I’m looking for some advice as to what product(s) I would need to replace an access point in my house.
My current setup is crudely drawn below. The house is ancient and weirdly shaped, so needs multiple wireless access points to get decent coverage everywhere.
I have 300Mbps fibre to the premises which goes into the Wi-Fi router ®. I have a Cat 6 cable (red line) running from the router, outside the front of the house and back in through the back of the house where it connects to an old router (AP1) that is configured as a Wi-Fi bridge/access point.
Another Cat 6 cable (blue line) then runs from that access point to my cabin into another old router (AP2) that is configured as an access point so I can have Wi-Fi in there.
Basically I’ve chained the old routers and set them all up with the same Wi-Fi network and password so I can seamlessly connect automatically wherever I am, and all devices can see each other where relevant.
The issue is AP1 is failing every few days and giving very slow speeds. It’s fine after a reboot and goes back up to 300Mbps for a couple of days until it needs another kick.
I’d like to replace AP1 with something else. What I don’t know, is what would give the fastest/most consistent speeds.
Should I:
a) Just replace AP1 with another newer, more reliable router set to bridge/AP mode.
b) Replace AP1 with an Ethernet switch so that the red line and blue line connect to the switch, and connect a dedicated AP to the switch where AP1 is. Most inexpensive dedicated access points I’ve looked at don’t seem to have enough Ethernet ports to allow chaining, which is why I’m wondering if a switch is necessary.
c) Something else?
Assume I can’t run any new cables outside the house, i.e. I can’t be arsed to replace the red line because it would be a huge pain.
If you have specific recommendations of products, that would be great. Cost is a factor - I’m not looking to replace the whole setup with some expensive mesh product because 80% of the time I’m getting maximum speed with this current cheapo setup, it’s just that it’s annoying to have to reset AP1 regularly.
I’ve come to conclude that whenever there is a home networking issue, the solution is to avoid consumer grade hardware as much as possible. This usually takes care of having to reboot routers and access points every few days.
What I’d do in your case:
If you want to do this as cheaply as possible, I suggest just doing the cable runs to avoid daisy chaining, but I suspect the wireless access points themselves might be the main issue.
As for APs, there are many that are good. I personally use three Aruba Instant-On that cover my entire three floor house with no problem.
This is the right approach.
I personally use UniFi 6 dishes for my APs, and am never going back to “consumer”.
A note unsaid: typically these also handle band steering and roaming awareness. This means that you can walk from one AP to another and they will connect you seamlessly without fighting over who is stronger, and will adapt to prevent collisions.
Not sure about Aruba (almost guaranteed they have the same), but you want the options to deploy a Wifi config universally across your house, with each member being aware of and cooperating with the others. In UniFi case, they will occasionally scan the spectrum and auto assign the channels for what is least crowded in the range. The group automatically avoids each other during this process and it’s beautiful.
Yup, I have my Unifi gear for the automated allocation like you said, though I think pretty much every SOHO manufacturer does this to some degree these days.
Yup, I’ve seen those features in some of the models - an AP will hand off a client to a different AP automagically as necessary.