Access point suggestions

[lackskill]

I have a more complex than average homeowner network install. My house is 2700sf with a basement and 2 floors above grade. Basement is standard poured concrete, above grade is typical 2x4 stick build from the 90s, siding is lp smartside, with some decorative brick fascia. My current network consists of a sb6141 next to a netgear r7800 in the basement. Wireless is disabled on the r7800. There’s also a netgear 8 port gb switch feeding various locations in the house. My wireless is currently handled by a netgear Orbi rbr-50 with one satellite placed at opposite ends of the main floor. The rbr has a wired backhaul. The rbs is a wireless backhaul. When it’s working, this setup has been adequate. Lately my rbr is requiring a reboot due to complete signal loss between once a day and once a week with signal degradation that increases with uptime.

The r7800 is still working ok and I’ll replace it with something like a netgate 2100 appliance when it NFGs. In the meantime, I’m tired of replacing $3-600 worth of equipment every 2nd or 3rd year. I’d like to find a cheaper set of access points that will basically directly replace the Orbi and have decent reliability and similar coverage. AC is enough for the foreseeable future. IoT consists of nest cameras and t-stat.

I understand that I’ll have to run a wired backhaul to the rbs location and am comfortable with that.

Ruckus looks nice, but I’d be hard pressed to spend half of one r350 to achieve my objective.

Once upon a time, I enjoyed spending the 40-60 hours agonizing over these decisions, but I just don’t have time for that anymore. Absent any viable alternatives, I’ll probably just get a couple cheap asus or tplink routers and put them in mesh or ap mode.

Thanks!

 

[Tech Junky]

I use Zyxel NWA210AX and at $150/ea they're worthwhile. Mine covers 1300sq ft corner to corner and some RF leakage outside as well for additional coverage. Uptime is as long as you want w/o any issue. Upgrade the FW when it's released so, every ~90 days or so check for new FW / reboot to apply. If you have it connected to 2.5GE at the switch the potential single client speeds are 1.5gbps and split between 2 clients max would be 2.5gbps or slightly less w/ overhead. They've only been out for a couple of years so, durability isn't really known beyond 2 yeas at this point but, it's doing well so far. There's talk of an NWA220AX-E coming around the end of the year and who knows what the costs would be at this point but, the only real perk would be 6ghz being added.

 

[lackskill]

Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll look that up.

My internet is only 200mbps and not likely to see a substantial upgrade soon, so big wlan throughput isn’t a necessity. My heavy usage is all wired anyway.

 

[tgl]

FWIW, I'd recommend getting a true access point not a wireless router, if you're going to put it behind some other router. Yeah, most consumer wireless routers have an AP mode, but their heart's not in that use-case in my experience. You're paying for more hardware than you need, and getting a larger bug surface that you definitely don't need.

A year ago before I'd learned that lesson, I bought some Netgear Orbis, and while they were fast when they worked they were unreliable and not very configurable; I agree with your conclusion that you don't want new ones. I then tried some ASUS XT8s, and the only thing that's better is the configurability. In the 8 months I've had them, ASUS has yet to ship a firmware version that doesn't have serious bugs. What I'm currently using is a pair of Zyxel NWA210AX APs (purchased at the suggestion of @Tech Junky and some other regulars here), and these are the first wireless gear since my late-lamented Apple Airports that I'm actually satisfied with. I don't say that they have zero issues --- about once a month, one or the other will reboot for no apparent reason. But they are enormously more solid than either the Netgear or ASUS units. I think this is less about one manufacturer being smarter than another and more about an access point having less to go wrong than a router.

 

[lackskill]

FWIW, I'd recommend getting a true access point not a wireless router, if you're going to put it behind some other router. Yeah, most consumer wireless routers have an AP mode, but their heart's not in that use-case in my experience. You're paying for more hardware than you need, and getting a larger bug surface that you definitely don't need.

A year ago before I'd learned that lesson, I bought some Netgear Orbis, and while they were fast when they worked they were unreliable and not very configurable; I agree with your conclusion that you don't want new ones. I then tried some ASUS XT8s, and the only thing that's better is the configurability. In the 8 months I've had them, ASUS has yet to ship a firmware version that doesn't have serious bugs. What I'm currently using is a pair of Zyxel NWA210AX APs (purchased at the suggestion of @Tech Junky and some other regulars here), and these are the first wireless gear since my late-lamented Apple Airports that I'm actually satisfied with. I don't say that they have zero issues --- about once a month, one or the other will reboot for no apparent reason. But they are enormously more solid than either the Netgear or ASUS units. I think this is less about one manufacturer being smarter than another and more about an access point having less to go wrong than a router.

This is consistent with my thought process more succinctly communicated. Thanks!

My rbr seems to have just completely died as I’m posting this, so what was a thought exercise may have just become a pressing need.

My rbr was acting as a switch as well, any recommendations for a 4 port would be appreciated also!

 

[tgl]

Plain unmanaged switches are easy and cheap ... I've always used Netgear and been happy with their offerings. If you need a managed switch then it gets more interesting.

 

[lackskill]

I doubt I’ll ever have the need for a managed switch. Been using netgear equipment almost exclusively for a little over 20 years. Up until about 10 years ago it had served me well, but even my unmanaged 8 port gb switch from them seems to need an occasional reboot. My older stuff got rebooted if my power went out or if I moved.

 

[Tech9]

Perhaps the best AC Wave 2 AP for the price is TP-Link EAP245v3. One OC200 Omada Controller and you have UniFi like system for less. I had UniFi with LR-PRO before in one business place, tested exactly EAP245v3 after and they are even better. The controller is needed not only for fancy graphs and stats, but it also manages roaming technologies. Omada works much better than Asus AiMesh for comparison. Home routers shout too much. Place 3x APs and adjust the power to your needs. You'll be much happier user. Good quality Qualcomm hardware. You need PoE switch for clean installation.

 

[tgl]

Interesting. FWIW, I've got Netgear GS316 and GS110MX switches, as well as an ancient GS105v4 5-porter, and never had even the slightest issue with 'em.

I would suggest that buying a 4-port is not very future-proof --- go for 8 port minimum, unless you have some absolutely convincing argument that you won't ever need more ports.

 

[Tech9]

something like a netgate 2100 appliance

Definitely go with SMB gear with native VLAN support. You'll need it.

 

[L&LD]

With (only) a 2700 SqFt area to light up, and the desire to have the LAN side more robust, a 2x RT-AX86U in wired AiMesh backhaul mode will be a noticeable upgrade for both wireless and wired devices today and in the foreseeable future.

Note that even a quality Cat5e cable of 100' is enough to provide a 2.5GbE connection between the main router and the node.

With a couple of QNAP QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Unmanaged 2.5GbE Switches, your most important wired devices can all be working at the 2.5GbE speeds too.

Why the recommendation above? Because basically, the above setup has been working flawlessly for the past 19 months or so.

And, a 200Mbps ISP connection in a 2700 SqFt space doesn't warrant any SMB gear either.


Note that today, I have replaced one RT-AX86U (the node) with a GT-AX6000 router with noticeably improved results (around 20% higher, wireless).

2x GT-AX6000 would be the setup I would be pursuing today to not need to re-do this in the next year or two again.