Help me find the best WIFI7 AP for me

[vlycop]

Hello all ! I’m back !
Does that mean anything when nobody know you ? Anyway…
After 2y of contractor hell, I’m now finally living in my new house, and while there is still a lot of work to do, my first pain point is the networking.

My current Wifi is the ISP router, very bare bone and i can’t use my Opnsense router for as long as i need it.

So i want to buy my AP “right now” and that mean not waiting for whatever model will come out in 3-6 month. This is my list of need and want, i hope you can help me with model recommendation

1. Ceiling mounted form-factor with POE power
2. 10 GB upstrem
3. Enough stream on all frequency to not be a limit. i’ll have over 200 WIFI device on the 2.5Ghz spread over 2 APs, probably 5-10 on the 5Ghz, and for now only 3 on the 6Ghz but that will evolve with time.
4. At least 4 SSID per frequency
5. Device isolation for the bad iot network
6. No cloud controller or internet requirement. Those device will never see the light of the internet and i expect to upload update to them when i want to do one.
7. A way to sync the config to both AP, it can be API, Ansible, a web UI, sftp .conf upload, i don’t really care as long as something exist.
8. A way to hid all light/led without having to put gaffer on them.

That aside, i don’t care about brand. My rule in this new house is “No Unifi switch” because i got trapped in their ecosystem once. But for AP, it could be them if they are the best, i really don’t care.
They are usuealy very late tho, so i feel like looking elsewhere is a good idea.

Here is the list of AP i have found for now

• Access Point U7 Pro XG - Ubiquiti Store
  Only 2x2x2, but the pro xgs is 2x4x2, and i feel like the extra 2 on the 5Ghz won’t really be useful
  I know the software stack already, but i would be more than happy to try something else.
• Omada EAP780 | BE22000 Ceiling Mount Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Access Point | TP-Link
  I can’t tell if the Omada Software Controller version of their management app require cloud or not.
  I can’t find the number of stream per radio.
• WBE758 WiFi 7 Access Point Insight Managed - NETGEAR
  4x4x4 is nice, but the device look surprisingly small, and it’s over 1k€ which is hard to justify but not infeasible if it make sense.

What do you have experience with ? What do you recommend or advise against ?

[vlycop]

@vlycop

I can’t tell if the Omada Software Controller version of their management app require cloud or not.

It look like it’s ok, it will work fully offline

Will the system work without Internet connectivity - Business Community

@vlycop

I can’t find the number of stream per radio.

Internal Omni
• 2.4 GHz: 4× 4 dBi
• 5 GHz: 4× 5.5 dBi
• 6 GHz: 4× 5 dBi

[vlycop]

I could get a used Omada 783 for under 500€, so i took that as a test.
If i don’t like it or find a drawback to big, i’ll probabely be able to sell it back for arount the same price.

I didn’t find any other brand, to check on… If anyone have some recommendation i’m still looking around !

[vlycop]

I popped a proxmox on my old laptop that will serve as a temporary server until i can get my rack back, and installed omada on a debian vm.
A couple note

• It request 16GB of ram and 2 core 4 thread, but i could make it boot with 2 gb of ram and 2 thread. i’ll check if its stable given my small usage, because that laptop is 14 yo and have 12gb of ram, can’t afford to give it much.
• It needed openjdk-17-jre-headless and jsvc to be installed before i could run the dpkg install, and it left the install in a bad state when i didn’t had them forcing me to hard uninstall it.
• it also require mongodb
• it’s UI look crazy like Unifi, and i wonder who copied who.

Sadly like unify, it’s saturated with option i don’t need because i don’t have a router compatible with the tool… If only they could show and hide feature and config based on the enrolled hardware…