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’m using TP-Link Omada series access points and they are amazing. You can run them off of a power brick or POE (power over ethernet) and put then anywhere that you can run ethernet. They can also work in mesh mode if desired and are not super expensive. Combine them with the OC200 controller or run the controller software on an always on PC and they work flawlessly.
You can pick your preferred wifi version and upgrade to a newer version later on by just changing out the access points and adopting them into the system.