The house I'm building will almost certainly need multiple wireless access points (using that term non-technically). It's on 2 storeys, there is aluminium sheeting for the upstairs heating above most of the ground floor ceilings, the modem router will be at the front right corner of the house and it's about 18 metres from the router to the most distant point on the plan. I've played around with wireless extenders before and they have been rubbish.
I have a quote from the electrician to install 3 Ubiquiti wireless access points, about £400.
I believe these are cabled, whether just back to the modem router or to each other I'm not sure.
It strikes me I could just buy something like this MESH kit
www.amazon.co.uk/BT-Seamless-Connection-Everywhere-Complete/dp/B07RRWL39N/
5 discs are about £200, plug them in around the house and go. These Mini Whole Home ones are slower than the full fat BT Whole Home ones but FTTC only goes to about 60Mbps where I live anyway.
I'm minded to do the MESH kit as it's cheaper. Is it worth wiring them up for ethernet backhaul? It should make the wifi faster but as the wifi should be much faster than the internet connection anyway, is there any benefit?
I haven't really much of a clue about this but I think either of these set ups should be much better than wifi extenders?
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 31 Mar 21 at 16:19
|
my 2 pence worth …
I have the BT Whole Home with 4 discs, one by the router in the upstairs study then 3 daisy chained across the upstairs bedrooms. About 10 to 14 meters apart.
I had thought 3 discs would be enough but its a 50's house with thick walls and extensions which mean 4th needed and it still took some time to get the locations right to connect.
The phone app they give you to check signal strength and help placing is very good.
Now very reliable at 70 to 75 MPBS - and it gets through to all the floor below and about 10 m down the garden as well
|
A mesh system depends on each of the points seeing each other (and having a discrete backhaul wireless channel)
They wont work through your shielded floor. You will need a wired gigabit cable from downstairs to upstairs as a very minimum.
Each Ubiguiti WAP cost about 70 quid, which is average for a good WAP. They are cabled to the router, so I assume its wireless router & 1 WAP down, and two WAP up stairs. Thats three cable runs and connecting ports.
400 quid is not unreasonable for a stable and reliable solution.
|
...Wot he said ↑ ....
If you have the routeing for wired connections, go for that.
At least some of the Ubiquiti units will work with PoE*, which could make for rather easier and neater cable runs (but would need PoE injection at a convenient point near the router).
*Power over Ethernet, where the power to the device/access point is provided over the Ethernet cable, rather than via a separate power connection.
|
I appreciate I'm a few years out of date with Ubiquiti stuff, so this may not be relevant these days. But one of my last projects at work involved a large number of Unifi access points. We put them in in 2015, and I was working with them on and off, as it were, until 2017.
They were utterly horrid - unreliable, crashy, nasty interfaces. More, the feature list kept changing and it was a never ending round of firmware updates required and general looking after.
We also found (at least for Enterprise support) Ubiquiti were pretty slow and unresponsive if you had questions. "Yes, we know it's broken. You have to wait for the next firmware. No idea when that will come, sorry".
We also fell for the "put in as many you think you need and then some more" game, which of course is counter productive, but that was our fault.
But as I say, I'm out of date, so take all that as a snapshot of the past rather than (perhaps) what they are like now.
However, while poking about, I found this article from 2018 which resonated with me:
arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/enterprise-wi-fi-at-home-part-two-reflecting-on-almost-three-years-with-pro-gear/
Last edited by: Crankcase on Wed 31 Mar 21 at 17:59
|
|
The Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE gets pretty good reviews in SOHO environment, however any WAP with a wired connection around that price point will do the job.
|
Thanks for the comments.
The quote was actually £380 which isn't unreasonable even though the cables are at this stage very easy to run. Reading Cranker's link I'm not sure I want to invest the effort involved in doing anything with the Ubiquiti kit if it needs attention in the future.
Can't decide where to bring the phone cable in. Must ring BT and see if I can get it ducted, the position of the pole means I have to be careful where I park if I don't want my car carpped on with the overhead cable.
|
>> Thanks for the comments.
>>
>> The quote was actually £380 which isn't unreasonable even though the cables are at this
>> stage very easy to run.
Tell him to install a Token Ring, your days will be full of technical joy and wonder, a constant source of entertainment.
|
If I'm looking for a new device then to start with my Google search go to is the name of the tech, in this case "mesh", and then the phrase "it just works".
|
|
I googled mesh and came up with a medical tale of woe and agro.
|
|
Do you remember Googlewhacks? Don't get those these days but they were good rabbit holes.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 1 Apr 21 at 09:40
|
I haven't teased the electrician with Token Rings. Fro £385 I've told him to get on with the Ubiquiti wifi.
I've also told him to do the alarm (£1000) and CCTV (£1100) which is overkill really but the inescapable logic with a new build is that all these these are easier and cheaper to do now than when all the plasterboard is in place.
|
Mesh wifi - rocket
