingly bad.
- Where people actually sit. The home office, the kitchen island, the couch and the deck. Coverage in the hallway is not the goal.
- What is on the network. Thirty smart-home devices, four TVs and two video calls at once is a capacity problem as much as a coverage problem.
Why wired backhaul changes everything
A mesh kit's satellites talk to the base over Wi-Fi. Every hop halves your usable speed and adds latency, and the satellites are competing with your devices for the same airtime. That is why the third node in the basement is so slow.
An access point with a network cable to the rack has the full connection to itself. Two wired access points almost always outperform four wireless mesh nodes, and the cable is cheaper than the extra boxes. If the house has any existing cabling (old phone lines often run through the same paths), or an attic and a basement, there is usually a route.
Placement beats quantity
Access points belong on ceilings or high on walls, in the middle of the area they serve, away from metal. Not in the basement utility room next to the panel, not inside a cabinet, not behind the television. A single ceiling-mounted access point in a central hallway will outperform a router in the corner of the basement every time.
What we actually do
For most homes we do a short survey: walk the property with a meter, note the construction, and place access points on the floor plan. The typical answer for a two-storey detached house in our area is two ceiling-mounted UniFi access points with wired backhaul and a small switch, occasionally three if there is a finished basement or a workshop. For a bungalow it is often one. We would rather sell you one access point in the right spot than three in the wrong ones.
If you have already bought a mesh kit and it is not working, the fix is often running one cable to the worst node and switching it to wired backhaul, which most kits support. That is an afternoon's work, not a replacement.
Cabling, networks, cameras, access control, smart homes, hosting and software for homes and small business across Southwestern Ontario. Twenty-plus years in the trade, and we still answer the phone.