I have gone to a completely unifi setup. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it lets you manage as many switches, access points, etc. as you want from one controller interface. My current setup consists of one UDM Pro, 6 access points of various types, and a few of their switches. It is absolutely overkill for my house, but I have rock solid 5 Ghz wifi in every square inch of every room in a pretty crowded RF environment. All of the access points are powered by PoE so it looks pretty clean. It is expensive, but it's worth considering if you enjoy tinkering with networking stuff. I will say that it is an all or nothing proposition. You only get the benefit of the "single pane of glass" and automatic cooperation between the various components if everything is Unifi. As soon as you add a non-unifi switch, you start seeing anomalies because Unifi doesn't know how to handle it.
I should note that unifi made news today because of a security breach on their corporate side. I think most (if not all) of the major networking players have had breaches so I'm not sure that changes anything, but FYI. Josh. On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 9:59 PM 'Michael Chaney' via NLUG < [email protected]> wrote: > I have a confession to make - I haven't been paying attention to wifi in > the last 15 years. I typically wait until it's too slow then go buy what > seems like the high end of whatever netgear is on sale at best buy. That > has served me well for some years now. I now have a netgear R8500. I > don't remember how old it is but it's somewhat recent. > > My house is a rectangle that is 34' front to back and 76' side to side. > It's basically a ranch home with a bonus area upstairs and a full basement > below. The exact geographic center of the house is in a hallway, but > there's a coat closet just a few feet away from it. I have my cable modem > and wireless router mounted in the closet near the top of the closet. > > My office is in the corner of the basement as far from the router as I can > be - not because I want to be far away but because this is the perfect > office space. My wifi mostly works, but with the kids home from university > over the break I find my computer getting kicked off wifi a few times each > day. When that happens it generally won't find the router automatically > again so I have to enter the ssid and password again. When connected I get > full signal strength. > > Looking now, there are 18 wireless devices connected to the wifi and > another one or two that are probably just turned off. When my other kid is > home there are two or three more devices connected to the wifi. I've > noticed that when he's here I get kicked off more often. The router also > loses its wifi ability every couple of weeks when the kids are both here > causing me to have to reboot it to gain access again. > > What are my options if I want better coverage on all three levels of the > house and all corners of the basement? > > It seems I likely need a couple of routers that play nice with each > other. I don't want to get some sort of repeater that will simply halve my > bandwidth and rebroadcast packets up the line. I have a second wiring > closet upstairs with a switch and cat6 running to it. I plan on adding > another such setup in the basement. The point is that if I have multiple > wireless routers I'd prefer to be able to run cat6 to all of them so that > the packets never hit more than a single wireless router before going on > the wire. > > Suggestions are appreciated. > > Thanks, > Michael > -- > Michael Darrin Chaney, Sr. > [email protected] > http://www.michaelchaney.com/ > > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAAtfUtEXH%3DJEKPGRVRkpfKrkexZ_csMG_QZC7XUq0fYUq1CsWQ%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAAtfUtEXH%3DJEKPGRVRkpfKrkexZ_csMG_QZC7XUq0fYUq1CsWQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CACxE-hOszodYwNy-JeSBirc7ZvX66a6Z2cgTMwVBXVd5oyyz-w%40mail.gmail.com.
