1. What if the camera is disconnected while using an extender?
2. How does the extender work?
3. How does a mesh network work?
Lollipop Baby Camera does not have to be connected to a regular AP router with a LAN cable. The camera can be connected to single APs, extenders, and mesh networks with or without a LAN cable connected (when in mesh or extender/relay mode).
If you get a new mesh AP, router, extender, etc., you might want to carefully consider and plan the distribution of all that equipment to cover your home properly with the Wi-Fi signal. If that equipment is not installed or set up properly, the camera will not work properly too because it depends on a strong Wi-Fi signal.
Suggestion:
Before testing the extender, you can put the camera next to the main router and try to connect the camera there.
What if the camera is disconnected while using an extender?
You can relocate the extender so it is in range with the main router if it is losing signal with the main router and the camera is being disconnected from it.
Lollipop Baby Camera sees an extender just as another AP with the same network name when compared to the main AP. The camera can’t extract extra information from extenders; therefore, trying to identify if a customer is using those is a task that takes time. Most of the time, logs need to be downloaded and checked for patterns of disconnection/reconnection on the networks available to the camera.
When using repeaters/extenders, the camera will connect to the one that has the stronger signal. This does not necessarily mean the closest signal. If the repeater/extender that the camera is connected to goes down, the camera will try to connect to another AP with the strongest signal. If none are available, then it will periodically scan for a network that it has connected to before. If one is found, the camera will connect to it and remain connected to that network.
How does the extender work?
An extender is a device that extends, repeats, or relays the radio signals generated by the AP, extending the coverage that this can provide.
In the process of repeating the signal, the extender needs to receive the signal as strongly as possible from the main AP or from other extenders, since it is bound to the same rules regarding the bitrate negotiation explained before. If the signal received by the extender/repeater is weak, the extender effectively converts itself into the bottleneck of the network. This means that the data will be slowly relayed by the extender, and, at some point, if new data is produced faster than it can be relayed, old data is going to be dropped. Because of this, it is important that customers pay special attention to where the extender is located. In order for them to properly work, they need to be in the area of coverage of the main AP.
Extenders can be connected to each other, creating a very large area of coverage. To do this, the data relayed by each link will add some processing time before it reaches its final destination. So, the more extenders present in a network, the longer it is going to take for the data to be transmitted to the final point.
In devices like Lollipop Baby Camera, which has shorter buffer queues for audio and video, data related to the live view might be dropped if the delays are too long (more than a couple dozens of milliseconds). This is when artifacts and lines start to appear in the video as well as cuts in the audio. At other times, no video or audio reaching customers’ devices could be due to these delays.
How does a mesh network work?
Mesh networks work in a similar fashion as extenders, except that one can work as the main AP, as an extender, or all as individual APs. Mesh APs also suffer from the same issues related to how far they are with the main AP (if they are using this specific configuration). The same issues occur with the delays related to the relay of data. The same principles apply with mesh.
With a mesh network, more careful planning is required since it is a newer technology and not understood completely by a lot of customers. The power of a mesh network relies on the options it has to transmit data. For example, extenders use radio links to relay/transmit data. Mesh networks can use radios as well as wires (ethernet cables) to do it.
When using ethernet cables, they can route the data through shortcuts to reach the final destination. Not all customers can install them like this, and, most of the time, mesh APs are installed as repeaters.
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