10,000 sq ft coverage

[mlg321]

I am trying to cover a large 10,000 sq ft house, that currently has a linksys router and a few access points scattered around the house. Speed is slow and coverage is poor. At this current moment, I'm planning on gettings one AirPort Extreme as a base station, and 4-5 other AirPort Expresses or Extremes to extend the network via ethernet. This is what I currently have at another location, of about 5,000 sq ft. It works very well. But before I do that again, I've been researching Uniquiti Unifi. I'm wondering how they will differ in performance, range, and seemless roaming throughout the house, as well as ease of use set up. We are an all Apple house, MacBooks, iPads, iPhones. Can I use the AXBS as the router & starting WiFi point and then add Unifis on throughout the house from there?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[thiggins]

If you are going to use Unifi, which is an enterprise-grade system, I don't think you will want to mix in an Apple Airport Extreme.

If by "seamless roaming" you mean very quick handoff from AP to AP with the client automatically switching when it senses a better connection nearby, forget it. That's up to the client and not something that is built into Apple or any other consumer Wi-Fi clients.

 

[mlg321]

Thanks.

If I go the Uniquiti route, what router do you suggest? Something with WiFi preferably, to be the starting point since it is somewhat centrally located.

 

[thiggins]

You can use the Airport Extreme if you like as a router and even as a central AP. Just don't expect the Ubiquiti Unifi to integrate it. In other words, the Apple won't appear in the Ubiquiti Unifi console.

 

[darkphader]

Finished a UniFi AP Pro deployment (3 units covering a larger space) at a local office recently and it was certainly a pleasure. The units come with a PoE injector which works fine if you don't have a PoE enabled switch. Nice to be able to get them up and out of the way without needing a nearby power outlet. All managed from one app makes for quick work. Great performance. Highly recommended.

 

[darkphader]

If I go the Uniquiti route, what router do you suggest? Something with WiFi preferably, to be the starting point since it is somewhat centrally located.

No reason to go WiFi on the router - you'll have the UniFi's for wireless and you may even create performance issues, and certainly management overhead, between it and the UniFi's. My personal preference is OpenBSD on a small Atom based box such as the Supermicro SYS-5015A-EHF-D525 (and even an old PIII with a couple of NIC's will handle eveything you can throw at it), or if you want something (seemingly) more braindead simple, use a "firewall" distro such as SmoothWall, pfSense, etc. You'll (generally) have much more control even beyond what DD-WRT can provide.

Chris

 

[sfx2000]

I am trying to cover a large 10,000 sq ft house, that currently has a linksys router and a few access points scattered around the house. Speed is slow and coverage is poor. At this current moment, I'm planning on gettings one AirPort Extreme as a base station, and 4-5 other AirPort Expresses or Extremes to extend the network via ethernet. This is what I currently have at another location, of about 5,000 sq ft. It works very well. But before I do that again, I've been researching Uniquiti Unifi. I'm wondering how they will differ in performance, range, and seemless roaming throughout the house, as well as ease of use set up. We are an all Apple house, MacBooks, iPads, iPhones. Can I use the AXBS as the router & starting WiFi point and then add Unifis on throughout the house from there?

Any help is appreciated.

The Airport Extreme with ethernet backhauled Airport Expresses can do the job very well - set up the Expresses as Roaming Access Points

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4260

Very easy to do, and works great - my iDevices roam clean from AP to AP depending on signal strength - it's a fast layer 2 handover, so VOIP apps don't even know they've jumped AP's during traffic...