After my love hate relationship with Wifi devices and the Huawei router, I moved to something more business like and more expensive. A smart router / firewall. The Sonicwall tz100 with Wireless N.
I simply turned off the SSID on my Huawei router and recreated it with the same WPA2-PSK password on the Sonicwall and let all my preconfigured smart devices move over.
They all appeared on the network but access to them was horribly delayed.
I originally put it down to all the firewall protections, gateway antivirus and more.
The problem I found was that 12 devices was about the max I could easily control. The others dropped on and off the network, Much worse than the Huawei router. It seems it too has a real world upper limit.
I was playing with this over a few days but, the router needed a reboot every few hours. It was unreliable.
Using just my home laptops (4 or 5) on the Sonicwall works fine. Adding my Qnap to it and Amazon firesticks was all fine. Now, it is dodgy.
I don’t think it can handle this so my search for a good Wifi router for smart home devices continues.
BTW, my Zigbee devices connected to the Echo 4 are working fine in all of this !
So so far
- HUAWEI Home Gateway HG659 – 14 devices and reliable at this number
- Sonicwall tz100 Wireless – Falls apart after 12. Unreliable.
