Thinking of a changing my network hardware

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

I'm considering dumping my Netgear 6300v2 and going with a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter and Ubiquiti UniFi UAP AC Long Range UAP-AC-LR. Right now, from a wired point of view, the router is hardwired to a 24 port gigabit switch. I have drops all over the house.  This has worked as well as expected - great. The problem is WiFi.  I am getting miserable coverage around the house. The location of the router is stuffed in a second floor closet and that's probably where it's going to stay. I've thought about  mesh system for a while but now I'm instead thinking of just a single (good) AP. I can mount it on a wall that is central in the house (both horizontally and vertically) and all locations using WiFi will only have a single obstruction (mostly drywall) to that location.  The house is a 2 story brick that is about 35'x35'  square (really, if you remove the garage, its a big 35'x35' 2 story box.)   My question is setup. I'm not really a network guru. How difficult is the setup in this scenario for the Ubiquiti equipment.     

[+BudMan MVC]

Its not very difficult at all.. Are you looking at the edge router or gateway.  The gateway is prob the better option for ease of use and feature set.. With the controller you should run with wifi, and the gateway you can get all kinds of insight into your whole network.  DPI, etc.

 

You most likely do not want to mount on wall, most likely ceiling.

 

https://store.ubnt.com/collections/routing-switching/products/unifi-security-gateway

 

Or this

https://store.ubnt.com/collections/routing-switching/products/edgerouter-lite

 

The gateway is only 20$ more..

 

Does your 24 port switch support vlans?  Not a requirement - but this moves you into a whole new ball game for network when you add real AP like the unifi stuff and then router and switching that supports vlans.

 

You can always add more AP if you find you have low coverage areas as well.  Nice thing with going with real POE AP..  Ease of placement for best coverage..  While the current AC line your looking at the the LR, Pro and Lite do not support full mesh.. They can do wireless uplinks - just need to provide them power and they can use one of the bands for uplink if you can not really run a wire.. They also have the in wall ones you could leverage if you have wires going to all your runs already.

https://store.ubnt.com/collections/wireless/products/unifi-ap-in-wall

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

Thanks Budman!

 

1. The current switch is just a dumb switch, not managed so no VLANs. Also, I know a ceiling mount is recommended but I can't (without great expense) get a wire dropped with ceiling access anywhere near that point. I looked at the radiation pattern from that AP and think I may be OK. I only have one room that would be 'behind' and below the AP so that toroid pattern will likely work with reduced signal... The other option would be the ceiling high on the second floor over the foyer That would put it 26' about above the ground floor. I'd think the top floor would get outstanding signal and the downstairs would start to trail off but that may still be better.

 

2. I'll look at the gateway, I'm fine with having more capability than I need.

 

3. The drops running downstairs all run down exterior walls (best I could do working with the home builder at the time)  so grabbing a line and adding an in-wall AP is also not the best/easy solution.  Worst case, I may need to get the AP and a long cable and a non-conductive/shielding handheld mount to get me a bit further from the radiation point and move the AP around and measure the signal. If needed, maybe I can build a little 'shelf' on that wall to get it mounted horizontally.

 

4. As for mesh, just plain decided to skip them this round. I'll let the consumer stuff get another generation or two under their belt. 

[+BudMan MVC]

The consumer mesh ###### is just that currently - no vlan support at all.. WTF??

 

Your most likely going to want to go with a smart switch that can do vlans.  Depends on how many devices you have, and how many vlans you want, etc.  You could always go with a smaller port density switch that can do vlans and then use your dumb downstream of that where all devices on that dumb switch are on the same vlan.  Cheap 8 port gigs that do vlans can be had for $40 or less even.  I picked up a tplink one for $25 a while back to play with since many people have it and wanted to have some first hand experience with it.. Its got some flaws for sure - cosmetic one where it flags tagged packets and recv errors in its interface counter.  And you can not remove vlan 1 from ports - so not real secure, any one could just connect to any port and access the switch admin page (still need to know password).. And if in a home/lab not all that big of an issue.  But to mean this is a big enough security issue that would not use in actual production network.

 

Yeah 2 story houses can be a pain for mounting AP on in the first floor ceiling..

 

If your going to go with unifi for your router and AP -- might as well go full and get a switch from them as well hehehe

 

 

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

First of all, not sure why I said it was a 24 port switch, its 16. Guess I was wishing....  and for further transparency, I actually landed up with 2 (TP-Link TL-SG1016) . Both are in the rack but only one is powered up. Its a boring story how I landed up with two but it ends with being told to just keep the second one instead of sending it back so that's what I did, Always figured if one dies, I'd just plug in the other. I'd like the idea of a smaller VLAN capable switch that I can put in front of the main switch.