Quote:
Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce
Step 1:
Basement 3000 sq ft
Main floor 4000 sq ft (includes garage and self contained main floor inlaw suite, a portion of which do not have second floor above either. For reference to size, from front edge of garage to back of inlaw suite is more than 100 linear ft - just measured .
Upper floor 2600 sq ft.
Also want service over sizeable outdoor space in back. House exterior is entirely brick, apparently a pretty good signal killer.
Previous owners (they built it) ran network cable everywhere (and RG6). Literally miles throughout every room of house, but appears to me they cut all cabling in utility room when they left. Almost none are marked there anymore. Not sure if this is usable or how much may help.
Step 2
We need good stable internet throughout home for home offices and streaming entertainment purposes. We are not gamers. Budget is what is required to provide excellent coverage throughout the home. I have no idea how to rate level of knowledge, but I can learn.
Thanks
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For your needs, my assumption is you need signal strength in all areas of the home (absolutely no dead spots) and that signal strength outside of the main areas (office, media room etc.) is not as big of a concern (consistent high speeds).
What do you have right now network wise and how "lacking" is it (signal strength issues, dead zones etc.)?
How big is a "sizeable outdoor space in back"?
The cabling you have and whether it is useable, no idea, but let's assume it's usable. It is worth the time and effort finish off ethernet cables and using a tester to figure out which cable is which plate the other areas of the home. I'd suggest this be done no matter what method you choose so that you can hard wire access points (rather than attempt to wirelessly repeat) and hardwire media/office (to have more consistent speeds/reduce potential interference).
For a mesh concept vs a specific networking concept, everyone can notice the difference in performance vs stability.
It's your choice to decide what tradeoff you want in terms of money, time and max performance.
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I'm not a Ubiquiti fan boy, but it's just what I know and an easier standard than aiming lower end for units that aren't as consistent and I have good experience with them.
Amplifi line is cheaper, easier with a difficulty level barely more than looking at settings on an app. Some of the performance will only ever be "good enough, but perhaps that's what you want. Less settings to break things, but decent amount more settings than cheaper mesh systems. Issues causing down time are not too significant. You can keep adding more units and mesh points without much worry. Trade time for money. Highs not as high, lows not as low. Think iPhone, mostly similar across the board.
UniFi line is more expensive, with a difficulty level closer to customizing settings and confirming the settings are compatible with varied hardware. Your aim is for fantastic performance everywhere and good enough isn't always considered a victory. You could run into issues that could cause much more down time or be perplexed with a specific hardware add on that just isn't working right at all. Way more settings options to improve performance or cause a mess that needs to be reversed and revised. More AP isn't necessarily a good thing as they can interfere with each other. Money cannot always substitute time. The money is for higher level performance. Highs are much higher, lows are much lower. Think combining low and high end Android units depending on situation.
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For a home of your description + backyard area, in theory 3-4 AmpliFi HD should work with enough fingers crossing to hope that there aren't bad enough dead zones or weak zones that piss you off. You could tinker with positioning, or just add more point to mesh to a problem area. I am assuming that you'd hard wire the additional routers (ethernet) rather than attempt to get them to communicate wirelessly with each other to amp the signal (drops your speeds a lot due to duplication of transmissions).
1. At the utility room (basement?) Should be adequate enough for most of the basement.
2. Main floor x 2. One in a main area/closer to the garage side, one as close to the backyard wall with as little walls in between as possible.
3. Optional: Upstairs
In my place which is probably half your size, I had 3 Amplifi routers. One in basement/utility room (router), one upstairs south wall (Access Point/mesh), one upstairs north wall (Access Point/mesh).
Basement was fine signal strength wise.
(South) Backyard I'd get decent/weak signal up to 15-20 feet and 20-50 feet was weak/inconsistent away from the house wall (broadcasting through two inner walls + outer wall stucco). I could have moved it to broadcast only through the outer wall, but before I could test it, I upgraded.
(North) Garage I'd get strong signal.
Main floor (supplied by basement and upstairs) I'd get solid consistent signal everywhere.
I'm quite certain I could have constantly adjusted the positioning to make the signal more effective, but the Amplifi Mesh system was so simple, it would have been easier to just buy an additional mesh point or router and just plug it in close to the area I had issues with.
On a 300 Mbit plan, there was not a single place in my home that was slower than 20-30 MB/s when using speed test.
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Dream machine route (basic concept):
1. Dream machine (depends which version of it you want) at utility room (Basically a router)
2. Special access point (hardwired) broadcasting towards outside
3. Access point (ie: wifi 6 Long range) somewhere on the main floor (wall or ceiling)
4. Access point (AC) somewhere on the main floor but on the far side, have one to deal with bugs with devices confused by Wifi6
The dream machine and special access point are probably closer to $300 each all in for set up and additional work and the AP are probably $100-150 each. You're flirting closer to $1K at this point, but the expectation is that the performance could be up to 2-3x higher than with "generic" mesh points. The UDM system has some pretty slick stuff that can connect to it for additional features and expansion wise, you can either grab more APs or swap APs to more specialized jobs for your home. This set up however is going to be a combination of much higher performance due to more situational specific hardware being put up, but more complexity for set up and the research to figure out an issue will be higher because it's not as unified hardware and settings as something like the Amplifi.
In my home, I have the Dream machine Pro + U6 long range (wifi 6) AP and a AC lite AP. With only the UDM + U6 LR, I was getting over 100 MBits and lots of 200 MBits almost everywhere in the home with the occasional 30-40 MBits. I have the LR AP close to the outer wall and I can get solid signal almost 50-100 feet away. However, my inlaws had weird connectivity issues with their devices that I couldn't replicate with my devices. I added the AC lite AP and those connectivity issues are gone. But now I swear I have interference issues between the two AP and the speeds are basically 40-180 MB/s per speed test in my home. Faster than the Amplifi set up, but feels like a failure if I don't have over 100 MB/s+ in every damn corner of my home and the main area speeds dropping to around 80-180 instead of being consistently 16-200+. so I must spend time and figure it out when I get a chance.
