Multiple Repeaters

[LeeODougherty]

We have a Midway trailer on the NHRA circuit with Meraki networking (Security appliance, switches, APs)  and Cradlepoints as our internet connection with a Mushroom tunnel. We are flying an MR84 about 20' in the air as our gateway AP and have 2 MR84's that are running as repeaters. We added the second repeater this year and our performance has suffered so far all year. What is the best practice as far as channel selection, power, etc. Should we fly two gateways? 1 dedicated to each repeater?

Thanks in advance. 

[PhilipDAth]

Each time a repeater is used the performance halves.  Can both repeaters connect baclk to the wired node?

If a repeater has to connect via another repeater its performance will be down to 25% (at best, in practice even less).

[MerakiDave]

@PhilipDAth is correct, that's not a Meraki thing but just the physics of repeater hops running on the same channel and cutting the performance in half.  Take a look at your AP's RF page and look over the mesh repeater stats.  If you can have a 2nd gateway AP and keep any/all repeater APs to a single hop that'll give the best results.  I've seen a handful of double and even triple-hop repeaters work just fine, but the use case allowed for it and the performance requirements were fairly light.  I always try to minimize the number of repeater APs in the first place, and keep any/all to a single hop.  Perhaps instead of a double hop you can have two single-hop repeaters back to the same gateway AP?  

[LeeODougherty]

Thanks @MerakiDave and @PhilipDAth. I understand that performance will suffer a bit with two hops from a single gateway. @MerakiDave sometimes it works out that they both use the gateway with a single hop but the main issue at each race is the layout changes. We never know where the gateway will be in comparison to each repeater. Example- the gateway could be in the middle of the midway and one repeater is to the left and the other to the right or they both could be the left with one further away from the first repeater. Would it be too much interference to have two gateways flying dedicated to each repeater and set the RF channels to match?

Thanks guys!