We have used Engenius WAPs for years. Ultra-reliable but the setup is designed for IT people not home users. There have been occasional quirky issues with disconnects on Apple devices, which usually go away after the next Apple iOS upgrade. They can do everything in your requirements list.
Another great choice is Ubiquiti. They are great equipment but have moved strongly into cloud management and their devices are very dependent on it. If you are not comfortable with everything in the cloud, they are not for you.
Used Cisco is an option but you really have to be invested in Cisco infrastructure and knowledge to use them.
Most of the rest are either very expensive or home user items. Depends on your needs and budget.
@pike_it - do you currently use the Ubiquiti UniFi series? How do you like them?
@anon84413319 - I’ll take a look at the Asus AC86U and an Asus AC68U. Thanks!
@anon33261557 - I’ll look at the openwrt.com effort. I am not sure I want to be experimenting on my sister-in-law. But it would be a fun project for me!
@jack-long - Hi Jack! Welcome to the IPFire Community!
I’ll probably stick to something new for the sister-in-law. And no cell 5G. I don’t want it to come back and bite me. I’ll probably stay away from mesh since they’ll be an ethernet connection on each floor.
@fkienker - I’ll look at the Engenius WAPs and Ubiquiti. I may steer away from cloud management. I hadn’t thought about it before but I don’t want to be too firmly tied to the cloud. Something to think about! I don’t have any experience with Cisco.
@xperimental - do you currently use the Grandstream APs? Which one? How do you like them? I just bought a Grandstream SIP device and it was a “challenge” to set-up.
The Unifi AP’s can be used in a manage environment or un managed.
They are not tied to Cloud management.
I use one of there AC Pro AP’s
And I also do the old router trick. Turn of DHCP etc.
I do not use them because my setup does not need it, but i installed few (10-12) and i quite like them.
The (free) management software is a bit a PITA (should be running 24/7 to gain advantage of the features) but when installed is easy to use and manage, you can extend your setup quite easily adding devices if needed.
In a domestic environment, the devices are “nice”, they work really well, the extension of the coverage is good and the bandwidth is really interesting.
No affiliation with Ubiquiti.
Another brand and device group can be Nebula-enabled AP By Zyxel. They can be managed standalone, but the base cloud management of Zyxel is free and there are some not expensive AP’s that be buyed and used into an house. Never give a shot of Nebula management because every time I installed one of them the cloud management was not an option/interesting.
BTW 5G Wireless lan is really useful when close to the AP, the latency is dramatically lower and the bandwidth is quite interesting.
No it don’t. I got one of these (for now about 1,5 yaers) and i’m totally happy. For the first setup you’ll need the controller UI (better than doing the setup via shell directly on the AP). I installed it on a RasPi 3 (with raspian) that wasn’t in use. If you did your setup and don’t want to change anything you may take the RasPi for other purposes.
Because if you don’t have a “low consumption” device as a Pi or CubiEBoard for the management, you have to keep a computer powered on and a service/server (well… a few) to collect data and store stats from your AP’s
Also, the management can be linked to a cloud management account, so you can run/manage remotely the network, and update not only management, but also the firmware of the devices.
Anyway: after the setup, management do not need to be kept running all the time for the AP to works, even after power shortage.But… i suggest you to keep it running at least a couple of months, only to help evaluate use, bandwith hogs and even which device need… ethernet than a wireless card
Bandwidth has been defined “interesting” because a pricier AC-Pro gives more transport capacity on 5GHZ, allowing the increase of data exchange between hosts into the network. This come handy in massive file transfers and LAN streaming from devices like NASes/video banks with more resolution than 2k.
Also… you don’t mention any ISP capacity/speed. Maybe after 400mbps the AC AP Lite could show the limit.
I have a Unifi AP AC Lite and it is working fine. It has a very good coverage and I only need the one to give me good coverage throughout the house.
You don’t need to have the management software running to be able to use the AP as long as you are not intending to use the Guest Portal option as that needs the software to be running.
Without the portal the only thing you lose by not having the management software running is the statistics for the AP connections, speeds, dropped packets etc. I haven’t missed that for my home use of the unit.
The only problem I had with it was when I set it up to get an IP address from ipfire by dhcp. It would work most of the time but occasionally it couldn’t connect and it’s fall back seemed to be to set a fixed IP in another subnet from the one I was using. Then I would need to basically reset the AP and restart it. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was so in the end I set a fixed IP in the AP and it has worked fine since then.
At the moment I am leaning toward: - Unifi AP AC Lite or maybe - Unifi AP AC IW (In Wall).
I’ll be able to add comments about the install but probably not many comments about the use. The set-up will be at an in-laws house so I may not hear anything.
Thanks again to all and I’ll report back!
Edit:
• No NAS (yet?)
• And the speed is 50 Mb down x 5 Mb up. Maybe someday will update to 200 x 10.
I will (should) be receiving my Unifi AP any moment and I am still reading the guides & Ubiquiti web site. Much of this is over my head and I have a few beginning questions.
I want to stay away from a Ubiquiti cloud setup. Do I need to setup a Ubiquiti account to setup / configure the Unifi AP? When I load Java and the Unifi.app on my iMac, the Unifi Controller ask for a password & ID. Is there a direct way to configure the Unifi AP without calling the mother ship? (I realize this is not the Ubiquiti support site but I am hoping someone has gone thru the same and can point me to the right webpage/website)
Thank you!
PS - I didn’t want to do shell commands to setup / config either unless there is a nice setup command like IPFire!
Hi Jon,
That looks very interesting. I never found that in any of my google searches. Oh well.
You will have to let us know how you get on with it. I might give it a try myself. Will have to check that it can be used to set up vlans as I have my Unifi AP with two vlans, one for green and one for blue.
Regarding the Ubiquiti account. You don’t need to set one up but the wizard doesn’t make that very clear. I only read that I didn’t need to do that some time after I had done it. However, even if you do, you can disable it in the controller software. However this probably no longer is an issue if you use the app.
All of the above units worked better than hoped. My SIL (sister-in-law) ended up with one unit in the basement and one unit upstairs on the second floor. No 3rd unit in the middle floor. Nice savings there!
I was able to easily avoid using the Ubiquiti cloud setup. No Ubiquiti accounts were needed for setups or configs (no email, no password, nothing).
Everything for the UniFi Access Points can be setup locally via the UniFi Network app on my iPhone. Just following the instructions referenced in the above post.
The downside of avoiding the Ubiquiti cloud is no fancy or pretty stats. Which is OK by me.
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Also - I liked the Unifi products so much I ended up buying an Unifi Access Point for me. I had planned on buying two units (one for upstairs and one for downstairs) but the one I purchased covers the entire house really well.
Since I transfer lots of big files and do backups to a local server, I decided to buy a faster unit for our home.
Count me in…
But don’t forget: no replacement for the cable. 2.5Gbit Ethernet and 5GBit ethernet are coming. Cannot wait the time when a 48 MultiRate Switch will be available “cheap” (around 500 Euros/ USD)
First thing I do when getting hold of old or new wifi routers: flash OpenWrt. Currently I’m operating 4 TP-Link Archer C7 boxes as ordinary access points with 802.1X security (WPA2-EAP) and another one as guest wifi AP (i.e. in fact a “freifunk.net” node). The only management software I use is FreeRADIUS 3.x with a suitable “huntgroup” configuration to manage access. For me there is no need to do more management with cloud-based solutions etc.
- Unifi AP AC Lite or maybe
- Unifi AP AC IW (In Wall).