I have installed and set up most of this with the phone support of West Network Systems.
Yes we have a AP One X and a Balance 20X providing the Local Wifi to the boat. That has been working well except for the recent change to pickup the Marina Wifi via my Balance 20X Paddle Antennas and provide Local Wifi. Once we disabled the Marina Wifi on the Balance 20X the Local Wifi signal improved.
We have 15’ extensions on the 40G (comes with 6’) Flybridge Antenna so a total of 21’
Since we are running an LTE AT&T Card we would like to use the (2 extra cables) 40G to pull in the Marina Wifi when available. So we purchased the adapters and connected the other two antenna cables from the 40G to the WiFi connections on the back of the Balance 20.
If I understand your “Wifi and WAN” article it sounds like i should disable the Local Wifi from the Balance 20X and only use the AP One to provide Local Wifi to the entire boat. Its a 52’ Sedan Bridge so we werent sure if we needed both (AP One and Balance 20) sources for Local Wifi for overall good coverage. In fact thats why we purchased the AP One to provide better coverage in the front of the boat where strong signal was lacking.
I could mount the AP One in a more central location to the boat and see if that helps simultaneously turning of the Balance 20 Local Wifi.
I didnt realize and West Systems didnt caution that running Local Wifi from the Router might degrade performance. Although they did say that running two different AP’s might cloud the air with two much wifi???
Yesterday we connected the 40G Antenna extra two cables to the Balance 20 Wifi connections on the back to again pick up the Marina Wifif. West Systems simultaneously blew out all of our wifi networks (2 from the AP and two from the Balance 20) and set just a new 2.4 and 5 ghz local wifi. Sounded good but signal is poor again and having troubles reconnecting my devices via wifi.
It’s worth testing to see if the AP One will work well enough without the 20X if you intend on using WiFi as WAN. If not, and you need both, then you’ll just have to deal with the lower performance from the 20X, or you can add another AP One if you really want to.
WiFi as WAN has been around a long time, and the performance degradation is pretty well known, so I’m not sure why they didn’t mention it. Having too many APs does cause issues if you don’t tune them. Using defaults in the settings is not going to provide the best results - you usually need to choose differing channels for both 2.4 and 5 Ghz radios so that you’re not using the same ones across your own APs. Setting client thresholds, power levels, etc. can help as well. This is where a site survey or a professional installation and tuning can help.
I don’t believe you can force the 20X just to be a WiFi as WAN device - some routers have this option which makes it simpler. You may have to create a new AP Profile and assign the AP One X to it to test a new SSID, or change the old one to something else and create a new profile with the old name.
The unit is performing well but one major issue we discovered in this process is the 40G is hurting the performance of both Marina WiFi and LTE Speeds compared to the paddles antennas on the balance 20x.
I tested my Marina WiFi and LTE with the 40G connected and with the paddle antennas connected to the router.
In both cases I have better performance (up and down speed) with the paddle antennas
Antenna performance can be frustrating to tune. If you have really good cellular signals, as an example, the default antennas may work better because there is less cable between the antenna and the router, especially if the router is in a good place and not obscured. Bigger antennas will work better when you are in lower signal areas, but may not work as well in better signal areas as the default antennas, essentially.
That looks correct. Another way to verify it is to look at the AP status.
