FlexHD

This makes sense. Do the modeling. The AP placement really needs to factor in your home shape. I have a 3,700 sq ft three level wood frame home. Back in 2020 I installed two nanoHD APs on the ceiling to the top floor (about 12’ from each end of the house) and they did a pretty nice job of covering the main areas on both floors below. I added a couple of FlexHDs on the lowest level to boost signal in some odd corners down there. 6GHz won’t cover as well as 5GHz and certainly not as well as 2.4hz, so more APs would likely be needed to have good 6GHz coverage. For outside, you will want an AP located outside of your aluminum siding, of course. The outdoor APs are pretty nice. I installed a U7 outdoor at a vacation house and it really lit up the yard nicely. Just know that you will only cover one side with a single AP due to your siding being aluminum.

I dropped off my orbi 970 at UPS today to be returned in favor of my new UniFi stack. It’s no comparison.

This is my current setup. Three WAPs(Ubiquity unifi) 3 years ago, have already replaced 2 switches and now all my access points are constantly failing. I have a Verizon router that my Apps are hardwired to for each floor. I was only using the WiFi from my APs before it started acting up, I’m currently using the WiFi from the router as a backup for a stable connection. My question is, is the SSID from the router interfering with the APs? If so, how can I resolve this. I’m only using the WiFi for my IoT devices.

I’ll really need your help. I’ve had this issue for the past three years now. A company installed 3 Ubiquiti WAPs for me that are now out of warranty. Have replaced 2 switches that just died and now all of my WAPs are not connecting to the network.

It's really not a lot worse that something like Asus, who has a decently robust interface (lots of consumer stuff hides everything behind "simplicity"). The payoff is reliability and a long service life (my oldest UniFi AP is 7 years old, still supported, and still working great.)

>I want them to be connected in to a seamless mesh network for seamless roaming. So, "mesh" has become an obtuse word in home networking. It's really just wirelessly uplinking to access points when cable can't or won't be used. Seamless roaming is built into wifi, it's not something that is only available in mesh systems - marketing hype has steered the understanding that way. You could set up three access points independently, with the same parameters (SSID, passphrase, security method) and your clients will roam amongst them as needed, seamlessly (meaning, no intervention required by the client to move). What mesh systems do bring is a unified management of access points which allows for certain enhancements to improve roaming (sometimes known as "fast roaming"). It's not super beneficial to home networks, but it's there. So if you're not buying a mesh system, using Ubiquiti UniFi or Omada - which both have a central "controller" - will provide those same features (and arguably better in some ways). Both of these are "prosumer" - a large step up in quality and features. Avoiding "the cloud" is maybe a good thing or maybe bad. With UniFi, you can set up access points standalone with an app that communicates directly with the hardware. Or, for a better setup, you would need the controller which allows more control and statistics. You also need to set up a userid with them, but you do not have to manage your network via, or have it connected to them - you can run it standalone. There are some benefits to the cloud access such as remote access to your controller. I run a full UniFi stack and it's been super reliable and easy to work with. I have a Dream Machine Pro, 5 switches and 4 APs. Since you mentioned PoE also, that's the way to go. I have my setup on a UPS, and everything is powered by a 16-port PoE switch. If the power goes out, everything keeps working off the UPS. The remote switches are also PoE powered, which is quite nice. Edit: spelling and some minor clarification

Just so you know, mesh doesn't bring roaming to wifi - any APs set up with the same authetication configuration (SSID, passphrase, security method) will allow wifi clients to roam amongst them as needed. Mesh uses what setups like Ubiquiti UniFi and commercial networking hardware use to allow *faster* roaming. UniFi would be my recommendation. It doesn't matter what your brother in law thinks.

UniFi - reliability, self-hosted, no cloud, no subscriptions etc.

UniFi has all the blocking and other features that you'd want. I have not tried it but it now also has ad blocking. At this point, I would never change. It's easy to maintain and upgrade etc. If something does fail, it's pretty simple to replace the component and keep moving. It's got a lot of enterprise type features that I like.

In consumer world - Asus and TP-Link are the better choices. Eero is great hardware has a subscription model for some needed (IMO) features. I would avoid Netgear, D-Link and Linksys - they are not what they once were and have subscription models, sometimes poor support, and varying reliability and quality. You could also consider gl.Inet Flint devices if you're looking for an all-in-one router, they have gained a very good reputation. I agree that a better choice than any of the above would be Ubiquiti UniFi and TP-Link Omada is also decent - it's different than the consumer gear. Reliability is one of the major points of these prosumer setups. I've been running UniFi for 7 years, it's great.

I’ve used Unifi APs for years with my Firewalla. Another option you might want to investigate is the Firewalla AP7.

Have you looked into Unifi? It’s not the cheapest and gets hate from the open source crowd because, well, it isn’t open source. It works really well though and they have a huge ecosystem to build out your network.

I would recommend Ubiquity over TPLink due to the potential ongoing political issues if you are in the US. Also, build quality for Ubiquity APs is better. You so not need to run their controller software 24/7. You can just run it to set up and uodate firmware. My main network router and switch is Mikrotik and love them. I woukd nit rrcommend their APs, though. Not as giid of performance on those.

I disagree, I have 2 Unifi APs, both are connected to the same PoE switch (hence the same network), but one of them says it is connecting to the other because there appears to be a problem with the ethernet cable, it only gets the power over the ethernet cable but data is flowing through the other AP, then, this is effectively a mesh network. I need to change that ethernet run, but if the AP is working I don't really have to do it right now.