Suggest best router for home- normal as well as larger range

[vitrag24]

I bought D-Link dir615 n300 finally! It seems fine for me!

 

[bhojv74]

if someone was to invest in ubnt wireless hardware, which model would you recommend.

Depends on floor plan.

2880 square feet house I think. Basement, Ground Floor and First Floor. Since I have a corner house, I have access to the complete side of the house. I would prefer to install something on the ground floor that should cover it completely in addition to hopefully first floor and basement as well.

A floor plan of the place could help, but off hand looks like you need 1 AP-AC-LR on each of the 3 floors. Nothing would guarantee coverage across floors, you may try putting one on the ground and see how the signal strength on below & above floors.

so it needs a device like pi with controller configured to be running 24x7?

For home use, you can set it up on a Pi, some NAS models also support installation of the controller, any PC or MAC, but it does not need to run 24x7, if you do, you would have granular control of your wifi, you can even restrict bandwidth of clients from the controller. They even have a cloud key, it is just like a thumb drive sized with one LAN port and runs the controller 24x7.

You may even setup the APs individually using the mobile app, I prefer the controller mode. The AP does not have a web interface, it is like enterprise models (Zebra/Aruba etc) and needs a controller to be configured & monitored. Once you use it, I can guarantee you would never go back to consumer grade equipment.

that's not a big deal. i use a regular computer. desktop computer. and then i have a pi that runs pretty much 24x7. wifi at home is pretty much set right now. i just have a mi router in the basement and an extender on the ground floor. first floor is not covered much but it was not a priority until now. i was just wondering if i could get an estimate on how i can make it a proper mesh network so that devices do not lose internet when they switch from one network to another.

With consumer grade wifi, we setup individual APs and they work in isolated manner, but with controller, we just need to setup the controller software and adapt the APs to replicate the config. All the APs work in tandem to each other, does load balance among bands & APs. The wifi network is a single unified network managed by the controller using multiple APs. Thus, maybe start with 1 AP on ground floor, and expland on other floors if required. Later you may disable the wifi from you MI router.

EDIT:

Another product they have recently launched for homes is the Amplifi AmpliFi Wi-Fi

It is not available through dealer/integrator channel in India, so no warranty support and you would have to import. But I like keeping the routing & wifi functions separate.

 

[Sushubh]

So you install these on the ceiling for optimal coverage? Or can they be mounted on a wall?

 

[bhojv74]

Anywhere you like, I have it placed on my work desk at home. It can be installed both vertically or horizontally. It also comes with mounting bracket.

@Ouch , another thing I forgot to mention is that if your controller is on 24x7 then you can also manage it from the cloud using a browser or their mobile app. Which is why their controller hardware controller is called "cloud key".

 

[igloo]

Wifi signal tends to go down (with gravity maybe) . So better install it in higher floor.
In a four story house for single wifi ap best be to install it in third floor. one floor up and two down.

 

[bhojv74]

^ so if it comes down with gravity how will the client sent data to the AP against the gravity ?

Its not like rain falling, it is a 2 way communication. Never heard of this concept for indoor wifi, maybe valid for very long range p2p communication for aligning antenna.

 

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[bhojv74]

Here, you may try your luck :

Engadget giveaway: Win an Amplifi HD home WiFi system!

 

[Sushubh]

lol. that actually looks like the nest thermostat.

 

[v1rus]

Guys,

I have been trying to get good wifi coverage in my house and before investing in an expensive solution I tried to read about stuff and now I am even more confused. Can you please help me with the following:

1. It has dawned on me that the advertised speeds are combination of both up and down speed for a full duplex channel and therefore we can only get the half of the advertised speed from any router, This explains why router at my place max out at approximately 20MBps on 300Mbps negotiated link on 2.4Ghz ~19MBps) and 5Ghz (My router at best support AC750) max out at ~47MBps but I can not find any sources to confirm that.

Is my understanding this correct (I understand there can be gazillion other factor but is this the max speed) ?

2. AP selection in Wifi roaming is the responsibility of mobile device (laptop/mobiles/tablet etc) From wikipedia page:

The fundamental architecture for handoffs is identical for 802.11 with and without 802.11r: the mobile device is entirely in charge of deciding when to hand off and to which access point it wishes to hand off. In the early days of 802.11, handoff was a much simpler task for the mobile device

IEEE 802.11r-2008 - Wikipedia

then how does Ubiquity claims zero time hand off or whatever they call it?

3. Can I not create a mesh network by adding several routers with same SSID and same credentials? I understand the consumer grade and enterprise grade argument but for approximately 10 devices(Usage includes: no online gaming. video streaming from YouTube and Netflix and file sharing among devices) in our household is the difference significant to justify the cost?

4. Ubiquity AC Pro that is being sold on Amazon (Source
) is different from one being displayed on the web site (Ubiquiti Networks - UniFi® AP) In fact I could not find mention of AC Pro (I believe I have not looked hard enough) on the website

@bhojv74

Do you have any reference that provide details about data transfer rates of Amplifi when
1. Connected to one of the Extension unit which is connected to router
2. Connected to one of the extension unit which is connected to another extension unit


I will appreciate the help.

 

[bhojv74]

1. My mobile presently has nego link of 72 mbps on 2.4g wireless N/G @ 94% (-52 dBm) signal strength. The link speed will depend on your signal strength. Doing a internet speedtest from a 50 mbps connection, I'm getting around 42 mbps on my mobile.

2. UniFi - What is Zero-Handoff?

3. Connecting all the wifi routers with UTP, it is not mesh, go with physical connection if you can run cables at each location, that is the best approach.
Wireless Mesh Networking - O'Reilly Media
this would be an excellent read: Review: Ubiquiti UniFi made me realize how terrible consumer Wi-Fi gear is

4. You are looking at old devices page, refer here: Ubiquiti Networks - Products

Amplifi is a very new device and I've not used them. But just to clear the concept, those are not wifi extenders/extensions but wifi mesh points.