Recommendations for home APs?

Networking Networking Hardware
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Hi, folks. I’ve got a fairly large property that I’m looking to wire up with new APs. It’s currently got 3x unifi UAP-PRO models and they’re absolute garbage. I need to manually restart them every 3-5 days or they choke themselves to death, and I’m getting sick of it. I bought this crap so it’d be set and forget.

I really want to upgrade to something that does wifi 6, but I also want it to be manageable. Ideally, I’d run something that can be managed through Ansible or an easy-to-use web UI, like the Unifi gear has. I don’t really have a budget at this point, but I know I need 3x APs, and have wired for 3, so I’m happy in that regard. All I need now is to figure out which units to use.

Something to note, I’ve only wired cat5e to these APs, so the best they’ll get is 1Gbps. I like the idea of wifi 6, mostly because in real world situations, we won’t be able to saturate the full speed.

One of my questions for the folks who know about signals is, how much do walls/HVAC effect the signal quality of this stuff? I’ve got a couple deadzones and I suspect metal in HVAC ducts could be the cause.

Bonus points if they run some form of OpenWRT or are compatible with it.

Sorry this is a bit unorganized, it’s been a long day and it’s only 9am.

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A lot of people including myself had problems with this model. Totally understand if you want to go with a different company after that bad experience, but the lite series have been really reliable for me (years of service with no issues).

I just got a wifi6 lite ap. I can let you know how it goes. The UAP-Pros would typically exhibit problematic behavior within the first year.

Eager to see if there’s anything affordable that falls into this category.

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Not insignificantly but in a Home situation not enough to worry… wifi 6 complicates it as it has the ability to utilize the reflections and balances in MU-MIMO… so overall not something I would worry about unless you see real world problems after deployment

Lots of software issues as I understand

There are currently 6 models OpenWRT compatible Wifi 6 models as of today. https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi

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As for ansible integration im really not sure. I only have one WAP (dont even)… Though TBCH I feel your sentiment. Ill be on wifi 5 until it becomes widely supported on the WAP end of things for OpenWRT… If you want a recommendation for that I have one

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I thought they were falling behind on providing the latest protocols, but I guess I’m just not paying attention.

Do let me know how the wifi lites work.

Figured you’d be in the same boat as I.

I’m on old dumb APs that don’t have any special beamforming or MU-MIMO or whatever, so maybe the deadzones will go away.

The UAP Lite is compatible? HMMMMMMMM intensifies.

Looks like the UAP AC PRO supports openwrt as well. I wonder if that’ll fix the software retardation.

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I heard the Unifi 6 LR is a much better candidate for most peoples usage. Through the grapevine of course

@SgtAwesomesauce bear in mind SNAPSHOT is not stable where 21.x is

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I’ll have to do some research on the LR vs Lite.

TBH, if I can have some assurances that these new APs work well, that’d be nice. I’ve already got Unifi fixtures in my ceiling, so I am not looking forward to patching a bunch of holes.

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On OpenWRT I have no clue. That would be spending some time on their forums for sure.

As for the Unifi 6 LRs I havent seen complains like I saw for the UAP-Pros.

So if those 6 LRs are compatible with the fixtures. Id say they are the safest upgrade in your case? Worst case OpenWRT doesnt work but Im not seeing complaints about the 6s on a search

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I have the Netgear Essentials WAX214, AX1800 (WAX214-100EUS) . 2.4/5GHz WiFi 6 with WebUI and SSH access. Works fine, however I have no experience automating access to it.

Edit: Has some nice features like it can open 4 Networks in different VLANs etc.

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I’m okay with using their botnet firmware. They won’t learn anything they can’t find on my forum account lol

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it likely would be a manner of just setting up the ssh-agent properly. Embedding the keys and having ansible transfer the configs? Im assuming theres someway to to dump and restore the config in terminal?

lol fair enough.

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I’ve noticed the fixtures seem to be changing. I wouldn’t assume different APs will just work by default…

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REEEEE

That thoroughly disappoints me. You’d think they’d make the mounts standardized so that you can just swap em out.

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The newer ones have “security” features :wink:

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If you’re just looking for a “set and forget” setup, I’d probably recommend a set of Eero Pro units.

They’re probably the best at just about simplifying management to about nil.

Edit:

Only downside is that you literally have little to no access to advance debugging/management features.

It’s basically the equivalent of buying an Apple device for your network needs.

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Try to get a product you can install on the ceiling and power it with PoE.

Really depends on your walls. There are countries where people have basically reinforced cardboard box walls, others have sandstone. My neighbors house has actual concrete walls, not good for WLAN or drilling holes to get cables going.

And radio waves don’t care about you or your needs, they got their wavelength and just do their physics.
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Weather can have an impact, but usually isn’t the tipping point.

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Wow, that’s some decent value there. Might have to check it out.

That’s gonna be a nope from me dawg. Need that good good advanced tab.

Never experienced that, but hmmmm

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Lol fair enough. I’m still evaluating how I feel about it; i don’t really do anything esoteric with my home network. 99% of the time I’m in love with it, 1% of the time I’m pissed off that there’s only a phone app for interfacing with it, for instance.

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Yeah I had no idea, that’s interesting.

AC lite and 6 lite appear to have the same mounts, but IIRC, Pro and LR have their own. I was sent an LR by mistake recently, and it is quite large.

I think @mutation666 has some Mikrotik APs he likes. Although they also have an erratic track record.

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Yeah, I’ve heard both rave reviews and complete dressings down about Mikrotik. I’m good with any product that’s good quality tho.

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I would strongly caution against EnGenius AP’s, the support has been the worst I have ever had. I am about to test the TP-Link Omada products since it looks like I can self host the controller in a standard VM/Container.

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