Flair works poorly with mesh networks
Answered
Hi, folks.
I use a Plume (http://www.plume.com) setup here, and I've had quite consistent challenges keeping the Flair gateway connected to the network. The signal strength is quite high all over the house (one of the obvious strengths of a mesh network), but despite that (and despite the "full bars" indication when actually connected), the Gateway drops off the network for 10-30 minutes at a time, almost constantly.
I brought up a secondary access point to try to diagnose the issue, and it works OK with that, so there definitely seems to be a compatibility issue there. It's, quite literally, the only device I've got (and I have a lot of devices) that doesn't work properly with this setup.
Is the wifi stack in the puck old or, perhaps, problematic in this area?
(Note that XFinity uses Plume as their own mesh network, so it's not an unpopular solution.)
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Official comment
This is well timed: we're actually doing some testing with mesh networks right now! We'll be investigating this week and will hopefully have some information soon for our customers with mesh networks. Thanks for your patience.
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Yeah, I've used Velop (in fact, I have Plume, Velop, eero and Google WiFi here; don't ask). It's a different beast and is much more like a main unit with automatically/automagically managed "extenders". In general, Velop's units are designed to be much higher power than Plume, and so it's less likely a unit will "see" more than one strong signal at a given location because the devices are typically placed out at coverage "edges". There are usually two or three Velop units in a given network.
The Plume pods, though, are typically placed in almost every room. (That's an exaggeration, but I have eight pods in my setup, three of which are wired.) So there are more devices broadcasting the SSID.
Flair manages the network "properly" in its UI (it only shows one entry for the SSID, whereas some IoT devices will not consolidate broadcasting units). But, for whatever reason, it doesn't maintain a stable connection. I don't know whether that's because it's randomly connecting to units, isn't handling steering right, is advertising that it can handle 5GHz where it can't, and thus is getting 'steered' wrong, or what...but something is happening!
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It's constantly sporadic. So, for example, if you're getting temperature readings from puck every 20 seconds, you might get a reading (if the pucks seem online) every 4 minutes. Until the pucks go offline. And some don't connect at all, even when there's a meshpoint/pod in the same room.
There are clearly some bad assumptions being made in the stack about how networks "look". Since the Velop doesn't really do much load balancing or band steering (let alone node/pod steering), it may work better within those assumptions.
Whatever the problem, I'm sure Flair is working on it. :-)
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I've just ordered a Puck...probably should have read this thread first. I have an Xfinity wifi router with their "pods" mesh network setup around the house. Speedy and consistent. Will I have trouble getting the Puck to work on this network or have you fixed this issue? I'm having the same problem with Honeywell D6 tstat. Xfinity doesn't make it clear if I'm broadcasting 2.4 or 5 ghz.
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Though this doesn't address the OP's Plume issue, I just wanted to post an update:
I've had my Flair for 5 months now on a Velop 'Tri-band' network with no compatibility issues to date with Flair and Velop.
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That said, the Velop nodes themselves are still buggy, and occasionally I see issues when one of the nodes keeps dropping off the network or the ecobee can't join the WiFi.
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